We live in dark times. More Christians have been martyred in the twentieth century than in all previous centuries combined. A British court has just declared that Judaism is racist, a ruling that may make Jewish education impossible in the UK, even in private schools. Many of our contemporaries seem hell-bent on destroying us, the world, and themselves in the bargain.
Revolutionaries of all parties tell us that the world we know is irredeemably evil and must be completely transformed. We hear voices telling us that mankind is a plague on the earth, that we must apologize for our existence on the earth, that our interests can be sacrificed for the good of the earth. We hear that male and female are nothing but human inventions, and evil inventions at that. We must wipe out all traces of gender, neuter ourselves, and become generic humans, rather than men and women. This is to say that we must make war on our own bodies, since there are no generic humans.
Against these voices, we have the voice of the living God, proclaiming His creation to be good. And when He had created man and woman in His image, He declared His work to be very good. We Christians and Jews are under no illusions: we know perfectly well that the world is imperfect, mankind most of all. But we live in the confidence that God has created each and every one of us in his image and likeness, that Almighty God wishes to live among us and to make Himself known to us. He calls us to repentance and reform, without demanding that we destroy ourselves or spit in our own faces. In fact, he forbids us to do so. He demands that we love our neighbors as ourselves, which doesn’t amount to much if we despise ourselves.
God came among us at Christmas in Bethlehem. Everyone knows the story as Luke tells it, and as we hear it at Midnight Mass: the angelic choirs, the star, the shepherds, Joseph leading the donkey to Bethlehem, Mary holding all these things in her heart. But during the day, the Church reads to us from the Gospel of John. In the Beginning, was the Word. The opening of John’s Gospel connects us with the very first words of Genesis, and thereby, with everything in between. And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. This is why Christians throughout the centuries and across the world have always celebrated Christmas with such reckless abandon. No matter how grim things seem to be, how bad can the world be, if God came among us, and is among us still?
At this holy time of year, I want to express my very warmest wishes to our elder brothers and sisters of the Jewish faith. Your fidelity to the covenant graces us all.
To all my friends of all faiths, to all my coworkers in the truth, Be Not Afraid!
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.