The Word became flesh… (Jn 1:14)
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ: At this time of year, especially, we are called on to take Jesus’ coming seriously. The prayers and readings from Scripture that open the Church’s new liturgical year breathe with urgency, deep longing and eager expectation: “Increase our strength of will for doing good that Christ may find an eager welcome at his coming …increase our longing for Christ our Savior…we keep vigil for the dawn of salvation…your Church is filled with wonder at the nearness of her God…Be watchful, be alert!”
When we speak of His coming, we refer to our celebration of His birth two thousand years ago, His coming into our hearts today, and His Second Coming at the end of time.
At Christmas, we contemplate the reality that the second person of the Trinity—God the Son—emptied Himself, took on our human nature (becoming truly human while remaining truly God) in order to save us, to reconcile humanity with God, to make known the mercy and love of God and to allow us to share in His divinity. This awesome reality confronts us every day of the year, but especially at Christmas, which the Church rightly calls the “Feast of our Salvation.”
As Christmas dawns, our Advent time of preparation, of conversion and of yearning for Emmanuel—“God with us”—gives way to wonder and joy, as we gratefully welcome the Prince of Peace into our world and into our hearts, just as the shepherds glorified and praised God for all they had heard and seen.
But is this really the way we have awaited Jesus’ coming? Is this how we will greet him on Christmas morning?
Sadly, in our world today, there is no peace. Men and women, military and civilian, and children are dying in so many places. Jesus has come to bring us peace but we, sinful and foolish, refuse to accept His gift. As St. John wrote, “The true light was coming into the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him.” (Jn 1:10-11) Of course, there always have been and will continue to be those who will reject Jesus, sometimes out of hatred or anger, but perhaps more often out of confusion, hurt or fear. For those who have rejected Jesus in this way, we pray that their hearts may be healed and opened to His love and peace. For me, though, there is something even more disheartening than this outright rejection of Jesus: Indifference. As Pope Benedict XVI asked this week, “Does humanity today still await the Savior? One has the feeling that many consider God to be extraneous to their own interests. Apparently, they do not need him; they live as if he did not exist or, worse, as if he were an obstacle to be removed for their self-realization.”
At Christmas we are called to celebrate the immense mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God, the great light that penetrates the darkness of sin and despair, and transforms the world. But, inexplicably, we turn away disinterested, too busy to care. We too often are caught up in our own lives and concerns to pause for a moment to contemplate and appreciate the gift of Jesus’ coming. As if to ensure that we are not roused from this indifference, Madison Avenue, Hollywood and politically correct secularists collaborate to keep Jesus from intruding on the “winter holidays.” And we go along for the sleigh ride, so to speak.
Despite the fact that many, many will come to Mass for Christmas, there is still indifference to Jesus. That same Jesus whose birth we celebrate is present to us not just on Christmas morning, but throughout the year. He is “God with us” in a most special way in the Eucharist, but we stay away from weekly participation, caught up with other obligations, shrugging that perhaps we’ll go spend time with Jesus some other weekend, if we get around to it. I wonder sometimes if our indifference toward Jesus makes it all the harder to care about our neighbor and the injustice that permeates our world and even our local communities.
Last week I had the opportunity, at an Advent retreat for diocesan employees conducted Father Jim Greenfield, OSFS, to view scenes from a movie adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. While Dickens composed the short story a century and a half ago it still captures well the unfortunate reality of our own times. In an early scene the specter of deceased business partner, Jacob Marley, has appeared before Ebenezer Scrooge in a last ditch effort to convince him to reform his life. Ebenezer replies that Marley, whatever his failings in life, was always “a good man of business.” Marley roars back, “Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
Holocaust survivor, author and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Eli Wiesel, said once that the opposite of faith is not heresy, it is indifference. He also said that indifference is worse than hatred because at least with hatred you can denounce it and fight it. Indifference, he said, is “a strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil.”
Just as we keep Jesus from intruding on our celebration of Christmas, we keep our neighbor’s misery and hardship from intruding on our daily routine and our way of life, out of sight, out of mind, at a comfortable, sterile distance. As Wiesel said, “For the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence, and, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the other to an abstraction.”
Has our neighbor in need become an abstraction for us? Has Christmas, a feast increasingly emptied of its very essence, become an abstraction?
I pray that in this Christmas season and in the New Year to come each of us may awake from indifference and acknowledge and celebrate the splendor of God’s Christmas gift to humankind. May we experience the peace of Jesus in our own hearts and work to spread His peace and love to others. May you and your families have a joyous Christmas and New Year filled with Jesus!
Fraternally,
Most Reverend Joseph A. Galante, D.D., J.C.D.
Bishop of Camden