What Christmas is all about

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

Chaplain

Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE)

Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com

CHRISTMAS always evokes a very romantic sensation of joy, and that’s very understandable since what takes place there on December 25 is the birth of our Savior, the Son of God who became man to bring us back to where we came from, and thus providing us with what is most important in our life.

As we celebrate this Solemnity liturgically, we know through our faith that the birth of Christ is made present before our eyes. Imagine if our faith captures this wonderful truth, what tremendous joy we can have!

But going beyond the mere fact that Christ is born on Christmas Day, what we should perceive even more sharply is that Christ wants to be born in us, so that he and us can only be one, as we are meant to be in God’s plan for us.

Yes, Christ wants to be born in us. That, in a nutshell, is the meaning of Christmas. All the festivities and merrymaking associated with this day should point us to this truth. We have to correspond to it and act on it as best that we can.

Let’s hope that the beautiful decorations we have everywhere, especially the Christmas crèche, Christmas tree, lanterns, the Santa Clauses, etc., lead us to this realization, instead of being distractions or, worse, a sweet poison to our soul.

Let’s hope that when we look at the Child Jesus in the belen, we get moved to thank him for wanting to be born in us, and to promise him that we will do our part to welcome and receive him in the best way we can.

Christ wants to be born in us because he is our savior who comes to re-make us after we have fallen into sin. Let’s remember that we are children of God, made in his image and likeness.

Christ wants to be born in us so he can start and continue with his work of redemption which takes place in the whole span of our earthly life. He wants to grow and live with us, experience what we experience so he can guide us. Let us always remember then that all events in our life are an occasion for us to correspond to Christ’s constant interventions in our life.

But do we welcome him? Are we willing to have Christ in us, to work in us and with us? Do we actively cooperate in his redemptive work in us? Are we willing to be another Christ, “alter Christus,” as we ought to be, so we can recover and enrich the dignity God intended for us?

Christmas is a time of rebirth, of another conversion so that our identification with Christ, the pattern of our humanity and savior of our damaged humanity, becomes ever tighter. We have to realize ever more deeply that we need to be reborn. We have to do whatever is needed to make this need felt sharply by us. We cannot deny that today’s conditions seem to desensitize us of this most basic need of ours.

Precisely for his purpose, Christ made himself so easily available to us that he makes himself not only present to us up to now, but to give himself to us completely especially in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.

To be reborn in Christ, who is our “way, truth and life,” to be “alter Christus” if not “ipse Christus” (another Christ, Christ himself) as we ought to be, is not a pipe dream. Christ is all there for the taking! A Merry and Blessed Christmas to all!