Advent and Christmas

The Celebration of Christmas

Celebrating Christmas means many different things to different people.  It is still a significant time of celebration in our general society.  It is a day which has its own special aura.  There are people for whom it is just part of a holiday time, for many it is a time for the family to get together and many people make considerable efforts to achieve such gatherings.  It is a time when we go all-out in the providing of special food. 

For the believer, this is the second of our great feasts.  It is Easter which is our principal feast and its celebration is very ancient indeed.  But then comes Christmas which we began to celebrate in the fourth century as we saw some weeks back in this series.

Beyond the Christmas crib, and beyond the very visible elements of our celebration, we are celebrating something that humankind had never dreamed of, something which turns on its head the previous ways in which people thought about God and acted towards God.  We celebrate something which so many people at the time considered impossible and which so many people today think is impossible.

This unprecedented happening was that God was to be discovered in a human being.  This discovery gradually happened to those first disciples who began to ask such questions as “Who can this be?” and their ultimate discovery is well summed up in the ultimate words of ‘doubting’ Thomas: ‘My Lord and my God’.

As St John intimates at the beginning of his gospel, in this Jesus the word of God has become flesh.  That word which had been spoken to the prophets was now not just words but was now in the whole of this human being Jesus of Nazareth.  In his words and actions and very person, the word of God himself is being spoken to us.  In him the divine has become human.

And as the Fathers of the Church never tired of saying, just as he has shared our humanity with us, so will we be drawn into such union with him that we will have a share in his divine life.

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin

Published: 20 December 2024