It often happens that Christmas good feelings and sentimentality mask the deeper message that God’s scandalous decision “to become like us in all things but sin” conveys by the Nativity. An ancient responsorial chant, O Magnum Mysterium, highlights this paradox by proclaiming “O great mystery and wonderous sacrament, that animals saw the birth of the Lord, laying in a feeding trough.” It is an invitation for us to reflect on God’s presence in our world in even the most improbable places, turning our usual expectations upside down.
Duccio de Buoninsegna, 1308
The profound message of Christmas is that this presence is often revealed among us in humility and by the most unlikely people, not in trumpet blasts. Jesus’ birth should alert us to the way he would later speak about the Kingdom of God, for the details of this birth among the animals is just as crazy as a shepherd leaving 99 sheep to look for one that is lost; as workers who work only an hour are paid the same as those working a whole day; as repentant tax collectors being welcomed to table before upright respectable people.
Christmas prepares us to identify God’s unlikely presence in our world the rest of the year — in the poor, in migrants, in those on the periphery, in people that are often considered of least importance.
On behalf of the Viatorian Community in the United States and Colombia,
I wish you and yours a Merry Christmas!
Fr. Mark Francis, CSV
Provincial