Christmas is a beautiful feast that celebrates God’s love for us and how God uses simple, ordinary persons to be the instruments through whom God does great things for us.
            It can be incredibly difficult for us as Christians to appreciate the truth that we proclaim so boldly at Christmas. God took flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. This is an incredible profession of faith! God is completely other than us; beyond our ability to comprehend fully or to understand completely. Yet, as Christians we proclaim that our God took flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. God became fully human - shared fully in our humanity. We do not believe in a God who is distant from us. We do not believe in a God who is indifferent to us. We believe in a God who is radically intimate with us and who desires such radical intimacy with us because of God’s concern for us collectively as God’s family and for each of us individually. There is no one reading this bulletin essay today who is not loved by God as he or she is. How remarkable is the love of God for us as a people! How more remarkable is God’s love for us individually!
            To enter fully into our humanity, God chose to do so through a teenage peasant from a village of no importance in a country whose glory had long since faded. This teenage peasant, Mary, had sufficient faith in God that she could say “Yes” to what God asked of her even though she could never have understood all that her “Yes” would demand of her. This young woman who was of absolutely of no importance or significance in her world literally changed the course of human history by her cooperation with God. Incredible! Even more incredible is that we, too, can be instruments of God’s saving love, God’s saving grace, in our world if we simply say “Yes” to a life lived in faithfulness to the teaching and example of Mary’s son, Jesus. We can, in fact, incarnate Jesus anew in our world through the witness of our lives. Amazing!
            In this Christmas season, offer thanks to God each day for the love that God has for you and pray for the grace to follow the example of Mary and say, “Yes,” to God.