|
Boys and girls, the beginning line of the first reading says
that there were people in darkness, and they saw a great light.
Wow. Very dramatic. Is not it?
There were people in darkness who saw a great light.
What would happen if you were in the dark?
What would you want to do?
“You want to go into the light!”
“Get a flashlight and turn on a light.”
You cannot beat darkness with darkness, can you? No.
Darkness only is overcome by light.
Boys and girls, God sent his son among us
because we were in darkness,
and he was the light.
Let's do a little bit of drama here and now.
Let's turn off the lights!
Oh wow.
Now we say that Jesus came among us as the light.
Let's see if baby Jesus can come forward again.
Look at that baby Jesus is coming back.
See now baby Jesus is the light.
[Taking the child who was presented as baby Jesus at the beginning of liturgy, I show the newborn child to the children.]
The light is the baby and the baby is the light.
And what the Lord is saying to us is that this light,
who is the baby Jesus, is the life for the whole world.
Now the important part is that he came once, but he comes again in us.
That light is within everyone here.
Without exception, you have the light of Christ in you.
And that light will never, ever, ever get extinguished.
There is nothing that can ever happen that can extinguish that life.
And nobody ever tell you that you do not have that light.
Sometimes it gets dimmed, boys and girls,
it gets dimmed when we make mistakes and we sin.
When we tell a little lie, it gets a little dimmer.
When we are mean to our brothers or sisters, it gets a little dimmer.
When we are disobedient to our parents and doing something wrong,
it gets a little dimmer.
But it never, ever, ever goes out.
And all you have to do to get it to shine again is simply say, “I am sorry.”
God lets the light shine bright again.
What are some of the ways in which we could shine the light on others?
When a friend is feeling upset, then you could play with them.
When somebody is feeling left out is feeling left out,
we can play with them when they get felt left out.
When somebody is being mean to another person
we can stand up for them and defend them.
We can load the dishwasher at home and be helpful.
There are a million different ways that we can let our light shine.
There is a little song. Do you know the little song?
“This little light of mine, I am going to let it shine
This little light of mine, I am going let it shine.
Let it shine, let it shine. Let it shine.”
Boys and girls, this is our work not only for today
but it is our homework is for the rest of the month, right?
We have to let your light shine by being good to others.
Mom and dad, your brothers and sisters and others who are hurting.
That is the message that God gave to us,
that he comes inside of us and
there is nothing that will ever let that light dim. Nothing.
We will always have that light within us.
Boys and girls, let the light of Jesus shine inside you today.
Go ahead. Go back to your seats.
To all of the adults now:
we might think that the world that
Jesus came into is darker than it is today.
Or we might be tempted to think that today is darker than that world,
but the world is darkened by sin.
We know that is true today as much as in Jesus’ day.
There are over 122 places in war currently,
the big ones we know in Palestine and in Israel,
Ukraine and in Russia.
But there are skirmishes and wars all over the world.
The world needs the light of Christ to shine desperately.
But we are not going to be able to go out
and shine all the way over all there.
What we can start with is in our own families
and in our own communities and places we have some sort of influence.
What does that look like?
Like the children just said, it is not terribly complicated.
We need to just believe that the light is in you and the light is in me,
and that we want to find a way to let our light shine.
I want to find a way to let my light shine.
Sometimes that requires of us to be attentive to those around us,
to be attentive in particular to the broken and the wounded around us,
especially inside our families.
I know that we have all our families and we are gathering
from all over the place and it is wonderful,
but there is also some strain and some pain that happens in families.
There is a temptation to let the darkness come in on us.
But this is the message of Christ that the light came into the world
to overcome the darkness,
to overcome the pain,
to overcome the strain.
We need to be part of that.
We need to be the ones to become the light to others.
What does that mean for us?
It means that we do not have to have the last word
when we want to have the last word.
We do not have to win an argument
when we want to win an argument, especially over the Christmas dinner.
We do not have to have to be right even though we believe we are.
It is a matter of letting others have a little bit of light
and let their light shine.
What that will require of us is
to let them have a little bit of the story.
Let them shine just a little bit.
Let’s ask them some questions.
Let them have their moment.
We can have our moment later.
My friends life is so precious, it is so precious.
We do not know when our last day is
and we get caught up in many small things
that we tend to forget that life is precious.
So precious that we do not know when our last look will be.
Here is the news.
There were some people last Christmas
that thought this was not their last and it was.
They are not here and we miss them.
We do not know if this next Christmas is our last and we will not make it.
Therefore, let's make every Christmas a wonderful day.
Let's make every day a wonderful day where our light,
our collective light, can shine with each other.
There is a great quote from Saint John of the cross:
“In the end of our life, we will not judged on how well we have lived.
We will be judged on how well we have loved.”
We are judging how well we have loved our friends.
When we love, we let our light shine.
When we allow others to love,
then we let their light shine.
The whole message of Christmas is that God loves us so much
that he became one of us.
He wanted us to know that there is nothing
that could extinguish the light that he gave to us.
Nothing. Not our sins, not our pain, not our suffering.
Nothing could extinguish it.
We know when we are mean and we say things are unpleasant
and we do things that are unpleasant.
We adults are way worse at this than the children.
We manage to do the darndest things,
but that light is shining even in the most painful,
the most wounded, the most sick,
and the most sinful human beings.
The light still shines,
which means the light even shines on in those Palestinian Hamas militants.
That is hard because they did such awful things to so many.
And the light also shines in every Jew,
even when they are crushing the Gazan children!
The light shines in our enemies and the light shines in our friends.
The light shines everywhere.
Will we let our light shine brightly?
This year as much as any other year,
this darkened world needs the light of Christ.
We cannot solve all the world's problems,
but what we can do is let our light shine
and we can let our family lights shine
and we can let our community light shine bright.
It starts with you and I believing that the light is in you and me.
Yes. That the reading was dramatic,
deliberately dramatic to get our attention to ensure
that we are called to be the light of Christ.
The ultimate message of Christmas is that we will be judged on,
not on how well we have lived,
but on how well we have loved.
This Christmas, let us love well and
let us let our light shine for all to see.
| 
