December 25, 2005

Is There A Christ in Christmas?

As the believer is surrounded this very day by the almost inconceivable efforts of secularists to keep the name of Christ out of this holiday season, and ridiculous objections are being made for the use of even “Merry Christmas”, it’s extremely important for us to restate our belief in Christ and His divinity. How important it is for each one of us to reaffirm our profound faith and our commitment to the divine Son of God who became man.

Recently I have discovered on the internet the talks of Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM, Cap. who is the Papal Preacher. If you can, be sure to try to get them at this address: www.cantalamessa.org. His marvelous meditation for the second week of Advent very helpfully gets us out of the clouds of the writings of scripture scholars, who without meaning to do so, reduce the Word of God to the words of men. Fr. Cantalamessa reaffirms the profound meaning, especially of Christ’s affirmation of His divinity in the Gospel of St. John, very beautifully. Fr. Cantalamessa points out the importance of personal individual devotion to Jesus Christ and re-conversion to Him, which must be renewed over and over again. He points out very well that there are thousands of examples in our time of people who were far from Christ and who are now personally converted to Him. This experience of Christ is also true of those who are not converts, but who have been called to be close to Him all the years and decades of life. We should resist the indifferentism and phony attempts of being objective, which remove us from personal devotion to Jesus Christ. You should ask yourself if Christ is in fact the center of your life. Do you turn to Him with needs, with attempts to do good, with failure, with repentance? Do you read the Gospels carefully? Do you know Christ Jesus? In all that you do, do you make Him more and more the center of your life and share Him with those who are dear to you who can understand to some degree your experience of Him because they also know Him to be the center of life.

It is by the gifts of the Holy Spirit that we are able to be real Christians, to know Christ Jesus and to do all things in union with Him. Let that be our goal as we celebrate today His Incarnation.

Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR