The Christmas kindling of the light of Christ

THERE IS no doubt that as far as the official teaching of the Church is concerned, Easter is the greatest feast of the Church's Year — indeed it is its very centre. Just as Sunday is the most important day of the week, the Lord's Day, so Easter, the feast of the Lord's triumph over sin and death, is the most important feast of the year.
The Church, however, "considers the Christmas season which celebrates the birth of our Lord and His early manifestations, second only to the annual celebration of the Easter mystery."
There is equally no doubt that the most popular feast with the actual worshipping community is Christmas. The large numbers who attend Christmas Midnight Mass, and the day Masses of Christmas, testify to the deep roots the feast has in our lives. The fact that so many are prepared to come out at midnight in the bleak mid-winter of December to celebrate Christ's birth but that so few come to celebrate His resurrection in the Easter Vigil can tell us something about our liturgy and the way it is celebrated.
The simplicity and beauty of Christmas are in contrast to the complexity (but still the beauty) of the Easter liturgy. There is also the contrast between the almost inexplicable fact of Christ's rising from the dead, and the equally inexplicable, but somehow more human, fact of God becoming man as a baby in the stable at Bethlehem.
As a baby, born to ordinary parents, in the poverty of a cattle shed, God's son is immediately approachable by all people, rich and poor, and it is the poor and simple shepherds who are first called to witness the fact of this birth. All can find in the simplicity of the stable a vivid message of God's love for each one of them. If God who created the universe can take the form of a baby, then He is not some impersonal source of life but a living, loving God who cares for us just as a father or mother care for their children.
This beautiful message is unfortunately all too easily converted to a sort of sloppy sentimentalism. Christmas becomes "the children's feast", which it is, of course, but it is so much more. Within the beauty of the Christmas story lies a challenge to all Christians to work out the mystery of God's incarnation in our lives. If God has become man for us, what must we do in response to this.
In the Christmas liturgy the Church celebrates the beauty and simplicity of Christ's incarnation and at the same time challenges us with its message. For instance in the Dawn Mass of Christmas, the Church prays:
Father, We are filled with the new light by the coming of your Word among us.
May the light of faith shine in our words and actions.
Will we be able to say after Christmas, that Christ's light is shining within us, in all that we say or do?
In the Mass of the Day, the Alternative Opening Prayer says:
"Make us a people of this light, Make us faithful to your Word, that we may being your life to the waiting world."
There really is a challenge. Are we ready to accept the mission of bringing Christ's life to a waiting world? There is no doubt that the world is waiting for the witness of Christians; what we must ask ourselves is how we are failing to give this witness.
In the readings too we are helped by St Paul to apply the joy of the Christmas Story to our lives. Writing to Titus, he reminds us that "when the kindness and love of God our saviour for mankind were revealed", we were saved not because of anything we might have done, but simply out of His love for us. God did not have to save us; He did not have to take flesh; but He did this out of love for us. Later. St John reminds us in his Gospel that to all who accept Jesus as Son of God, He has given "power to become children of God."
The Christmas Season begins with the Vigil Mass of Christmas on the evening of December 24 and ends with the feast of the Baptism of the Lord on the Sunday after the Epiphany. During this time we celebrate many different aspects of His love — family life in the feast of the Holy Family; the motherhood of Mary on New Year's Day; the showing forth of God's love to all peoples in the Epiphany; and the witness to God's love by the martyrs St Stephen and in our country St Thomas Becket.
The fact that the season of Christmas ends with the Baptism of the Lord and the beginning of His public ministry is a vivid reminder that Christmas is not some cosy celebration remote from our lives, but a challenge to us to share God's love with all peoples.
"God sent his angels to shepherds to herald the great joy of our Saviour's birth, May he fill you with joy and make you heralds of his gospel."
(From the Solemn Blessing of Christmas).