Awesome. Really.

A homily for the Nativity of the Lord (Christmas), December 25, 2022

Is 9:1-6, Ti 2:11-14, Lk 2:1-14 (the Mass at Night; for all Scripture options, click here)

This is the time of the year for us to be awestruck.

By Santa Claus? By 50 percent off and free delivery? By Jimmy Choo on consignment at The Real Real?

By our own ability to find a parking space right next to the front of the ShopRite, and then, for getting out of there with everything we went in to buy and with all of our limbs intact?

Uh, no.

To be sure: We can be happy this time of the year. Excited. Relieved, maybe, but not awestruck, despite what the solid-gold electric Cadillac commercials would have us believe.

None of that is awesome. Sorry not sorry, Madison Avenue.

Fortunately, today’s celebration shows us what true awesomeness is.

For a child is born to us, a son is given to us;
upon his shoulder dominion rests.
They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero,
Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.

All this true awesomeness, given to us.

To us.

To all of humankind, whether or not some of our sisters and brothers in the world know of him.

To puny, insignificant us, tiny creatures living short but precious lives on a tiny blue marble in the incomprehensible vastness of this universe.

To every person who ever lived or will ever live on terra firma.

The Creator of the universe — or universes — came to Earth in pretty much the usual way, as a vulnerable baby born of a simple young peasant woman who said yes to a request by her Maker.

He grew to manhood among us, learning of his faith and learning a trade, playing some sort of football with his friends and relatives, getting stomach aches and colds and splinters and scraped knuckles.

The human whose divinity shone forth through his itinerant ministry walked with his fellow humans, dined with his fellow humans, told jokes and discussed politics with his fellow humans, and lived a fully human life.

And he still does the same for us, alive in our hearts forever.

Now, Jesus’s living a more or less regular life isn’t completely the awesome part. We’re all challenged to do that, just as we’re also challenged to be grateful every moment of every day for the Almighty’s, yes, awesome gift to us of our individual lives.

Yeah, us getting to be us does qualify as awesome, because each of us is a gift from God and a gift of God.

But, perspective.

I’m regularly dazzled by the images of the known universe being captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.

They’re images of the universe’s mind-boggling beauty and gray-matter-melting size. Our science and math are stretched to their limits as the greatest minds among us try to chart and catalog what we’re seeing.

And we believers recognize that these gazillions of galaxies and (make up a huge-sounding -illions word) of stars and planets fit in the palm of God’s loving, caring hand, under God’s watchful gaze.

If the universe is a whale, then the Earth is, like, one atom in it.

And yet:

the Word [of God] became flesh
and made his dwelling among us

No wonder we fall to our knees.

But here’s the clincher, the awesome of awesome:

While we’re bowing down on our knees, and rightly so, Jesus extends his hand and pulls us to our feet. He asks us to walk with him, talk with him, share our lives with him.

He wants to know how our days are going, whether we liked the gifts he gave us (Yes! Thank you!), whether we need anything, whether we need his shoulder to cry on (also Yes! Thank you!).

He challenges us to do the same for all of our sisters and brothers because, while he is everywhere and can be in everyone’s hearts, some of us choose not to see him nor recognize him for who — and what — he is. But they can see us, and we can be Christ to them, introducing Jesus and God’s infinite love to them.

We must use “Merry Christmas” to draw humankind closer to our Creator, our Redeemer and our Sanctifier.

Jesus came to Earth as one of us, to share in the joys and sorrows of human life. He walked many a mile in our sandals.

Jesus is one of us, and yet he’s got the whole world in his hand. He’s got the Whole Whole of Everything in his hand.

Fully human. Fully divine.

Awesome.