Christmas, the Joyful Mystery

Nothing quite matches the joys of Christmas, except the mysteries of Christmas. To the believers, the mysteries start with the Incarnation of God becoming baby, born of virgin, arriving poor on earth in swaddling clothes in a manger lighted only by a distant lone star the same God form whose fingertips had same God from whose fingertips had tumbled planets and comets and suns.

This, to the Christians, is exquisite mystery that passeth understanding and yet they believe because they could comprehend the mystery with the mind of their faith. Believing a story too magical to be true is part of the reason why Christmas makes people as happy as a child and sentimental.

Of course, to nonbelievers the Christmas story about divinity in a stable is pure fable. There cannot be a mystery to them who had rejected the truth of the story in the first place. Apart from this, they don’t accept anything beyond the rim reason and the province of the senses. And there are those among them that are so sure that God does not exist.

The most that the assorted unbelievers could concede is that Jesus Christ was an extraordinary man with magical powers to inspire and mesmerize masses of people, a great teacher, perhaps, a [prophet. But any suggestion that he was God or God-Man is, to them, just too much.

But Christmas has a built-in mysteries even to the most incredulous. And these mysteries are more mystifying to them precisely because they don’t believe, rejecting all tools of perceiving except reason. There are facts about Christmas and Christ that are settled, known, admitted by all. It’s these facts that have spawned enigmas that have bothered and bewildered the non believers.

How come that of all the thousands of magnificent men that trod this earth, Christ alone had become the main measure of the lifetime of mankind? In the calendar of human existence, he holds center stage: all the years and centuries after him are catalogued as BC, Before Christ, and all the years and centuries after him are marked A.D, After Death, as if the whole world revolved around him.

Why does the entire world, both Christian and non-Christian, celebrate the feast of his birth, now nearing the 3,000th year as it does not do for any other person?

Bishop Fulton Sheen, America’s best loved preacher, once said that Good Friday was necessary. ” There would not have been Easter Sunday if not for Good Friday. ” Might it not also be said that Christmas is more necessary? Without Christmas, neither Good Friday nor Easter Sunday would have happened.

Again, there is the everlasting quality of his Church. From Peter to Pope John Paul II, the succession is unbroken. Stalin once mocked the pope in Rome” ” How many divisions does he have?” One could imagine the envy that consumes those who deny Christ even his credentials as the promised Messiah. One sees the same stubbornness, despite overwhelming evidence, that has given the Jewish people a lot of trouble. There are those who would try to get even. What shrew efforts they make to obscure or twist the meaning of Christmas.

Note that some Christmas cards and ads talk only of “Yuletide or ” Season’s greetings.” The word Christmas is at all cost avoided. No reference to the Nativity. Christmas trees replacing belens could be part of the subtle campaign to subvert Christmas.

Christmas celebrates perhaps the most important event in the life of the world. It’s a love story between God and world. It’s a love story between God and man, divinity humbling itself to share humanity with man. Let’s take care we celebrate Christmas meaningfully, not trivializing it with jingles, baubles, and tinsel.

https://youtu.be/v_W0xUgGILY