Christian People,
I have been so happy to see the charity you all have shown through your generous and quiet giving of things to the poor. This shows that you trully believe! It shows so many things. Jesus is the long awaited Messiah and it shows that you believe that he is just that. How are you showing it? It might be that you are showing it and you don't even know how exactly.
First you must think about who the long awaited Messiah was supposed to be like. The Old Testement Phrophets spoke of the Divine King who would be universal and eternal. He would be the cosmic King who would establish God's Kingdom forever; overcome all evil for ever, bring the peace, justice, love that we all long for. He would be God with us.
Sencond think of how this Messiah came. He came as baby. He was of a powerless family. He was poor. And yet we believe that this poor baby born in a kind of barn was the eternal King of King; that He is indeed God with us. This is a strange think to believe from a certian point of view. What kind of Savior King is poor and week?
But by grace we know and rejoice in it. And it does change the world. Now in an instant we know that the poor of this world are not being punnished by God, they are not cursed, they are not, despised by God. We know now in an instant that weekness, vunlnerability, poverty are in some mysterious way a fitting, somehow, the most fitting trappings of the Messiah.
If we really worhip the Christ Child we will be attentive to the words He will speak later in through the Gospels. They tell us that he really does come for the poor. He comes for the sinner. He comes for the week and the lowely. He come to with them. This really is powerful and it has begun the kingdom of God here on Earth more then we know. Now we see the poor and the week and the sinner and we see an opportunity to love. Did you know that outside of Christ this is not what we have done or do as regards to the poor and the week and the sinner?
Outside of Christianity the plight of the poor has been and is neglect, abandonment, isolation, and exploitation. The same happens now more and more in the places of the world that fail to recongnize Christ. In our own city the poor are seen more as a problem to be solved rather than as persons to be loved and cherished. Think of the poor public school girl who becoming pregnant is ushered through a system of guidence councellors and social workers that tell her they will help her become free and independent by killing her child. This is the twisted logic of a world that cannot love. It is the same world that rejects Christ and his Church.
But you have not. You prepare now to bend your knee and, full of faith, worship God born for us as a baby. You have been saved by Jesus born for us. And you have, with excitement, played a part in bringing His Kingdom about by lovingly serving Him as you tried to lovingly be part of helping the poor this Christmas Season.
God Bless,
Fr. St. Martin
