Did you notice how, when surprised or caught unawares, some people will explain:
“My God!”
The words come not as a prayer but as a spontaneous exclamation.
And yet, it could be a prayer… and it could be more than a prayer –
it could be the sign that the words of Isaiah in the 1st reading of the Christmas night mass (Isaiah 9:1-6)
have been really understood.
Because this is the true meaning of CHRISTMAS:
“To us a child is born,
to us a son is given.”
If only, this time – this Christmas – we could discover, understand, and appropriate this reality.
Appropriate, yes, make it our own – God is OUR God, God is God-with-us – this is his name.
How is it that we have come to imagine a distant God, remote from our human experience?
How did we miss what he has been trying to make us understand for so long?
Why do we find it so hard to accept that his idea of what God should be is the right one?!
Why do we constantly go back to the gods of the past, the gods known before Jesus was born a small child –
Born from a human mother, a woman of our race – that he could in truth claim us as his own.
He has claimed us as his own so that we may claim him as ours – indeed OUR God.
A child born to us, a son given to us.
This is Christmas – “MY God!” how amazingly wonderful!
Note: Another reflection on a different theme is available in French at: https://image-i-nations.com/fete-de-noel-annee-b-2020/