Wrapped up in our lives

A homily for The Nativity of the Lord (Christmas), Dec. 25, 2020

Is 9:1-6, Ti 2:11-14, Lk 2:1-14

This time of year, a couple of cable channels run a holiday favorite film nonstop for 24 hours. You know the one. 

And even though “A Christmas Story” pales in significance when compared with The Christmas Story, the movie ends with a remembrance that could be scriptural:

The greatest Christmas gift I had ever received, or would ever receive.

That’s the core of The Christmas Story, the story we retell today and every December 25 and, we hope, every day of the year in words and actions as faithful followers of Jesus Christ, Our Newborn King.

From the same loving God who gave us our lives and all of Creation, we get the gift of the Son of God who became truly human and lived among us.

The greatest Christmas gift any human being ever received, or would ever receive.

Christ’s short but intense life among us was the source of many more gifts, gifts that never fade, never wear out, and are recharged every time we spend time with Jesus, especially in the Eucharist.

The gift of pure love, love willing to sacrifice even life itself for the greater good of all — assuring our salvation and our place in the heavenly kingdom. There is no greater love than this.

The gift of example, a guide on how to live a humble holy life, the kind of life the prophet Micah wrote of and Jesus fulfilled. No holier-than-thou here.

The gift of enlightenment, for us to see beyond crass commercialism in a season when we’re cajoled to Spend! Spend! Spend! as a way of showing love, and instead see that our presence — even virtual — is a present no one can clip a price tag onto. Especially in these dark days of physical distance.

The gift of hope, which brings with every new day’s dawn a light for us to find our way to better days. 

The gift of strength and perseverance, to continue our journey toward those better days. As Churchill reportedly said, when you realize you are marching through hell, keep marching. God gives us the strength and the will to journey through this year of pain and virus toward God’s light.

The gift of peace, God’s peace, the peace that flows like a river when every one of us welcomes every other human as a child of God, created in God’s image, created for a purpose and created with a right to be here and an obligation to contribute to God’s family. 

The gift of wisdom, first and foremost the wisdom to appreciate and be grateful for all of God’s other gifts to us, and then the wisdom to know that we received our lives from generations that preceded us and are borrowing the Earth’s resources from generations yet to come.   

The gift of each other. What a precious, precious, fragile gift!

“A Christmas Story” accurately depicts what happens every Christmas morning, when children’s excitement cranks the volume up to 11. We remember it from all our own Christmases. Few things compare with that glee.

And, like that movie’s present-unwrapping scene, we get one more gift than we expected.

The gift of wonder, allowing ourselves to be awed by God’s gifts great and small, visible or invisible.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we always had that level of excitement for God’s gifts as well as Santa’s?