I would like to, on behalf of myself and my brothers and our community, to extend to you the warmest wishes of a blessed Christmas and a very grace filled New Year. We are very happy to have you join us to praise and glorify the Lord for the works of redemption and express our gratitude for all that God does for us.

If you have been reading the Plain Dealer lately you have seen a number of articles that talk about where exactly are the Christian values in the Christmas season, especially in the United States. People are wondering if they should say Happy Holiday or Merry Christmas, or if they should put up a Christmas tree or if they put up a holiday tree. In some places you can’t sing Christmas Carols in Public Squares. This is really a serious question in some ways but it does indicate that many people really wonder what exactly they’re celebrating when they come to Christmas. What’s the reality of Christmas?

The sad part would be that these expressions are really an indication that God becoming man is not a significance to people and that basically this is just what the secular world wants. It’s their kind of holiday, happy season. Fortunately we have faith and therefore we know the reality behind what people think is the reality. Our present pope, Benedict XVI in one of his works had said there are basically three approaches to lead us to the fullest of reality. The first is our human experience, our senses. What we see, what we hear, what we feel, what we touch that gives us a lot of knowledge about the world and about us. Then we have an intellect and therefore we can study and use abstraction and come to deeper knowledge of reality. But the deepest power that we have is to come to know reality in its fullest and its power is really our faith and especially love. When these two are active then the fullest of reality is open to us.

So we wonder how people look at Christmas. For some people I suppose it’s no different then a child being born in this little town of Bethlehem who is no different that any one of us because he has to be registered in the social and political scene at the time in his own family and this attitude apparently stayed toward Christ because we find in the gospels that when the leaders began to see that Jesus manifested wisdom they said, "Where did he get all that?" "Isn’t he just a carpenter’s son?" Even though we do senses doesn’t mean that we would open ourselves up to the fullness of reality.

Then we know that the Scribes and Pharisees studied the law and studied the fact that God promised the Messiah and they didn’t get it quite right. What about those who began to see something of this mystery? It’s important that we look at this as a mystery. The church is wise it says the evening Mass should be focused on the mystery. The morning Mass should be focused on the fact that Jesus became human in a specific place, Bethlehem, and it’s implications. Then the day Mass should focus on the fact that Christ came to dwell in us by the power of his life and grace.

So tonight we want to focus on the mystery. But that presupposes you have some sense of mystery even on a natural level. A couple of weeks ago I happened to keep my sense of mystery alive by looking at the astropics on the internet and the Hubble telescope pictures. They carved out roughly 16 degrees and kept the Hubble focused on that. Then they put underneath what was there. I could count some of them but they said there are thousands of galaxies that you are looking at right now. Every fuzzy thing is a galaxy but there were some that were more sharp than others. It said that this light coming to us at that particular time was 300 million light years away. Which means what I was looking at was before the dinosaurs! Now even though I understand some of this, there’s a lot I don’t. Therefore on the natural level we have mystery. But if we have some sense of mystery then we can start talking about this great mystery. What is your notion of God?

God is a universe of goodness. He is a sea of love that has no shore. The flow between the Father and the Son is an ebb and flow of tremendous love, power, intensity, rapture and complete happiness right now. There is in God virgin territory, virgin universe, that only God knows. That’s the God we’re talking about. That God became a human being. That’s the mystery. How could this infinite, loving, fully happy being decide to come and be with us? It’s our faith that shows us that this is not just a happenstance but this is a choice directed toward the whole human race to each of us here. That God knew we had no access to salvation on our own. Like a person locked in a prison cell, he can’t free himself, he needs help from the outside, and God stepped in and became one of us. Not only does he come to be one of us but he is here for us which means his greatest capacity as a human being is to be Saviour, to save us. That’s where he really shines. Which means each one of us is written on the palm of his hand and in the depth of his heart. He will not stop persuing our salvation until we are in his heart. That’s the mystery we are celebrating.

It took the angle to announce to the shepherds then the whole heavens were filled with angles proclaiming "Glory to God" because they knew that this is an incomprehensible jump. That God should become a human being. That he should become a human being for humans. With their problems, with their sinfulness. So they praised God they say basically acknowledge that you have a Saviour that’s living and now on earth and is your salvation.

Then the shepherds have that kind of faith and they come to adore. Then as the life of Christ unfolds the women and the apostles after the Resurrection they also claim that Jesus is alive and that he is accessable to those who believe.

Then our dear pope, about a month ago, said something very interesting. He said: "The church is alive." To claim that the church is alive is to claim that Jesus is alive because the life of the church is Christ.

So what is the truth that we are celebrating? Is that this Lord who became man, is active in history, in our lives, in the sacraments. That this God is just no longer out there in heaven far away, but near, accessible, you can touch him, and he’s touched by us especially in this sacrament of the Eucharist. Because he pours out the graces that he wants to give us, that he’s planning to give us the fullness of someday to share this tremendous life that flows between the Father and the Son and in the Spirit. It means that we need to take to heart what we have been proclaiming and follow what Paul has reminded us in Ephians: "that Christ lived for the church and gave himself up for her." The church as you and I know it is a church on a journey. Yes, we have difficulties, yes, we have to struggle, yes, we have weakness and sinfulness. At the same time because of this night there is available all the mercy and love that Jesus has already begun to give us not only in his birth and incarnation but in the sacraments and in the church and in our life of faith in life.

So Jesus continues to say to each of us, "fear not! I have overcome the world."