Emmanuel

Christmas is a beautiful time. The church bells begin to ring at four in the morning, nine days before the moment when Christ was born. Whole families flowing through the streets, pouring into the churches for the Aguinaldo Mass. The laughter on the way home. The warm, friendly conversation. The joyous spirit of Christmas.

In the churches we see the Belen, and the manger. We sing: “O come, O come, Emmanuel”. The name “Emmanuel” means “God is with us!” During those nine days of the Misa de Gallo we are like the Hebrew people, who waited for God, for a thousand years.

The Philippines, in Asia, is exactly like Israel was, in the Middle East. They were like a jewel box, treasuring the truth about God, in the middle of a pagan world. When God finally came, the jewel box was opened, and the truth about God poured out to all the nations around the Mediterranean.

In Asia, we are the jewel box, treasuring the truth about God, in the middle of a great continent, which is still hungering for him. As what the late John Paul II said to us, the jewel box must be thrown wide open, for Asia and for all the world.

Now it is Christmas time, and God is with us. It is strange that we should look upon this as such a big thing, because God is always with us! Every time we go to Mass, and receive Communion, his body becomes one with ours. His blood is running through our veins. And we meet God in every person he sends to us. He said that: “So long as you do it to the least of these, my little ones, you do it to me!” We see God in the rose, in the sunset, in the butterfly. When we take the hand of the child we love, we are touching the hand of God.

But at Christmas time we realize all the beautiful things that God did, in order to be one of us, to be close to us, to be our friend. First, he became a man. This is what irritated Lucifer, the Archangel, the Light Beaver. God did not become an angel. He by-passed the angels, to be come a man. The strong tradition is that Lucifer was asked to adore the baby in the manger. But that Baby was an animal! Lucifer was a pure spirit. His thoughts were: “Me? A pure spirit, adoring an animal? Me, a pure spirit asked to serve the other animals whom he has chosen to be his special friends? I will not!” And our Lord said: “I saw Lucifer falling like light from heaven.”

Secondly, it was how he came. He could have come through the clouds of heaven, in glory. He could have descended from a mountain top, surrounded by legions of angels. He could have walked in off the sea, a full grown man. But he chose to be conceived in the womb of a poor peasant girl, 14 years old. He chose to live within her body for nine months, being fed with her blood, hearing her talk to him, praying for him, feeling her love for him. He chose to be born as a baby, like each one of us, utterly helpless, to be held in the arms of his mother, to nurse at her breast. Having a mother was such a beautiful thing that even God wanted it.

Third, he wanted to be poor, as so many of us are poor. He engineered the census of the whole world, so that Joseph and Mary would go down to Bethlehem, find no room in the inn, and he would be born in a stable, wrapped in his mother’s veil, and laid in a manger on a straw, having nothing.

When he was born, the angels sang to the poor shepherds on the hillside. The shepherds had no education, no money — they did not even own the sheep they were tending. They were like our security guards, watching at night, protecting the property of somebody else. These shepherds went to the stable in the middle of the night, to kneel beside the manger and look at this beautiful little baby who had come to them. When the baby reached out to them, he was reaching out to us. They left the stable and went back to the hillside, excited and happy, much the way we come home from Midnight Mass, excited and happy. We do not have money, but we have God, and we have each other, and — for one brief shining moment — we feel the joy of living.

Right now, in this time of hardship, we sometimes make the same mistake as the Hebrews. We want Christ Our Lord to be a King of this world. We pray for the things of this world: money. . . . success. . . . . achievement. . . . . position. . . .power. God could give us these things, but he chooses to work in another way.

He does not remove the poverty, the suffering. But he enables us to feel the sweetness of shared hardship. He gives us the power to endure, to survive, and to smile, no matter how hard our life has become. All the foreigners who visit the Philippines are amazed by that: in the greatest hardship, in the deepest suffering, the Filipino smiles. That smile comes from the soul. It is a beautiful gift of God. Am I saying that the smile is worth more than money? That is exactly what I am saying. It is spiritual strength. And it comes from God.

It is true. We do not have money. But we are rich in love, in life, in laughter. We have God, and we have each other. And we have what all the world is hungry for — the joy of living.