On this Christmas eve morning I offer several texts that create a collage where the writers depict the mystery of the Christmas event, of God’s incarnate gift in Christ.  Along with Scripture, there is so much amazing art depicting the event for us, and then writers who have experienced and from their faith share through poetry and prose their experience of the Divine birth of God. I begin with these words of Sr. Maria Boulding: “Faith means life in the presence of God who is coming.  Joyful already, it is a prelude to joy” (The Coming of God, p.171).  Is our faith right now elusive or is it alive in anticipation of the ‘One who is to come’.  Here we are on the cusp of something ‘new’, the new of God, which longs to break into our lives…Advent has been preparing us, helping us to lean into the Christmas event which is given ‘for us and to us’.  It means change…but the change comes with grace…it comes with a new sense of Christ in our lives.

Our ‘yes’ uttered once again: not hesitatingly, not with being able to see what it would ask of us, this ‘yes’ uttered fully with every ounce of love and faith we could muster, following the pattern of her first ‘yes’.  Mary’s ‘virginal yes’, uttered into eternity, a first, pure, whole in its heart’s intention, uttered in response to God’s never before invitation, an invitation to birth forth his Son.  This encounter, a breaking open in history: God’s invitation and the human response. 

Today (hodie) we stand in the ambience and reality of the ‘first Coming’, of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, this great gift of God’s beloved Son.  Today we celebrate this historical reality.  And this is not all: Today (hodie) we stand with open hearts of faith as we behold the ‘second Coming’, the birth of Christ personally to each one of us and to the expanded horizon of our Church and our world. Let us never forget this: God’s incarnation is on-going and it needs each one of us, alone and together, to embody God’s life that is always coming into our lives. 

December 24