Dear Friends,
Advent is drawing to a close and as you receive this edition of In the Word in your inbox, the joy of Christmas is just days away.
This Christmas, as we struggle with the reality of significant conflict in our world, the impact of the loss of the Voice Referendum for our indigenous brothers and sisters, the cost-of-living crisis which affects us all, and general exhaustion after a long year, we look more than ever to the coming of the Prince of Peace at Christmas.
Christmas reminds us that in all of this, we are not alone. Our world might tell us that we have to ‘make it’ on our own, but God, through the incarnation, shows us that the opposite is true.
In John’s Gospel we hear the beautiful, liberating truth of Christmas, that “The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us” (Jn 1:14).
And when God became flesh, God didn’t arrive as an all-powerful king with armies and trumpets. No, God became flesh in the form of a tiny, defenceless baby. The Christian writer, C.S. Lewis wrote that he believed God came to us a baby so that we could not fear him, but could only love him (Mere Christianity).
Our loving God, who created the world and everything and everyone in it, loved us so much that when humanity turned away from him, he became one of us, fully human and fully divine, in order to be one with us and to save us by dying for our sins on the cross and giving us the way to return home to God. And God lives among us still, in the Church through Word, Sacrament, Prayer and of course, in each other.
It is this truth, that God came among us and continues to live among us, which drives us on as missionaries. Our vocation is a profoundly incarnational call – to be with people, where they are at, walking with them in the struggles of their lives, in their pain, their joy, their dispossession or marginalisation and to be Christ-bearers in the midst of all this, as they are Christ-bearers to us. In fact, as Provincial, when I assign missionaries to a new place, I give them one primary task: “Love the people”. This is, of course, the primary task of us all as we make our way through life, whether it be in religious life, married life or single life.
This Christmas I pray that we will all rediscover the awesome beauty of the incarnation. When we look at the nativity scene on Christmas morning, let us reflect on the truth of the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, even now.
Jesus came to us as a baby simply that we might love him. Let us remember that as baptised Christians, although imperfect in so many ways, we carry the imprint of Christ, and we are called to share his love with those around us, even those people around the Christmas table who it might be hard to love. We don’t need to be theologians to be disciples of Christ, we just need to love God and to love people as well as we can in any given situation – and when we fail, to try again.
This is the simple joy of Christmas which is so sorely needed in our world today.
Wishing you, your families, your communities a joyous, peace-filled Christmas.
Yours in the Word,
Fr Asaeli Rass SVD, Provincial.