December 25, 2020

The Great New Beginning

The Christmas Mystery is humanity's great new beginning, the sure orientation point for all history and each one's life, the pathway out of social and personal chaos, and the threshold into such tender harmonies as heal hearts and unleash untapped potential. If by the envy of the devil an obstacle thwarted the holiness that men and women were meant to know together, the love of this newborn has changed everything, forging a way to even deeper communion.  If in weakness and ignorance we turned from confidence in the goodness of God under the power of a seductive enchantment, the trust that this Child places in us helps us find our way again on the solid ground of truth. If unmet needs and bitterness threaten to swallow all that is good and noble with despair, the vulnerability of this Babe unveils the Lord's undaunted hope in those He created in His Image and Likeness Boorishness is buried when Christ comes forth from the womb!  Nihilism's darkness is destroyed when the Word made flesh cries out in the night. The truth confronts deceit. A new harmony takes up all discordance. In a sudden crescendo the Cosmos has never heard before (faith comes by hearing), in the murmurs of a sleeping newborn, there rings out that new echo of the inexhaustible Mystery from which all things come. It is the great canticle of life and love, the unheard eternal anthem  drawing all things to their great purpose. Creatures are taken by the gravity of a mercy excessive beyond all imaginings and wonder fills this tired out world - this living death discovers new life, and cannot be the same again. By the birth of God in our human poverty, even when the Word as not yet learned to speak, such unfathomed divine riches flow at last into hearts broken enough to welcome Him!

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