Christmas Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons

I wonder if there has ever really been a peaceful Christmas? I don't only mean one in which conflict and war do not figure, alas these things are always with us, but also our personal and communal disturbances and skirmishes at home and work . Paradoxically settings of conflict and disturbance sometimes bring out what is best in the Christmas story, as did that famous Christmas truce of the First World War, for despite our worst behaviour the capacity for generous love and reconciliation are always there.

The Gospel stories of the Nativity show the whole breadth and depth of human experience, from great joy, hope, hidden menace, tragedy and hints of death as told by Matthew and Luke, to the soaring and sublime theology of the Word made flesh in John's prologue. Yes, God-is-with-us , the abiding presence of One greater than all these things, who by coming from on high, casts his lot amongst the children of Adam and Eve. The kenosis, emptying out of Christ our God to take on human nature is the beginning of our theosis, becoming like him, filled with his light and the Holy Spirit.

In this present world of trouble, where in the very land of Jesus the same interplay of poverty, dispossession, domination of one group by another continues and in the Middle East where fellow Christians are being persecuted for their faith, the feast of the Nativity has a very important role to play.

When we celebrate this feast we become part of it, we bring it alive yet again for the next generation. We tell our story of salvation through Jesus the Christ and wonder at his generosity, when as a baby he gives himself into the hands of human beings, a helpless God-child, totally dependent on our love. We are reminded that the heart of our faith is this all enveloping and generous love that can never be extinguished, even if at times the world seems a very cruel place.

The Gospels tell us that through compassion and care of the little ones, the poor and helpless God's huge merciful presence comes, found not only in humanity, but all created things. In the Icons of this feast, peaceful and alone, beside the manger, are portrayed two animals, the Ox and the Ass. For as Isaiah said, they were the first to know their maker!