By Father Daniel Ciucci
Pastor of Most Precious Blood Parish, Denver
As a child, I remember attending the 4 p.m. Christmas Eve Mass with my parents. We’d have to get there by 2:30 p.m. to find a seat, joining hundreds of others crammed into the pews. The air was thick with anticipation and the scent of incense, and the choir’s practicing voices would echo softly as people settled in. The priest would deliver a homily that wound its way through various themes of the Nativity, and I remember one Christmas, a priest landed on a play of words: the presence of Jesus is the greatest present. I added this clever phrase to my Christian intellectual repertoire collection, but it never truly penetrated my heart. My juvenile self thought, “Yeah, Father, Jesus is awesome, but I can’t wait to go home and open presents tomorrow.”
Looking back, that notion of Jesus as a prerequisite to my forthcoming gifts of glee was more insightful than I realized. It becomes a point of meditation now that I’m older, walking this journey of faith with greater seriousness and commitment. The rituals that once felt like mere obligations have transformed into profound experiences that shape my understanding of God’s love and his many gifts.
Even the child of a barely-Mass-going family knows that Christmas Mass is a necessary — albeit sometimes burdensome — part of the annual regimen culminating in presents. These early truths provide access to deeper understandings that come with maturity: Christ’s coming as a baby to dwell among us opens the way to an eternal Christmas joy. Christ’s suffering, death and Resurrection are the means by which God wrought the salvation of all humanity. But you can’t crucify a spirit or even the Second Person of the Trinity until he takes on the reality of human flesh. That’s right – the cute little Christ Child in a manger is on a covert-ops rescue mission, taking on human life to give it up and win salvation for us all.
As a priest now, it probably occurs once or twice a month that after I insert a basic part of the Gospel into a homily – like “Jesus’ love is real” or “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” – someone comes up to me after Mass and says, “Father, I have never heard that before.” I’m often dumbfounded because I know my brother priests and I preach in a Christ-centered, salvation-forward way – it’s the Gospel, after all. Nevertheless, it’s astonishing and beautiful when people hear it with fresh ears. God’s love is real, and it’s present. The Holy Spirit is always at work, reviving the truths we’ve received and tucked away in the back burners of our brains, connecting them to our hearts.
You’ve likely heard throughout your whole life that Christ died for you. Now hear this: Christ was born for you.
The first sentence of the Catechism of the Catholic Church – the owner’s manual of the Catholic faith – states: “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness, freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life.” Understanding that God was “blessed in himself ” means he created us out of love, not out of constraint or necessity. Our very existence is motivated by pure love.
It continues, “For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man” (CCC 1). At Christmas, we speak of Jesus as Emmanuel – God-with-us. Part of this rescue mission entails a specific closeness to us, even in our weakened and fallen state. There’s great cause for rejoicing here!
This paragraph goes on: “He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior” (CCC 1). Again, during this time, we behold Jesus – infant Jesus – as the Son of Mary. Can we also consider him as Savior as he lays in the straw of our manger scenes at home or in the church? Is not an infant such a strange mode of salvation? Is not a child a peculiar Redeemer?
The paragraph concludes: “In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life” (CCC 1). Part of this salvation entails that we become just like children – dependent on a dependable Father. What does this mean? You have such great dignity that God chose to take on the same substance of which you are made, frail as it is. And his means of salvation starts with closeness to us and bringing us close to his Father. Pope Francis’ newest encyclical, Dilexit Nos, reminds us, “When the Son became man, all the hopes and aspirations of his human heart were directed towards the Father. If we consider the way Christ spoke of the Father, we can grasp the love and affection his human heart felt for him, this complete and constant orientation towards him. Jesus’ life among us was a journey of response to the constant call of his human heart to come to the Father” (72). That closeness to the Father is salvation.
This understanding of baby Jesus coming in the flesh is a rescue mission to – as the song goes – “save us all from Satan’s power when we had gone astray.” What comfort. What joy. What hope! His coming affords us the gift of salvation and the opportunity to be united with a God who is always doing something new. As Pope Benedict XVI reminds us in Spe Salvi: “The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life” (2). It’s a profound mystery that the Creator of the universe would humble himself to become a helpless infant, relying on human parents for care and nourishment. This humility and closeness seen in the cradle set the stage for his earthly ministry, culminating in the ultimate sacrifice on the Cross.
We must also acknowledge that the theological importance of Christmas gets diluted by the commercialization of the season. Our thinking about things goes up, with parties and sweets and presents. Is it possible, then, to leverage the comforts of the season to meditate on the goodness of God? It was God who made everything we love or made the people who made the things we love. So whether you delight in peppermint mochas, the newest PlayStation 5 game, the surprise of an aurora borealis, or the crackle of a fireplace – each is a gift from God. Every bit of creation bears the fingerprints, the vestiges, of the goodness of the Creator. Every gift has a giver. Consider the warmth you feel when unwrapping a gift from someone who cares about you. That joy is a mere shadow of God’s immense love for us. Every present is a premonition of the eternal present that Jesus offers us through salvation. To be invited into a blessed life with him is to be invited into an eternal Christmas morning filled with gifts and love beyond our wildest imaginings.
In the end, all the decorations, the lights and gifts point toward something greater. They are symbols that lead us back to the manger, back to that silent night when hope was born into the world. This Christmas, let’s allow ourselves to be like children again – full of wonder, open-hearted, and ready to receive the love that God so freely offers. When we attend Christmas Mass this year, let’s remember: Mass is a prerequisite for Christmas presents, just as Jesus is a prerequisite for salvation. The Mass isn’t just a ritual or an obligation; it’s a celebration of the greatest gift we’ve ever received. It’s an opportunity to step away from the hustle and bustle to refocus our hearts on what truly matters: the closeness and love of God. After all, the presence of Jesus is indeed the greatest present we could ever receive.
