This year, live Christmas by pondering Christ’s world and our own

It is with exceptional joy
that I find myself celebrating
my third Christmas
Season in the Diocese
of Tucson. I am greatly
blessed for having been led
to southern Arizona, a land
of true faith, great beauty
and an extraordinary blend
of cultures. The people of
our diocese are daily in my
prayers and I kindly ask that in the new year each
of you will lift me up in prayer to our Lord.
As I reflect upon the birth of God’s own Son
into the world some 2000 years ago, my mind
goes first to the love of his mother and father.
Mary’s “let it be done to me according to Thy
word” made room for Jesus in her heart before
she made room for Him in her womb. Likewise,
having accepted the mysterious message of an
angel brought to him in a dream, Joseph’s warm
embrace of the child born to Mary in unexpected
circumstances further reveals the great love which
awaited the infant Jesus.
I am next reminded of the poverty into which
the Christ child was born. The religious belief
of his day was that poverty was a sign of abandonment
from God. Jesus would confront this
misunderstanding and go on to teach that a life
of great simplicity lends itself toward a life of
great holiness. While He
is never concerned about
His own poverty, He does
recognize that devastating
poverty in the lives of others
can be crushing. In His
adult life and ministry he
will never pass by anyone
suffering without touching
their pain or
lessening their poverty.
We must remember too
that He was almost immediately
an immigrant
(the flight into Egypt). At
His birth shepherds and
angels sang, but the King of His day wanted His
death, fearing that the Prince of Peace was his
enemy. And thus, the infant is rushed to a foreign
land by His parents who were seeking to save His
life. When He would begin His adult ministry He
would reach deeply into the Hebrew Scriptures
(the Old Testament) and would prize the protection
and care of the traveler and immigrant among
the greatest of virtues.
Perhaps most important of
all, His birth into the world was
to reveal the incredible depth
of His Father’s love for all His
children. United with the Father
and in the power of the Holy
Spirit, the infant Jesus was born
into our world to redeem and
save us through the power of
His love.
Pondering this year’s Christmas,
I am struck by a great
many similarities with the world
into which Jesus was born.
Many of us were welcomed
into the world with great joy
and affection, but there are still those who are not
born into love and care. May we be a prophetic
call to life, reverencing the unborn, the elderly, the
sick, and all those who - like the Christ child - are
vulnerable and without a voice. Like Mary and
Joseph, may we make room for them in our hearts
which will lead to our making room for them in
our lives. Let us also hear the Christmas call to
remediating the crushing weight of poverty in others,
reverencing the Christ child in the immigrant
and asylum-seeker, and speaking love to a secular
world that so often chooses division and dismay
over faith and hope. Indeed, may we welcome
the Christ child this year into our hearts and lives,
and may His redeeming love touch us in new and
abundant ways.
May God bless you abundantly,