A Christmas Message from Bishop Brookhart

Christmas is my favorite holiday, and it may well be yours, too.  I love nearly everything about it, even the tacky decorations and corny songs.  The problem that presents itself is that it is so easy to settle for this surface level of Christmas observance.  I could be happy with ripping open gifts and singing "Silent Night' along with the car radio.

The church's celebration of this great day, however, asks us to dive down to a much deeper level.  Some years back my wife and I were in Bethlehem, where we visited the traditional site of Jesus' birth.  The ancient Church of the Nativity covers the little cave that the earliest Christians marked as the place of his birth.  We went down the narrow stone steps into the grotto, and knelt before the large silver star that identifies the likely place of his birth.  After that small act of devotion I went back further into the cave, and sat down with my back against the stone wall.  I wanted to be quiet and to try to take it in.  During that time, I wrote this haiku in my journal:

                Bells clap a new song

                Hard earth opens its door

                Firm, stony, "thereness" of God.

The poem attempts to state a perception beyond words, a perception that swept over me that day.  The theological word is "incarnation," God in the flesh.  In real time, in a real place, the living God became flesh and blood.  In the cave made of hard limestone God accepted being fully human.

That is Christmas.  We should not let ourselves off the hook with a sentimental and casual celebration, content with the idea of "happy holidays".  Christmas declares that God is deadly serious in God's commitment to humanity, that God knows what it means to be human from the inside out, and that this is as real and dependable as a rock.

This same God will make God's self available to us in the sacrament of his Body and Body this Christmas.  Kneel.  Worship.  Adore.

+Franklin