Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

Nativity of the Lord – Year B

1st reading: Isaiah 52, 7-10

Psalm: 97 (98), 1, 2-3ab, 3cd-4, 5-6

2rd Reading: Hebrews 1:1-6

Gospel: John 1,1-18

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Great mystery than that of Christmas!

The Word, who was in the beginning, who was with God, who was God: the Word became flesh. The second person of the Holy Trinity, the Word, the Son, became man in all the reality of man's life.

The letter to the Hebrews will tell us that he was like us in everything except sin (4,15). And sin is not an excess of humanity: sin is a defect of humanity. Jesus is more of a man than any of us. He thus reveals to us the value we have in the eyes of God. God must love man to come and share his life!

In this Prologue that we have just heard, one statement is loaded with meaning, especially today: “Life was the light of men.”. Life is the light of men... This means that any attack on life puts us in darkness, extinguishes the light. And that goes for all of creation. It is not only human life that is the light of men, it is life. There is a healthy ecology, which has its source not only in the creation stories of the book of Genesis, but also in this affirmation. Protecting animal species is part of our responsibility, we to whom God has entrusted creation, because life is our light.

But even more human life. Life from its first beginning. When this very first cell appears in the mother's womb.

Life, even disabled, is a light. Life, even wounded, even suffering. The life of someone who can no longer speak. The life of the addict is a light. And we want to turn off the light.

What a tragedy we are experiencing at the start of the millennium, to love life so little! Thérèse loves life. She loves it so much that she wants to experience it in its fullness, in its totality, in its fulfillment. And she understands that this accomplished life, this full and complete life, is the one towards which we are walking, it is the Kingdom, it is holiness! And this determined woman that is Thérèse chooses the quickest path that leads to eternal life, which is the fullness of life! It in no way depreciates this life on earth. But she understands that it is not by seeking enjoyment here below that we are prepared to receive the fullness of life, but that it is by being faithful to God and by traveling the path with Jesus.

It is this second thing that I would like to highlight in this Christmas celebration. Time, each liturgical time has its coloring. And Christmas time is colored by learning about companionship with Jesus. It is about renewing in us a constant relationship with Jesus who is present to us.

It is often us who are not present to him. And we see clearly, when we go through all of Thérèse's writings, how this presence of Jesus is constant, and how this presence of Jesus is not the presence of an, how to say, imaginary Jesus, or of a Jesus completely spiritual… Thérèse relies on the humanity of Jesus. It becomes contemporary with the Gospel, or the Gospel becomes contemporary with itself. She is in dialogue with the child Jesus. She rejoices in being a toy for Jesus as a child who is at his disposal, and she is happy to render this service to Jesus whom she loves.

When she experiences the dryness of prayer where she prays without any perception of anything, it is from the Gospel that she interprets what she experiences: she says that Jesus who spends his day chasing after lost sheep is blessed to be able to come and rest in her. And she lets him sleep, because that's what he needs. Wonderful way to enter into the humanity of Jesus and to take seriously an existential and contemporary relationship of oneself with Jesus.

The heart of the Christian life, my friends, is Jesus! The heart of Christian life is our relationship with Jesus. And that’s why we need to take so much care to cultivate this relationship.

Read and reread the Gospels.

Pray to Jesus, talk to him.

Contemplate Him in the mystery of the Eucharist.

Call on Him for help in spiritual warfare.

And understand that it is the manifestation of the love that God has for us.

Pleasing Jesus does not mean doing everything well as he says.

Pleasing Jesus is fundamentally accepting that he gave his life for me. That I am so incapable of anything that, in a certain way, there was no other solution than Jesus, God made man, giving his life for me. And instead of being distressed by it, I rejoice in it and I enter into a gratitude which leads to my conversion. When I understand, by contemplating Jesus, to what extent I am loved by God, to what extent I am loved by Jesus, now, at this very moment, then a thanksgiving, a gratitude grows within me. What God wants, first and foremost, is for us to let ourselves be loved by him. What Jesus wants first and foremost is that we welcome him into our concrete existence as our traveling companion, as our first friend.

Let us ask for this grace by celebrating this Eucharist, to know how to welcome Jesus and let ourselves be loved and led by him.

Amen