My dear friends 
It is Christmas! We celebrate this unique event with joy in our hearts and thank Father for his Incarnate Son, Emmanuel, God-with-us. The manner in which He became human and entered into our history is something amazing. He did not come with power, prestige or loud acclamations; He came silently as a ray of light, as the fragrance of a flower, as the life-giving dew on a winter morning. He came even more surprisingly as a poor child, bereft of the minimum comforts of an ordinary family. The infinite became finite; the omnipotent became weak. In other words, “God walked down the stairs of heaven with a Baby in His arms – Paul Scherer. Yes, in this age of scientific progress, the message of Christmas is a challenge to our self-sufficiency and self-reliance. It calls for introspection of our lives and for a change of heart and mind.
Christmas is an event of solidarity. An 11 year old boy with Cancer lost all the hair on his head as a result of Chemotherapy treatment. When the time came for his to return to school, he and his parents experimented with hats and wigs to try to conceal his baldness. They finally settled on a baseball cap. But the boy still feared the taunts he would receive for looking different. Mustering his courage, he went to school wearing his cap and discovered to his great surprise that all of his friends had shaved their heads to share their solidarity with their friend. It was their way of expressing their love and sympathy. That is what God did for us at Christmas. He became one among usexcept sin; He became one among us so that He might be with us all the time; He became one of us so that we might be with him forever. This means that the Incarnation is the starting point of our divinization. It calls us to participate in the event without being passive bystanders.
As we celebrate the great Mystery of God’s solidarity with us, God’s oneness among us, God’s self-emptying for us, the words of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross are very apt. She says, “In order to penetrate a whole human life with the Divine life, it is not enough to kneel once a year before the crib and let ourselves be captivated by the charm of the holy night. To achieve this, we must be daily in contact with God just as our earthly body needs bread, so the Divine life must be constantly fed.” St John Paul II of revered memory, in his Angelus message of December 19, 1999, explained that Christmas is not simply the remembrance of the Event that took place 2000 years ago; it is about a living reality that is repeated every year in the heart of believers.
Continuing in the same line of thought Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI said, "The mystery of the Holy Night, which historically happened two thousand years ago, must be lived as a spiritual event in the ‘today’ of the Liturgy… The Word who found a dwelling in Mary’s womb comes to knock on the heart of every person with singular intensity this Christmas." Let this Christmas make alive to us the presence of the Babe of Bethlehem and let Him make our hearts His crib, his manger, his dwelling place, his mansion and his abode. I wish each one of you the Love, Joy and Peace of Christmas!
