It is a cause for great delight when we hear the sound of young voices singing "Happy Birthday, Jesus!" It is likely that with the very popular movie, "The Nativity Story," the birth of Jesus in a faraway land under very difficult circumstances, amidst hostility and unwelcome, will increase our sense that "Jesus is the reason for the Season." Glimmers of putting Christ back into Christmas are more abundant this year, and for this we should give thanks.

At the risk of sounding just a tad Scrooge-like, it is important to remember that what we celebrate at Christmas cannot be reduced to a Happy Birthday song for Jesus. We celebrate the Nativity of the Lord. Christmas is the Solemnity of the sending of God's Only Son who comes to us in the fragile and trembling flesh of this mysterious infant. By pondering the vulnerable baby in the manger at Bethlehem, our eyes are opened to the gift of God's life and love that has come and is coming to us in the darkness of our own night, in the fragility of our own flesh, in the trembling need of our brothers and sisters, even those who do not know the name or the grace given in that manger in Bethlehem.

What we celebrate is the grand and glorious mystery of the Incarnation, the coming of the Word in flesh. And the Word is Love. Love is the life that pours itself forth: toward us, for us, with us and, yes, within us. In the mystery of the Incarnation, God soaks and saturates not just our hearts and our lives, but the whole earth --- all human and nonhuman life --- with Love.

In the mystery of the Incarnation, the God who is Love, Life and Light takes flesh of the young woman, Mary of Nazareth, and becomes an infant, child, youth, young adult, minister and teacher of mercy crucified on Golgotha for the redemption of the whole world and everyone and everything in it. The whole world, not just you and me! In the Incarnation, everything and everyone, every inch and ounce of our lives and the whole of creation, are taken up in the making new of creation through the embrace of that one Love who renews the face of the earth.

All too easily we are inclined to think of the Incarnation as an event that occurred long ago in a faraway place. But in God's ways of coming, there is no past, present or future. God is sheer aliveness. God is constantly coming as gift. God is Love lov/ing, Light light/ing, Life life/ing.

Thomas Aquinas, whose insights have continued to shape our understanding of Christ down through the ages, had it right: In the sacramental life of the Church the Incarnation continues. We proclaim him coming, come, and still to come --- in simple, earthen, fragile and fluid gifts of bread, wine, water and oil. And when we take them to ourselves, through our hands, our pores, our lips, our tongues, we too are embraced by that Incarnate Love and become his Body: Love Incarnate here and now.

Christmas Blessings upon all of you!