Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Decem­ber 25, 2014

The Catholic Church cel­e­brates three sep­a­rate Eucharis­tic Litur­gies for this solem­ni­ty of the birth of Jesus. There are sub­se­quent­ly three sep­a­rate sets of scrip­tur­al read­ings. It is unusu­al for most peo­ple to attend more than one Christ­mas litur­gy, but it would be help­ful for a fuller expe­ri­ence of this feast of Christ­mas to engage all nine readings.

At the mass dur­ing the night we have a dra­mat­ic proph­esy about a “child is born for us.” The Gospel is the most famil­iar about Mary and Joseph trav­el­ing to Beth­le­hem and find­ing no room in the inn, they set­tle for a sta­ble of birthing.

The Gospel for the mass at Dawn relates how the shep­herds who had heard the mes­sage of the angels believe that they had heard some­thing invit­ing and so they too go to the birthing-stable.

The third Gospel for the Mass dur­ing the day is not about sta­bles and angels, nor about stars and kings, but a well-worked sum­ma­ry of how believ­ers much lat­er than the writ­ers of the ear­ly accounts,  express “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”  The Word which was in the begin­ning,  now has embraced time and space. God so loved the world that God did not send an idea or a feel­ing or a doc­u­ment. The mys­te­ri­ous has come to be heard, seen, received and live among and with­in us all.

There are many gifts wrapped and ready under­neath forests of Christ­mas trees await­ing ‘rev­e­la­tion­a­tion’. This made-up term has a spe­cial mean­ing for gift giv­ing and receiv­ing.  Through the gift, the giv­er desires to say some­thing  to the receiv­er about the giv­er as well as the receiv­er.  So I want to say some­thing spe­cial about you in giv­ing you a some­thing.  I also desire to say some­thing to you about me.  In your recep­tion of the gift,  I desire that you receive, not only the gift, but what  I am say­ing about you and about me.  If you receive only the gift, you haven’t real­ly received the gift, but rather the thing.  So it is a triple pack­age with­in one container.

The space­less and time­less infi­nite Mys­tery invites  the world and  each one of us to receive, begin­ning with the sta­ble-birth, this dou­ble-intent,  this declar­a­tive state­ment about the Giv­er and the receiv­er, name­ly the uni­verse and each of us. The Giv­er, the Sender, the Reveal­er, the Wrap­per, the many-named Lover, is come to us to be received. We are asked to unwrap what the Teller is say­ing about all human life and our share of that mys­tery. When I take Jesus ten­der­ly and seri­ous­ly, then I equal­ly take my self and your­self ten­der­ly and seri­ous­ly. Gifts usu­al­ly come with cards and notes mak­ing explic­it the rev­e­la­tion­a­tion. We grow to under­stand what is exact­ly being expressed. These notes and cards make things a bit more clear.

The major prob­lem with Christ­mas and the cel­e­bra­tion of God’s love made vis­i­ble in Christ is that we can­not total­ly take it all in at once as we can do with a gift of hand­ker­chiefs from a lov­ing aunt or socks from a neigh­bor. These gifts are clear, def­i­nite, eas­i­ly received and for­got­ten.  Mary, Joseph the shep­herds, the kings, the whole cast of char­ac­ters could receive only parts to be pon­dered, trea­sured in their minds and hearts. We too are frus­trat­ing­ly so lim­it­ed while we kneel and watch and lis­ten. We do need socks and hand­ker­chiefs as lit­tle reminders and glimpses into what the Christ­mas Giv­er is try­ing to offer. The Time­less has per­ma­nent­ly tak­en up space, to give us space and time to receive just what we can, but there is always more to be unwrapped and received. Imag­ine that!