It’s a real challenge for true Christians and people of faith to reclaim the meaning of Christmas and to make it a real event as Jesus would want it. It’s a time to rededicate ourselves to the ideals He exemplified and brought into the world. We need to find again that path to spiritual renewal and the courage for unselfish living. “I came to serve and not to be served;” “They who lose their lives will save it;” “What you do to the poorest of My family, you do to Me;” “I came to give My life as an offering for many,” He taught us.
Christmas is all about living a simple, non-luxurious life in the friendship of Jesus Christ putting the well-being of suffering and deprived humanity at the forefront of our concerns. The Christmas story is a challenge for all to leave behind a self-centered existence for a life of unselfish self-giving and sharing in solidarity with the poor, the abused, exploited and downtrodden. We will receive many ‘Happy Christmas” greetings this year, by e-mail, by text messages and millions of greeting cards will travel in the postal system. What do they really say, what happiness do they wish upon us, is to have a good dinner party, a bottle of wine? What is a Happy Christmas?
My happy Christmas wish for you is that you may feel, all the more, compassion for the needy, the hungry, the refugees, the victims and the imprisoned children. That you will be strengthened in your commitment to the ideals of love and justice and dedication to saving people and the planet from injustice and harm. I wish that, together, we will be inspired, all the more, by the ideals that Jesus placed before us, may we all be motivated to act for justice and to change the world. It is these ideals that we ought to celebrate and promote at Christmas and to show to all that they really are important and that working to make them a reality is the way to true happiness and life fulfillment.
If we read the Christmas story and look behind the traditional images of an idealized cute cooing Baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph in a movie-like setting, we will see that it was not the birth among the rich and powerful, but a hard, bitter and impoverished birth among the poor and the creatures of the planet. Despite the changes in 2,000 years, the world of Jesus is so much like the world today.
King Herod, a cruel dictator, a lackey of the foreign powers that dominated Palestine, a malevolent tyrant ruling Palestine and planning and ordering a genocide, a massacre of innocent children, to prevent a rival from emerging from the ‘House of David” to challenge his rule.
Today, we see worst tyrants and even more genocidal rulers in the Sudan, Darfur, Eastern Congo, and bloody suffering and conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and even Palestine and many more. Women and children are abused and abducted; denied basic medical help and their basic human rights violated daily. Many give birth in hovels and in the fields and deserts, not even a shelter most times and certainly not in a setting like the airbrushed pictures of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. It really was a birth of the poor – harsh, dangerous and life threatening.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) tells us that every day, every minute, a mother dies while pregnant or while giving birth. The most important act of humankind is scarred and marred by the neglect of governments and the failure of the world community to nurture and protect human life. In sub-Saharan Africa, women still face a one-in-sixteen chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth. Helping preserve, protect and enhance life is what being a Christian is all about. Campaigning for justice for women and children, supporting charities that bring meaningful change is a great way to follow the example of that Child born in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago and survived, and is still very much alive today.
