The “Light that shines
in the darkness” first shone in the person of Jesus—in his birth, life, death,
and presence in the community of believers today. Mary and Joseph, the
shepherds and the angels from on high, saw something of this light and life in
the baby whose birth we celebrate.
As we celebrate Christmas, we are drawn to a
newborn baby in whom we experience the face and heart of
God our Father. We do not have to reach to something infinitely beyond
ourselves, but only embrace Someone who gives himself to us, even as a baby.
Ultimately, it is our experience of
Jesus Christ, a person born in human flesh who “pitched his tent among us,”
that precedes our faith in him as the Son of God and revelation of the Father.
St. Augustine was convinced that we cannot
really know something if we do not first love it. Karl Rahner echoed him when
he wrote:
Only the
heart knows in the full sense of the word. Really interior knowledge, knowledge
that grasps something completely and is more than a list of facts, is knowledge
of the heart, of the human center, which knows by experience and by suffering –
the human center where spirit and body, light and love dwell undivided in one
chasm. In the final analysis, knowledge is but the radiance of love…
And now
God says to us what God has already said to the earth as a whole through his
grace-filled birth: “I am there. I am with you. I am your life. I am your time.
I am the gloom of your daily routine . . . I am your joy. Do not be afraid to
be happy; ever since I wept, joy is the standard of living that is really more
suitable than the anxiety and grief of those who think they have no hope . . .
I am present in your needs. I have suffered them and they are now transformed
but not obliterated from my heart. This reality—incomprehensible wonder of my
almighty love—I have sheltered safely and completely in the cold stable of your
world. I am there. Even if you do not see me now, I am there. It is Christmas.
Light the candles. They have more right to exist than all the darkness.
Drawing by Jerome Quigley. Excerpts from a Christmas homily by Father Dominic.
