Christmas is God’s lesson on love

Dear brother priests, religious, lay men and women, and children of the Archdiocese of Vancouver:

At this joyful time of year, the Church universal celebrates the overflowing generosity, tenderness, and mercy of our God, Who has shone on our dark and gloomy world the “great light” (cf. Is. 9:2) of His radiance. To a world grown lonely and cold, to a people weary and downtrodden, the promises of centuries were finally fulfilled by an Infant Boy in a manger: “To you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, Who is the Messiah, the Lord” (Lk. 2:11).

God’s world is not the one we have made. We rely on power, wealth, control. In Bethlehem of Judah the iron curtain drawn on God’s transcendence was torn asunder, and the world was forever changed. He unmasks it with the divine lessons of dependence, simplicity, and grace.

The One Who is the Eternal Son of the Father cast aside the splendour of His divinity to enter the world of the flesh with its suffering and death.

In his Christmas homily in 2005, Pope Benedict said: “God is so great that He can become small. God is so powerful that He can make Himself vulnerable and come to us as a defenceless child, so that we can love him. God is so good that He can give up His divine splendour and come down to a stable, so that we might find Him, so that His goodness might touch us, give itself to us, and continue to work through us.”

Year after year we hear the Christmas story, so often that it can become stale and even boring, and yet it can still thrill us if we move beyond the canned sentimentality and crass consumerism and ponder its meaning.

More than a message about God, Christmas is a revelation of who God is - and who we have become because we are reborn in Him and forever united with Him. God Himself came in search of us; and He has “made His dwelling among us” (Jn. 1:14). The God we adore in the crib is the God Who is Love.

The Lord became man not primarily to stupefy us, but “for us men and for our salvation He came down from heaven.” The Child is born “for us” and is “given to us.” He ushers in a whole new era of peace and reconciliation with God and one another.

The Incarnation is the ultimate reason for human dignity, greatness, and destiny. In all its ordinariness, its trials and its failures, God Himself shares our life, taking the human face of my neighbour.

No doubt the first earthly utterance of the Son of God, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, was a cry for help. His first gesture was stretching out His hands searching for protection.

More than at any other time of year, Christmas is God’s lesson to all of us on loving the little ones. He teaches us to love the weak and the defenceless, the marginalized and abandoned in our city and neighbourhood - and even in our families. By Himself becoming a Child, God teaches us respect for all children.

In the words of our Holy Father: “The Child of Bethlehem directs our gaze towards all children who suffer and are abused in the world, the born and the unborn; towards children who are placed as soldiers in a violent world; towards children who have to beg; towards children who suffer deprivation and hunger; towards children who are unloved. In all of these it is the Child of Bethlehem Who is crying out to us; it is the God Who has become small Who appeals to us.”

We can and must do more, so that no child in our midst will ever be hungry, neglected, or exploited. Let us ask God to help us do our part, so that the dignity of every child - and every mother - will be ever more respected.

God surrendered Himself totally to the human condition precisely so that we could be lifted up, and “live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly” as we await the fulfilment of our salvation (cf Titus 2:12-13). And if we are to be lifted up, we must lift up others with us. Christ our Redeemer has become one with us, our Companion along the precarious path of life. Let us take the hand which He stretches out to us: it is a hand which seeks to take nothing from us, but only to give. Then, upheld by Him, we can reach out to others with His strength.

As we celebrate Christmas, let us be increasingly in awe at God’s love for us, and resolve to live our lives according to the dignity accorded to us by the Son’s birth of the Virgin Mary. In the Child Jesus, every person discovers that he or she is freely loved by God. In the radiant glory of Christmas, God’s tender mercy is revealed to each one of us. That is why, despite the frequent forgetting of the real reason, we can still speak of the “Christmas spirit.”

We offer all of you our cordial best wishes that the blessings of this Christmas season will be yours; and we pray that the Mother of the Saviour will help you to experience the joy of His birth and to ponder in your hearts the mystery of a love beyond all telling.

Sincerely yours in Jesus and Mary,

Archbishop Raymond Roussin, SM
 Archbishop of Vancouver
Archbishop Michael Miller, CSB
 Coadjutor Archbishop of Vancouver