Saturday, December 24, 2011

“Merry Christmas ” First Week of Christmas, December 25-31, 2011

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Christmas brings families together — at least in memory, when they cannot be physically. And this is what Jesus came to do: to bring the whole human race together as one family whose Father is God; in whom Jesus as Son is visible and growing to “full stature” by the indwelling presence and power of the Spirit.

Christmas is togetherness. And that is the mystery of God’s Being: God is the togetherness of Father, Son and Spirit: the Trinity.

It is striking to see how the roles of each Person of the Trinity appear in the Mass readings for Jesus’ birth:

Vigil Mass: “For the child [Son of the Father] conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”

Midnight Mass: A son is given to us.... called: Wonderful Counselor [Holy Spirit], Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince [Son] of Peace.”

Mass at Dawn: They shall be called “The Holy People” [Holy Spirit, Sanctifier], “The Redeemed of the LORD” [Son, Jesus]; “Cared For,” “A City Not Forsaken” [by the Father, God of the Covenant]. And “He saved us... through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit he [the Father] poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ [Son] our Savior.”

Mass during the Day: “They see the LORD [Yahweh, Father] restoring Zion.... for the LORD comforts his people [Holy Spirit, the Comforter], he redeems Jerusalem” [Jesus, Son]. “The Word [Son] was with God [the Father].... In him was life, and the life was the light [Holy Spirit] of all people.”

The readings all week tell us what this family is in which we find — and need to be constantly aware of — our identity. We are different. Stephen’s martyrdom reveals us as a people who live to die and die to live forever in Christ. John’s feast focuses us, as he does, on the “koinonia,” “communion, fellowship,” that should not only exist but be visible among us — which requires that we keep ourselves aware that we are all alive in Christ and as Christ.

The readings for the feast of the Holy Innocents reminds us we are a community, not of the righteous, but of the redeemed. Our “innocence” is not in our “perfect record,” but in our incorporation into Christ’s death that “takes away” our sin. When Jesus is held up at Mass as the “Lamb of God,” we are all invited to Communion. We receive Communion, not to proclaim we are “innocent,” but to say we are sinners with hope. Thursday’s readings tell us that to “keep the Commandments” means, first of all, to keep God’s words, his laws, in our hearts. We judge ourselves by the deep faith and desire we find in our hearts, not just by the success or failure of our external law observance. It is “Phariseeism” to judge ourselves or others simply by behavior.

The feast of the Holy Family — three persons united, like the Trinity, in the “communion of the Holy Spirit — promises us a “posterity” from the Father (blessed will be the fruit of our lives). It calls us to embody in our family life the love and truth Jesus embodied as Son, the Word made flesh. And it calls us (in the full text of the alternate reading from Hebrews) to design our family lifestyle by interaction with the Spirit in faith, so that our family life will bear witness to the world that we live here “as in a foreign land,” looking forward to “a better country, that is, a heavenly one.” John tells us, on the last day of the year, that we “know we know God” when our “anointing” by the Holy Spirit keeps us united to one another in the expression of our faith.

Being family is what the life of the Trinity — in God and in us — is all about.

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