(John 1:14,16)
Christmas is the time when people give gifts to one another. They may not be able to tell you exactly why, but they feel that they should. We know by a kind of instinct that Christmas and giving are practically synonymous; so that even if we were to receive all the gifts that we wished for, we would not be really and truly happy on Christmas unless, by giving something ourselves, we shared our happiness with someone else.
In this, as in so many other things, our Catholic instinct is entirely right. For the heart of Christmas is Christ, and Christ is a Gift: the greatest, the most precious gift that was ever given. He is God's Gift to men; to all men (as we tried to show earlier this evening); the gift that unites us all into one family, one household of God.
Christ, then, have the first Christmas gift; He gave it to us; and this gift is Himself. He gave us Himself by laying aside the splendors of His divinity, by stepping down from His throne amid light inaccessible, and becoming, like us, a Man. He made our weak, suffering humanity His own; and by so doing, gave us a share in His divinity, in His divine Sonship, so that now we may not only be called, but we are, the children of God. Before He become one of us, our Brother, we were the creatures of God, the servants of God; we could not dare address God by any title less remote than Master, Lord; but now, we can lift up our hands to the Maker of the sun and moon and cry, "Father!"
In giving us a share in His Sonship, Christ has given us a share in His inheritance. Heaven is His inheritance; that radiant and eternal City which has no need of lamp or sun, because God Himself is the light thereof. It is ours, now; Christ our Brother has given us the keys to it; and some day, we must give ourselves to Him.
He has shared with us His divine inheritance of glory; then we must share with Him our human inheritance of pain. The lot of man on this earth is sorrow and suffering: such is the stern fact, and it is useless either to deny or to avoid it. We must suffer; but we need not suffer fruitlessly. Like childbirth, like the grain of wheat that is buried in the ground and dies, our suffering can be fruitful, can give life. In a Carmelite monastery in France, a young nun offers herself as a victim to Jesus, and stricken by a fatal disease, coughs her life away; and at the ends of the earth, men and women she has never seen receive the grace of faith ― because, she suffered. This is why the Little Flower of Lisieux is the Patroness of the Missions. So great is the power of suffering. If we must suffer ― and we must ― then let us unite our sufferings with those of the Sacred Heart, and transform them into a power to save the world.
Christ has shared with us His own magnificent strength; then we must share with Him what little strength we have, by dedicating ourselves entirely to His service. Christ has shared with us His own Body and Blood: He has given His Body to be broken, His Blood to be spilled for our salvation; what else can we do, but give our own bodies and minds and hearts, yes, and our life blood, if necessary, to carry on His work, to spread His kingdom, to gather the broken fragments of our world into the unity of His Church?
Let this, then, be our offering to the Christ-Child this Christmas, the offering of ourselves, to suffer, to labor, to spend ourselves in His service, that He may be born again in the hearts of so many men and women who have forgotten or denied Him, and the whole world may be at peace.
― Fr. Horacio Luis de la Costa y Villamayor, S.J.
Henryton Sanatorium
Marriottsville, Maryland
14 December 1946
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| Christmas Hymn by J.C. Leyendecker 1905 |
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