Christmas Day, December 25, 2012
Epistle Hebrews 1: 1-12
Gospel John 1: 1-14
“Who shall declare his generation?” Isaias
writes at 53:8 in his prophecy of the Passion of our Lord. Jesus’
generation is from His Father in heaven and from the House of David through Joseph
and the Virgin Mary His mother. This fulfills the prophecy of Isaias at 7:14: “Behold a virgin shall
conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel,” which means
God with us.
Arius, the father of the Arian heresy of the 4th Century,
maintained that Jesus was an inferior god, standing midway between God and his
creatures. The Son of God, according to Arius, had not existed at one point and
therefore was created. This heresy led to other heresies for the next three
centuries, and then lay quiet. Today it is back and ringing your doorbell and
handing you copies of the Watchtower magazine. These are the Jehovah’s
Witnesses and they claim to be the only authority on what is true in religion,
but their religion goes back only to the 1870s. They were not present with the
Apostles when they were commissioned by Jesus, the Christ, to preach the Gospel
to all nations. The Apostles did not preach error, and they worshipped One God
in Three Persons.
Today St. John tells us that “In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God.” St. John was the Apostle that Jesus
loved and he speaks with the authority of God. Jehovah’s Witnesses change this
passage to read, “and the Word was a god.” Making Jesus a god with a small “g”
they make Him to be someone inferior to God our Father. After all, they say, didn’t
Jesus Himself say that “the Father is greater than I”? (John 14: 28) However, Jesus also told the Jewish authorities
that “I and the Father are one.” (John 10: 30) We
teach truly that Christ is both God and man. What is the meaning then of this
apparent contradiction in what our Lord told us? To understand, remember, Jesus
didn’t come here to fool us. He came to teach us, to redeem us from sin. In these
two statements, “the Father is greater than I” and “I and the Father are one”
Jesus is teaching us that He has two natures, human and Divine. That “the
Father is greater than I” relates to His human nature, and that “I and the
Father are one” relates to His Divine Nature. Jesus teaches us that He is fully
human and fully Divine, the wonderful mystery of our salvation that we don’t
fully understand.
St. John also tells us, “Let us therefore love God, because God first
hath loved us.” (1 John 4: 19) So we take great joy in celebrating today
that the Son of God loved us so much that He became one of us in all things but
sin. This Christmas let us remind ourselves of the dignity of our human nature,
that we were made in the image and likeness of God. Even though our nature has
been corrupted by Adam, it was made new by Christ. “Behold I make all things
new.” (Apocalypse 21: 5)
We just celebrated St. Thomas’ feast
day on December 21ST. Pope St. Gregory the Great tells us it is St.
Thomas the Apostle, Doubting Thomas we call him, who had more to do with
solidifying our faith than the faith of all the other Disciples. Thomas put his
fingers into the Wounds of his Master. He felt the risen Christ, and cried out,
“My Lord and my God.” Thomas saw only the Perfect Man before him, but touching
Him he believed in the Perfect God which he could not see. Thomas was a witness
for us of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thomas touched Christ’s wounds for
us so that we today may believe in the Resurrection. The words of our Lord
which followed, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed, (John 20: 29) are meant especially for us, who have not seen
Christ in the flesh, but believe in his Divinity. Neither have we seen the
birth of Jesus. We have not held the Baby in our arms, but we have many
evidences of His birth and His life, His death and His resurrection, and we
believe.
Many people are asleep in sin, asleep
because they are too concerned with the things of this life. Let us use, but
not abuse, the things of the Earth to clothe us and to feed us. Work with our
hands and minds to provide these things for us. Enjoy, but do not worship, the
beauty of the Earth. With our bodies be obedient to Christ’s commandments and
to the rules of His Church. But with our souls, worship God Whom we cannot see,
but Whom we can believe because Thomas touched Him and believed before us. With
the whole desire of our souls then let us embrace that “true light which
enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world.” (John 1: 9)
A happy and blessed Christmas to you
and to your families. +++
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