Celebrating the Birth of Jesus

As we celebrate the birth of Jesus, we find that gratitude for God’s love takes a central place in the prayer, merriment and coming together with others. Receiving this gift of Jesus’ birth, motivates us to want to be generous like God in giving to one another. And the giving and receiving situates us in a consciousness of the goodness of God constantly being made manifest to us and through us. As part of our Advent reflection, we took in the words of William of Saint Thierry, a gifted Cistercian author. He tells us that God made us to love us and share eternity with us, but God also made us to love Him. Beyond our accomplishments and struggles, it is in remaining aware that our true identity is to love God who loves us, that our desire for meaning in our lives meets the understanding we have been longing for. In writing his letter to inaugurate the Jubilee Year about to begin in the Church, Pope Francis, draws our attention to the theme of hope. Quoting Saint Paul, Pope Francis invites us all to live in the conviction that hope does not disappoint us. Distinguishing hope from optimism, Pope Francis calls us to remember the figures of Mary and Joseph, with a number of other men and women in scripture, who dared to believe when others would have dismissed their faith as immature or foolish. Their capacity to hope responding to God’s love for them, permitted them to be transformed by hope into the means God used for our salvation. Jesus’ birth happens within the human dynamic of humble family life having immeasurable consequence for the entire human family. William of Saint Thierry prompts us to surrender the tendency to minimize the significance of being recipients of God’s love and ardent lovers of God. Allow the full impact of that receiving and giving full sway in your own life and the lives of those around you, and the Bethlehem story is so much more than a Hallmark greeting card moment. The birth of Jesus changes history not only in the distant past, but in the present time. May the Lord bless us with an ever greater appreciation for the love God is so generously offering us. And may we unreservedly respond to God’s love and love God without reserve.