Christmas: Choosing the Light

JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU!

Our Belen for 2016

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

When the Lord Jesus was born, it was in the middle of the night. People were fast asleep except the shepherds who were keeping the night watch over their flock. Nobody knew that it was the most awaited night, the night when the ancient promise of God was fulfilled. Everything was hidden in the darkness of the night.

But what was hidden in darkness will be proclaimed in daylight. Today, the Light of the world shines in the darkness. Not even the darkness is able to overcome it. No amount of darkness will ever limit the light. Light limits the darkness and not the other way around. Light dispels the darkness. The darkness does not dispel the light. Darkness is the absence of light. When the light comes, there is no darkness.

There is only one way for darkness to stay…and that is by blocking the light. “He came to what was his own but his own people did not accept him.” Light is refused by putting up a barrier to keep it from penetrating the darkness. The barrier sort of protects the darkness from the light. Hiding behind that barrier, a person remains in the dark.

But it is unfortunate that one should refuse the light and choose the darkness. “For what came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race…” Life is light. Where there is light, there is life. Living things grow under the light. Death lurks in darkness. It would be sad if people choose the darkness because doing so, they would choose death over life. And who wants to die? The desire for death defies all logic. Everything that lives wants to remain alive. It would do everything to be able to extend life even for one second more.

Light empowers. “Those who did accept him, he gave the power to become children of God.” There can be no higher dignity for man than to be a child of God. To accept the light is to be chosen and loved by God as his dear children. This is the life he offers us. He offers us the life of the children of God. And to do this, his light comes into the world. “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” Like the sun at Fatima which one can look at without hurting one’s eyes, the Light of the world comes in the poverty of a little child. He is not a light that glares and blinds. He is a light that beckons, a light that attracts by its beauty. The sign of God is the poverty of a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and laying on a manger. The poverty of the human nature which he took upon himself makes the unapproachable light of God less intimidating and more approachable. This Light beckons us to go out of the dark. It draws us out of the darkness of sin and death. It invites us to take away the barrier that shields us from his light and life. It invites us to turn away from sin, to shun the works of darkness. The seeming poverty of God makes people underestimate his power. Our impatience to put things in order makes us resort to works of death: wars, killings, violence. But the peace and order that comes out of it is simply the silence of cadavers, the silence of cemeteries.

If only the world would accept Christ the Light, then it would receive from the fullness of his grace, grace upon grace. “Grace and Truth came through Jesus Christ.”  This is the true life giving grace. The mercy of the Christ Child is one that truly transforms and gives eternal life. It is the one that opens and fills paradise and not graves. “The Lord restores Zion. Break out together in song, O ruins of Jerusalem! The Lord comforts his people, he redeems Jerusalem.”

If we accept Christ, he will reveal God to us. “No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him.” Let us accept him for the Lord does not desire ruin for us but salvation. He desires not violence but peace. He desires not the death of the sinner but that the sinner should turn to him and live.

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!