From the desk of the pastor for Dec. 21, 2025

Merry Christmas!

I hope that everyone is ready to rejoice at the Birth of Our Savior, which is only days away. We spent the last few weeks of Advent preparing for our Lord’s arrival. On Christmas we will acclaim that heaven and earth meet in the person of Jesus. Just as Mary and Joseph adored Christ in Bethlehem, let us adore Him in our hearts and homes.

“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 defeating 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. Irenaeus explained that God had foreseen Adam and Eve’s Fall and had already prepared to save us. Just as we prepared for Christmas by going through Advent for four weeks, the LORD journeyed with Israel for centuries to make sure that they were ready for our savior.

Christmas thus inaugurates the moment of God’s triumph 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 in all its glory and grandeur. For we are no longer separated from God because He has come to us!

What of Easter? By His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, Jesus took the most broken parts of humanity and made them into His Victory. Trampling down death and sin, Jesus glorified our earthly body so that it would never die.

What Christ is by nature, we become by adoption. In this sense Christmas is the birthday for all of humanity. The goodwill and peace that we wish upon our neighbors is the fruit of His grace. May all the downcast and troubled look upon the Holy Infant and see God smiling upon them.

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 like Him. 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 Christ,
Fr. John