“The shepherds went in haste, and found Mary and Joseph and the Infant lying in a manger.” Lk 2,16

Merry Christmas, dear parishioners!

I am writing this on Christmas Day, so all I really want to do today is to share with you my Christmas message. Today we celebrate the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. How fitting, just two days after we celebrated Christmas, which in its own way, also very much a celebration of the Holy Family.

If you happened to watch our live streamed Christmas masses, perhaps you were struck with a very powerful emotion as you saw Fr. Gabriel and I was entering all alone into the big empty church, when it should be filled with people, venerating, all alone, Jesus in the manger. A powerful emotion, brought on by this poignant visual indicator of just how dramatic our situation really is. Perhaps you’ve experienced much sadness these past few days, because of the fact that you are celebrating Christmas alone, at home, as a family, as a household. Let me consider with you the bright side of our situation, because there is a bright side. 

In celebrating Christmas alone, at home, we are in communion with the Holy Family in a way in which we have never been before. Just remember the first Christmas. Apart from a brief visit by the shepherds, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus celebrated that first Christmas all alone, just the three of them, as a family. There is something very beautiful about this oneness that we share with them this year. It’s not how we would like to spend every Christmas, but it sure is nice that this once, we celebrate Christmas in the same way as the Holy Family celebrated it 2020 years ago.

“This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

These words, spoken by the angel to the shepherds, remind us of a fundamental truth: the birth of Jesus, in the eyes of those who witnessed him, could be nothing more than a sign. It was just a baby in a manger. It was just a sign, as Luke puts it so delicately. We celebrate Christmas as the feast of the Incarnation, but we forget easily, I think, that it was only the beginning of the Incarnation. The Incarnation would only be complete when Jesus would have assumed not only human flesh, but the human condition, with all its harshness. It was completed when he died on the cross. It is precisely because he lived the human condition in its harshest form that he has become truly one of us, one with us in our human condition, such as it is. And that is why we celebrate Christmas. Because we know the end of the story. We know that in the life he lived and in the passion and death he endured, he is really and truly, one of us, one with us. 

And that is why we can live Christmas, even in a pandemic, with peace, serenity, maybe even quiet joy, because we know Jesus to be Emmanuel, God with us, now in this pandemic, and forever. 

It is no small thing to be able to live one’s life in the knowledge of the Incarnation and of it’s consequence, Emmanuel, God-with-us, now and forever. The opening prayer of the mass during the nigh, on Christmas Eve, reminded us that as Christians, “we have known the mysteries of the light of Jesus on earth”. Indeed we have. Not everyone has. Far from it. My heart goes out to the many people out there who live their lives knowing nothing about the Incarnation and the presence of God to us, in Jesus. Let us pray this Christmas in thanksgiving for the privilege that is ours, let us pray that the gospel of the Incarnation and of the presence of God to us in Jesus will make it’s way into countless more lives. And finally, let us pray that if it be God’s will, we might be among the missionaries of this gospel, among the messengers who, in the beautiful words of Isaiah,  announce peace, bring good news, announce salvation. Who say to the world, by everything they say and do, that the Word became flesh, and lives among us.

May a God-given, and gospel-driven serenity in the face of this pandemic be our testimony to the world that everything either is or is going to be okay, because in Jesus, God is with us, now and forever.

God keep us all safe and well in the week to come, and beyond, in the New Year. 

Again, Merry Christmas to you all.
Fr. Guy