In those days a decree went out…

Tonight, tomorrow and truly until early January, we celebrate in a specific way the incarnation of God. God the Son, the only of the Father, nine months having passed from when the Angel approached Mary and informed her of God’s great role for her in the salvific plan, was born into this world.

Jesus the Christ came into our imperfect world and made it perfect. He didn’t remove the imperfection; he instead gave us the path of perfection, the path toward him and our eternal salvation that was are compelled to walk. Our Creator did not impact our free will and we are free to not follow Christ, but if we are true to ourselves, true to our nature, we cannot choose any course of action beside the one that follows the path of Jesus Christ.

Whether we celebrate Christmas surrounded by the beauty of St. Peter’s on the Vatican Hill, or in a barn-looking church, or solely within our own homes, we should take note and celebrate that no matter when the first Christmas truly occurred (we all admit that December 25th was probably not the actual date, save some awesome divine providence), that all of human kind is changed now that our own creator, our God, took the form of the creation and walked as one of us.

His incarnation is the first of many things Jesus shared with all of us. He knew family, homelessness, good friends, betrayal, power, powerlessness, sadness, joy, but more core to us than any of those things, he shared with us our human existence.

Through him, we can know what it is to be divine. We make the mistake quite often to say that our goal in life is to be good Christians, to be good Christ-like folks. This is incorrect. Our goal within this life on earth is to be Christ to other people. Through our hands, our actions, our words, we can become Christ to other people. His incarnation mingled humanity and divinity. Humanity was joined with divinity through his birth, and divinity was joined with humanity through the first Pentecost.

During this Christmas season, let’s take a break from all of the craziness that exists in the world and this time of year, and think about what it means to have Word made Flesh.