Weekly HOMILY for December 25,2007: God Breaking into Our World

The Solemnity of Christmas, Cycle A
Our Lady of Grace
December 25, 2007

God Breaking into Our World
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato


God and Our Aloneness

Up until 1940 or so, air travel was in its infancy. Very few people had flown in an airplane before then.

There is a story from that time about a mother, father and their children who were outside of their home building a snowman on Christmas Eve in Syracuse, New York.

While they were doing so, an airplane passed overhead. The children were very excited to see the plane and the youngest asked her father: “Daddy, how do people climb up to the sky to get into the planes?”

Her daddy explained that passengers do not have to climb up into the sky to get into the planes. Instead, the planes come down from the sky to the passengers.

The father almost immediately realized this as a beautiful explanation of Christmas. We do not climb up to the sky to get to God. Instead, God has come down to earth to us. God has entered our world in the infant born in Bethlehem.

And the significant realization of this fact is that we human beings are no longer left alone to fend for ourselves. God has responded in a dramatic way to our sense of aloneness and our yearning for closeness and intimacy with him.

This is the truth behind the angel’s words in this evening’s/today’s Gospel: “Today a Savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.” This then is the first message of Christmas: God has come down to earth to us and we are no longer alone, without God.


God and Our Hopelessness

Now, in doing this, God has also brought us light and hope.

In Jesus, the words of Isaiah in tonight’s first reading are fulfilled. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

The renowned psychologist Victor Frankl tells of an experience that illustrates the light and hope that Jesus brings. Frankl recalls his days in a Nazi concentration camp.

He describes the cold and hunger and hopelessness of the situation. And then, quite unexpectedly one night he had an experience that profoundly changed him.

Frankl looked through a small window of the wood barracks where he and others were confined. He saw a light in a distant farmhouse that was completely surrounded by darkness.

And at that moment, the words of Saint John’s Gospel came to his mind. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness shall never put it out.”

Frankl says that this experience gave him hope in the midst of suffering and hopelessness. For all of us tonight, Christmas celebrates the fact that by entering the world in Jesus, God has given us light and hope.

We too may experience suffering and disappointment and sadness. But the birth of Jesus gives us hope that light can win out over the many forms of darkness that are part of our human journey.


God and Our Aimlessness

This takes me to the third and final message that I see tonight.

We also are to be a beacon of light and hope for one another. An English author named John Ruskin gives us a vivid image of what God expects of us.

Ruskin lived in the 1800’s and electricity had not yet been discovered. There were no lampposts or streetlights that automatically came on when it got dark.

Instead, the streets were lit by gas lamps and lamplighters would go from lamp to lamp lighting them with their torches. One night, Ruskin was looking out the window of his country home and across the valley to a lane on the opposite hillside.

Ruskin could see the torch of the lamplighter and the trial of lights that he lit. But he could not see the lamplighter himself.

Ruskin writes: “That is a good illustration of Christians. People may never see us, but they know we have passed through the world by the trail of lights we leave behind.”

Sometimes, we may wonder what the purpose and meaning of our lives is and we may feel aimless and adrift. Christmas gives us an aim or purpose.

We are to give light and hope to elderly parents or little children or grandchildren, to a friend struggling with cancer or a needy family whom we assist at Christmas.


Conclusion

In the midst of our feeling alone or helpless or aimless, the simple yet profound messages of Christmas confronts us:

(1) You are not alone; our God who has come down to earth to be with us,

(2) You need not feel helpless; Jesus has brought us light and hope for our living, and

(3) Your life need not be aimless; Jesus has given you a mission to bring that same light and hope to another.