From the pastor's desk for December 22, 2024

Merry Christmas! We have spent the last few weeks preparing for our Lord’s arrival by putting aside the things of this world to partake of the things of heaven. In a few days we will enter anew the mystery of heaven and earth being united in the Person of Christ.

“Christ opened heaven for us in the manhood he assumed” said St. Irenaeus, a Church Father of the second century. All too often we forget that Christmas and Easter are linked together as the celebrations of God’s Mercy triumphing over sin and death. In his writings against the gnostics, St. Irenaeus presented Jesus as the New Adam and Mary as the New Eve. Whereas the gnostics thought that God only pretended to become a human being, St. Irenaeus defended the Catholic belief that God really did become man in the person of Jesus Christ. In fact Irenaeus explained that God had foreseen Adam and Eve’s Fall and had already prepared a plan to save us. Just as we prepared for Christmas by going through Advent, the LORD journeyed with Israel to make sure that they were ready for their savior.

Christmas thus inaugurates the moment of God’s victory over sin. Christ’s life on earth - from His Incarnation to His Ascension - is a single act of redemption. Joining human nature to the Divine, Jesus reclaims what Adam and Eve had lost. Likewise, Mary rectifies Eve’s disobedience at the temptation of a fallen angel by her obedience at the word of the Archangel Gabriel. Accordingly, at Christmas we celebrate that the Kingdom of God has arrived. For we are no longer separated from God because He has come to us!

If Christ is the New Adam, then we must become new in Christ. Celebrating the birth of Christ explicitly, we implicitly thank the LORD for our own sacramental rebirth. Attending Mass at Christmas we offer God our own human natures for rebirth and rejuvenation.

For every time we come to Mass, we present ourselves to God anew. Every time we receive Holy Communion, our soul is open again to being made one with God. Every time we pray our hearts are made more like Christ’s Sacred Heart. At least, that is what God wants. The gift that Jesus desires from us is more of us. If we can give Him a few moments more each day, He will give us grace in an abundance that we cannot imagine.

We can all learn from St. Irenaeus’s insight that Jesus joins the human and the divine. As Christ’s disciples we are called to not only announce His Gospel but also to become it. Through our festive celebrations and fraternal charity, let our hearts be freed to sing with the angels: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of goodwill.”

In His Sacred Heart,
Fr. John