Homily for the Solemnity of the Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Year A 2022

*To Save Us* 

Friends, I wish you all the joy and blessings of Christmas. In today's celebration, we are presented with three powerful lessons from the Christmas story. The first lesson is contained in the name of the child, Jesus, which means he is to save us from our sins. What sins? Topmost on the list is self-centeredness. We live in times when the words "altruism and sacrifice" rarely come up in conversations. Self-expressivism is the in-thing. And there is nothing wrong with expressing oneself. Even God expresses himself in the Christ-Child. What is wrong is the idolisation of the self. When the self becomes the centre and the determinant of all things, the other doesn't seem to matter. Too often than not, it is all about "me." He doesn't love me. She doesn't love me. My parents, siblings, friends, and colleagues don't love me. Have we ever asked ourselves if we love the other? At Christmas, God became a child to love the other, which is us, and he sends us forth to go and love others.


The second lesson is silence. In the Christmas story; the characters, the narratives, and even the liturgy itself are greeted with the silence of the Christ-Child. God, in the Christ-Child, is silent in a time when the world expects him to speak and call out humanity and publicly shame us. Somehow, he is expected to tell his truth. Just how familiar is all this, especially in the light of the Harry and Meghan Netflix documentary? But notice the dramatic silence of God. He doesn't come as an adult, powerful and eloquent. He comes as a child, weak and mute. Why? To listen and to speak not with words but with his presence. He listens to us so that we can hear ourselves and come to accept ourselves for who we truly are. In this way, he saves us from the sins of pride and being judgemental. Pride tells us that our truth is absolute and we are better than others. But humility, which the Christ-Child communicates, tells us, to listen, and pay attention to the other. Notice how there is a shift from the self to the other.


The third lesson is Emmanuel, the name which means God is with "us." Notice that there is no qualification for us. The name doesn't mean God is with the perfect us, nor does it say that God isn't with the broken and bad us. It simply says that God is with us. This is the heart of Christmas, God coming to be with us. How often do we get it all wrong to think that because we have done XYZ God is no longer with us or we are no longer good enough for God? No! He is with us. We are good enough for him. Our worth and life are not solely defined by what we have done or failed to do. It is defined by the fact that we are God's beloved children. We carry in us, his image and likeness, which is love. Love is our origin. Love is our purpose in life. Love is our destiny. And we are worth loving by God, even when we don't measure up to his standards. This is the joy of Christmas, the realisation that we are loved despite what we have done or failed to do. So let's rejoice and be glad, for God is with us. 


Fr Francis Afu

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