What is Christmas *really* about? (Christmas homily)

What is Christmas about, really?

It’s obviously more than celebrations and decorations – 

even if a lot of people don’t seem to know that, or remember.

Christmas is even about more than a child being born 

and shepherds adoring. 

The angels told the shepherds, that the child being born is a “sign”; 

a sign points to something still greater.

So what is that greater thing that Christmas is really about?

It can be summed up in the words of St. Athanasius, who said: 

“God became man so that man might become God.” 

Let me repeat that, so you really hear it: 

“God became man so that man might become God.”

Yes, he really said that. 

And so did a lot of saints and teachers of the Church. 

It’s in the Catechism, paragraph 460.

What does this mean?

It means that you and I are meant for more. 

More than 99% of what occupies our time, bad, good or indifferent. 

You and I are meant to be life-givers and world-changers. 

To be saints. 

Saints Louis & Zelie Martin – have you heard of them? 

They were an ordinary Catholic couple, 

striving to get each other and their children to heaven. 

You’ve heard of their daughter: St. Therese of Lisieux. 

Yet she, too, decided she would not do any great thing, 

but do lots of little things out of great love. 

Her little way captured hearts around the world.

Mother Theresa was called to care for the poorest of the poor. 

All she did was bathe and feed beggars, one at a time. 

She moved the world.

You and I are called to be saints. 

A saint is that person who accepts the Christmas Gift: 

that God became man so that men and women might become God.

What does this mean? It explains everything about the Gospel; 

it is what the whole Bible, 

and what all of God’s actions are leading toward. 

God wants us to be with him, united with him, 

changed by him, made new in a New Creation. 

“Through him, with him, and in him,” in a new heavens and a new earth.

Until our early 20s, we want to get older. We can’t wait! 

But then we want to hold in place, or get younger.

You and I naturally dread the inevitable loss of vigor.

And to a worldly mindset, nothing is worse than suffering.

But what if this trail of tears is a path of grace, 

leading to something new? 

Jesus goes ahead of us – from earth to heaven, old life to new.

This is what baptism begins and confirmation strengthens. 

This is what confession restores when we turn off the path of life.

The Holy Eucharist nourishes this rebirth. 

This is what our ordinary life of faithfulness leads to.

For this reason, the number one enemy of the human race 

is not hunger or war, unemployment or sickness or even death, 

as terrible as those things are. 

No, our greatest enemy is sin, because none of those other things 

can separate us from God and lead us to hell.

And one of the most dangerous sins – 

which we never talk about – is “sloth.” Laziness. 

Hitting the spiritual snooze button.

A lot of the time, we try to tame Christmas, and say, it’s about a baby, 

a family in trouble, such a nice story…aren’t the lights pretty? 

But only this makes Christmas awesome:

that God became man so that you and I might become God.

Only God is God. But he chooses to lift us up into his life; 

to be, as St. Peter says in one of his letters, 

“partakers of divine nature.” God created us in Paradise; but we left. 

He has wanted us back ever since. 

Still, we might wonder: why come as a child? 

Because then a child can come and say, I look like God. 

Because when God is born poor, and lives poor and hidden, 

then all those who are forgotten and neglected, 

can behold the Savior and say, I look like God. 

So that when the child grows up and is abused and wronged, 

all those who are oppressed in this world can say, I look like God. 

And when Jesus suffers and dies, 

all those facing pain and death know they are not alone, 

and that God has wounds, too. Wounds he is not ashamed of.

What is Christmas about? Christmas is an invitation.   

The God-man, the Christ Child, invites you. 

You’re here in his presence, right now. 

He offers himself and all his Gifts to you. 

To make us divine; to make an exchange: 

your life to him, and his to you. 

That’s the invitation. What will you do?

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Post script: In case you’re wondering, who else said it?

Justin Martyr

Athanasius

Augustine

Irenaeus

Gregory of Nyssa

Cyril of Alexandria

Clement of Alexandria

Theophilus of Antioch

Hippolytus of Rome

Maximus the Confessor

Basil of Caesarea

Thomas Aquinas