Christmas 2016 - Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons

Federico Barocci - Birth of Christ

When I look at the cribs in church or at home or see the lovely icons of the Nativity, I'm reminded that in the great cycle of the Church year, this feast is above all one for all those who are children either in age or at heart. Easter, Pascha, the feast of the Resurrection is very dramatic, passion, death, waiting for something to happen and then, new, resurrected life! But the Christmas symbols and images, the carols, scripture readings and songs all take us to something incredibly simple, the coming into human life of God made present in Jesus. It is above all a feast of kindly love.

The Christmas story never seems to get boring, every year I( and I hope you all), enter into the more subtle drama of how God became one of us, the Word made flesh as St John puts it. In an age when large segments of our population say they don't believe in God, or when others make claims that all religions are simply way of helping us through life and each one is as good as another, this feast, for me, tells a different and distinct truth.

It's a very simple one, like all true things, in the fullness of time, God came amongst us, as one of us, not to perform magical actions or show power, no, this presence dwelt in the heart and life of a child who handed himself over, first as the growing embryo in Mary's womb, then in birth to the custody of his mother and his foster father Joseph, literally placing himself into their hands as he must have done to others too and this does not stop, for we become the ones who hold him now!

There at his birthplace we come too as true worshippers, not alongside the establishment figures of court and government, religious leaders, public figures and celebrities, but with the curious, the traveller seeking truth, as the Magi did, the rough hewn shepherds in the fields and perhaps those staying at the inn, with travellers and needy ones. And above all we approach him with that openness of children

If our faith means anything, it surely is that it's different to other forms of religion, for Jesus Christ the light of the world came to lighten the darkness of our lives, came to call us back to the loving mercy of a God, who like a parent with a new born child, just wants the very best for us and pours out unconditional love for the life of the world.

Maybe we need to make sure we help our children enter into this great story, encourage them to gaze at the crib, to know the tales of the shepherds and magi and the message of the angels. That's how I began to learn my faith is true!

As St John writes:

What came to be through him was life,
and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it. (Jn 1.3)

Reflection

From Christmas by John Betchman 1955.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?
And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.