CHRISTMAS 2022

CHRISTMAS 2022 (REFLECTION 1): Christmas: A Culture of Giving Thrust: Give and love to give! Indicative: Christmas is not a matter of receiving but a matter of giving. It is not so much how many blessings, gifts, and happiness we receive at Christmas but how many blessings and happiness we give to others 1. Very often, the joy of life is seen and measured in terms of receiving. People feel happier when they receive more. Many are accustomed to such a culture of receiving and getting. This leads to a harmful spirit of greed and avarice, deception, and corruption. This further results in grabbing, profiting, and accumulating. To such a society and culture, Christmas comes as a strong contrast and challenge because it is all about giving. The birth of Christ is a matter of giving! 2. John 3. 16 very clearly affirms: “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son as a ransom for the salvation of the world”. The birth of Christ as one of us, as human person is the clearest sign of this spirit of love and giving. God loves us so much. That is why He gives His very self for our sake. That is why Phil 2.6 attests, “Even though Jesus is equal with God, yet he did not cling to his equality, as a thing to be grasped; rather he emptied himself”. 3. God gives us his presence, his solidarity, and his closeness. He gives our life the lost dignity, the lost vigour, the lost joy. He embraces our fragile human nature. Thereby God shows clearly that our human life is not something despicable and miserable. It is something beautiful and honourable. We may fail and fall to sin. But We can be raised. For this, by sharing our human life, he wants to give us back that divine life lost due to sin. 4. Through his birth on earth, he gives us the greatest assurance that he is Emmanuel, God-is-with us. He never abandons us however weak and imperfect we are. He gives us his light to dispel the shades of darkness. He gives us his energy to make us more vibrant. He gives us his healing to make us sane and healthy. He gives us his guidance to lead us on the right path. He gives us his comfort to boost our drooping spirits. He gives us his support to raise us up. He gives us his power to rejuvenate our dull hearts. He gives us his courage to cast away the tides of fear and discouragement. He gives us peace amidst all trouble and turmoil. He gives us his own joy to shatter the pangs of pain and sadness. 5. His whole life has been an unceasing act of giving. He gives sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, walking to the lame, healing to the leprous and paralysed, and life to the dead. He gives good news to the downcast. As the culmination of all this giving, he gives us his own life, his total self on the cross. He gives us himself totally to the extent of dying. He washes away our sinfulness through his own blood. Thereby, he gives us a mighty share in his own eternal life. 6. Therefore, Christmas becomes grand not only with our exchange of gifts, decorations, food, and drink celebrations. Such grandness will be only short-lived, limited to a few hours or days. But the joy of Christmas will be deep and last long if we imbibe the same spirit of Christmas. So relive the spirit of love and giving. Learn to give. Give your time, your love, your talents, your energies, your resources, your goodness, your patience, your gentleness, your tenderness, your warmth, your understanding, your forgiveness, your appreciation, and your encouragement. Give your very self. 7. Give generously! Give lovingly! Give trustingly! Give willingly! Give promptly! Give wholeheartedly! Give generously! Give joyfully! Give humbly! Give magnanimously! This will be real Christmas! Imperative: Our celebrations become meaningful only when we are truly imbued with the spirit of loving and giving. This is the only fitting remedy to the maladies of the world! (REFLECTION 2): Christmas: Celebrate Life Thrust: Celebrate Life! Indicative: Christmas celebration is not just a commemoration of a past event of the birth of Christ. It is the rebirth of divinity among the humanity 1. Christmas is indeed a feast of joy! But where is that spirit of Christmas? Battered by fears, shattered by afflictions, tormented by temptations, fragmented by divisions, intimidated by the power of Satan and dominated by the force of evil, tested by falsity and dishonesty and exhausted by the fierce struggle against sin, cowed down by corona - many have lost the spirit of Christmas. Precisely it is in this context that we should celebrate Christmas. We should rediscover, recapture and relive the lost spirit of Christmas. 2. First of all, it is a birthday celebration. Our Saviour Lord is born. It is the celebration of a new life: a new babe is born on earth. A new life has erupted. This is the very meaning and purpose of the birth of Christ. It is not merely the birth of another human. Rather it is the birth of a new humanity. In his birth, we see the “rebirth” of humanity tainted and fainted by sin. Therefore, Christ being born would firmly imply that we must be constantly reborn. 3. Usually, any birthday is a matter of that person born, what he should become, how he should grow, et cetera. But the birth of Christ is a matter totally different. If he is born, the question is: what must happen to others, how others should grow, what they should become. Thus, the birth of Christ is a challenge for the rebirth of all. 4. His birth is a call to live life to the full, to celebrate it with joy. This means we must foster a culture of life. We must insert into it a little more life-sap, energies and gifts, and enthusiasm and assiduity. It is not just remembering that God was born but reminding ourselves that we must be reborn. Christ's birth will be just another piece of history unless it makes a pass into my own story. 5. Sadly, we are surrounded and tormented by a viral and vicious circle of death. From day to night, we see and experience the evil effects of such a culture of death. This shows itself in all the forces that block, suffocate and harm the value, beauty, energy, and joy of living. The increasing spirit of grudge and revenge, hostility and hatred, aggression and violence, death and destruction makes life devalued, ugly, vulnerable, and burdensome. Life is dying! 6. Christ’s birth then is a new birth of beautification against all disfiguration, a resurgence of dignity and honour, recharging with new vigor and enthusiasm, a refilling of joy against all bouts of pain and suffering. His birth must breathe new life into a life that has lost its rhythm and charm. Therefore, the only way to celebrate Christ’s birth meaningfully and joyfully is to live reborn. The more we live lives with value, beauty, energy, and joy, the more the purpose of Christ’s birth is fulfilled. Imperative: The whole mystery of incarnation becomes relevant when it is not only a memory of the birth of Christ but the rebirth of everyone. It is the incarnation into our life of the same spirit of incarnate Christ.