Each Year Tells the Familiar Story

By Monsignor Michael McCarron, Pastor

Each year tells the familiar story. How an angel announced to a virgin that God was not angry, but fiercely in love. Of how she believed that love and was caught up in the miracle of it, forever changed. Of how a surprised husband believed in HIS love too, for her, and took her in, caught up in love for God and for her. And we hear once again how more angels made the night skies ring with a song only the lowly seemed to hear, of how the melody of redemption had come to crescendo, and death was soon to die. All this because of God, crazy in love with His people; crazy enough to become one of them, in the care of the virgin and her husband…and well, US.

At least that is what we hear every year. But the truth is we listen only lightly. When the presents are finally purchased, the vacation is over and the trees are down at last, we look to the night sky, and see not angels, but mainly just “dark”. We don’t take particularly good care of the gift we have been given, do we? 2000 years and more, and still there is war and violence; outside of us between nations, and amongst us too, with our words as deadly as a rifle. The poor still go on forced marches, not for the “Census”, but for jobs, or to follow the crops, or to find a home, wherever the nearest Bethlehem might be. Still, the lonely and the broken too often find our hearts too crowded to offer them room.

Perhaps we have started in the wrong place. I think we have spent too much time focused on the overwhelming nature of the gift. Looking at what we have been so selflessly offered, we can quickly judge ourselves unworthy of such a gift, incapable of its demands, unwilling to believe its promises. We pay such attention to the event, that we can make it something others should note, and like the crowds in Bethlehem so long ago paying little heed to the noise coming from the skies.

Perhaps we should refocus, by looking more at the Giver. I can be so overwhelmed by the gift God is giving in Himself; I look at my smallness and my inability to respond. It is overwhelming! However, when I look to the Giver, the God so crazy in love, I realize He sends all I need to accept the gift and care for it. If I start with GOD and His power and goodness, my inadequacies are of little importance. When God became human, Christians believe He well knew what awaited Him in this world. But Incarnate He came nonetheless. He gives the greatest gift, His very self, in Jesus. By the power of the Spirit, He gives to us, like Mary and Joseph, all we need both to accept Him and to care for Him enough to bring Him into the world.

It is Christmas. We will listen to the story again. Angels will announce and sing, and the Gift will be entrusted to us once more. This year, think less of how fantastic and big the story is, and more about how fantastic and great the Giver of the Gift wants to make me in order to receive it.

A Blessed Christmas!