Christmas Message From Our Pastor
Everyone seems to love Christmas music (except before Thanksgiving!). The popular songs can make us feel warm and cheerful, and the religious ones stir the soul and move the heart, especially as they illustrate the real beauty of the Incarnation and the birth of Jesus Christ.
It saddens me a bit, though, that the music and heavenly harmonies often seems to evaporate as quickly as one day after, before the egg nog has even turned – except in the Church, where the liturgical calendar distinguishes between the Advent and Christmas season. That’s because the glorious wonder of the Incarnation ripples through time into eternity. The first lines of the Gloria we sing on Sundays at Mass echoes the multitude of angels singing above Bethlehem on that winter’s night: “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace to people of good will” (Luke 2:14). The power of Christmas lasts forever because the Word became flesh and has made His dwelling amongst us (Jn 1:14), and in the person of Jesus, Heaven and earth are united. After the Fall in the Garden of Eden, the heavenly paradise and humanity were separated. When the Archangel Gabriel came to the Virgin Mary and she said yes to God’s plan, it began the fulfilment of His divine plan and promise. And those do not end on December 26th.
When music ceases and decorations are taken down so quickly, it gives the impression that the birth of Jesus was merely a moment in time – a special
moment, yes, but still just a singular event. Nothing could be further from the truth.
When Jesus is born all of creation is forever changed. Going forward, humanity will ever more have direct access to the grace of God through the
Sacraments that Jesus instituted for the Church. But looking backwards in time, Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of God’s promise. And with all of humanity afflicted by sin and death, the people of God needed a savior, because no human person could by themselves undo the spiritual damage inflicted upon creation.
Roughly 2,000 years before the first Christmas, God chose Abram – who later became known as Abraham – to be the father and patriarch of a great nation, that his descendants would number as the stars. Thus began the nation of Israel. And from that nation’s royal lineage, “a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse” (Isaiah 11:1). This is a prophecy about the lineage that leads to Jesus – sometimes depicted in what is called a Jesse Tree… which adorns the cover of our St. Alphonsus Christmas bulletin.
Jesus fulfills God’s promise to create from His chosen people a great nation with many descendants. Far greater still, in Christ all of humanity is invited to gather around the newborn King of Kings, and in the cave of the Nativity, discover the reunification of Heaven and earth, and therefore realize that all peoples and nations are meant to become brothers and sisters – one family – because of the providential promise and plan of the God of Abraham.
Rev. Steven Bauer
Pastor
