Dearly
beloved, today our Savior is born; let us rejoice. Sadness should have no place
on the birthday of life. The fear of death has been swallowed up; life brings
us joy with the promise of eternal happiness.
No one is
shut out from this joy; all share the same reason for rejoicing. Our Lord,
victor over sin and death, finding no man free from sin, came to free us all.
Let the saint rejoice as he sees the palm of victory at hand. Let the sinner be
glad as he receives the offer of forgiveness. Let the pagan take courage as he
is summoned to life.
In the
fullness of time, chosen in the unfathomable depths of God’s wisdom, the Son of
God took for himself our common humanity in order to reconcile it with its
creator. He came to overthrow the devil, the origin of death, in that very
nature by which he had overthrown mankind.
And so at the
birth of our Lord the angels sing in joy: Glory to God in the highest, and
they proclaim peace to his people on earth as they see the
heavenly Jerusalem being built from all the nations of the world. When the
angels on high are so exultant at this marvelous work of God’s goodness, what
joy should it not bring to the lowly hearts of men?
Beloved, let
us give thanks to God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit, because
in his great love for us he took pity on us, and when we were dead in
our sins he brought us to life with Christ, so that in him we might be
a new creation. Let us throw off our old nature and all its ways and, as we
have come to birth in Christ, let us renounce the works of the flesh.
Christian,
remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not
return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and
of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from
the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.
Through the
sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive
away so great a guest by evil conduct and become again a slave to the devil,
for your liberty was bought by the blood of Christ.
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