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A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John

In the beginning was the Word,and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God.3 All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.What came to be 4through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race;the light shines in the darkness,and the darkness has not overcome it.6 A man named John was sent from God. 7 He came for testimony,to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.f 8He was not the light, but came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.10He was in the world,and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him. 12 But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, 13 who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God.

14And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us,and we saw his glory,the glory as of the Father’s only Son,full of grace and truth. 15 John testified to him and cried out, saying, “This was he of whom I said,l ‘The one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.’” 16From his fullness we have all received, grace in place of grace,* 17because while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.m 18No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God,who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Jesus wants to provide something new for us, an unprecedented experience of Christmas through the present of His presence. That is what Christmas is all about.

And in Christ, we can be open to experience the beauty of life.  We are meant to discover each of our lives as gift. In  fact, the most important gift that you can give, more than anything you can buy –is yourself.

When we give the gift of our life, we begin to experience a new birth of love, which is what God desires for us to dawn within ourselves, the rebirth of knowing your worth to the beauty of God’s love for you. This is the glory of Christmas.

To discover all of life, beginning with your own life story is a gift. The good times and the bad – all have purpose and value. The Author of life knows the story of your soul better than you do, and He more than anyone else is able to speak to that secret part of our hearts that you may not be able to communicate, even to the people you love most. God alone can reach into the area, of who we really are and He wants to reveal to you how much you are worth to Him.

He was born for you.

God  is the light, the love, and the logic that is at the heart of all life, the artist who designed all that exists; he  is poet who spoke into being all beauty and meaning and He was born for me, for you.

We have to personalize Christmas, not just as something of the past, but as something personal and of the present. Jesus was born for me, as if I were the only person he wanted to be born for because he wants to be born in my life. He wants my heart to come to a new birth.

This rebirth is  a matter of knowing our own worth, but our true value and self-worth cannot be found from the outside world. What we do for a living, what we own, or what we look like – these are not the basis and foundation of the worth of our lives.  Our importance can be found in more than what we buy from the department store, how much money we make, or the expensiveness of our gifts. Our true value and self worth must not be found in our accomplishment, our social status, or how we dress.

Our worth is found from the inside.

Each of us possesses in the secret recesses of our hearts a greatness beyond which there can be nothing greater; we all have that inside of us. And faith is the vital link that connects us to the supreme good that is inside of us – God.

God does not want to be elusive or distant from our human experience. In Christmas, God wants us to know the wondrous newness of His presence in our midst, mysteriously at work in each of us.  God with us – Immanuel. He loves us above and beyond our shortcomings and failures, and beyond our own sins and brokenness.

When God’s Word comes to birth in us, our world is no longer the same. When the Holy Spirit brings us to new birth and awakes us to the fact that Christ was born for me; when that truth comes to birth in our heart; when knowing Jesus comes from the head to the inside of who I am, then we can be awakened to a sense of wonder to what Christmas is about.

We will awaken to the radical awareness of God’s grace and the new horizons of beauty in what our hearts are made for. This Christmas, we are called to be open to God’s gift to us, the present of His Presence, which He wants us to receive and personally experience.

In His Son, God is a free gift of love – second to none. He wants us to receive what Jesus possesses in Himself – love’s pure light, beyond which nothing can be greater. God alone can help us savor this love’s pure light, which already lives in us and He desires to grow in us.

Jesus’s birth as our savior reminds us that He came to free us from slavery, the slavery of our tendency to glorify ourselves more than the Almighty. He came to set me free from anything that tries to suppress my true self. The Creator became incarnate to set me free from living a life other than the one I was created for and set into the world for; to set me free from anything that is unworthy of my dignity as a human being created in His beauty – from negativity and everything unworthy of my destiny to share in God’s eternity.

The harmony, the goodness and glory that is the source, the summit and the center of the universe today is sent into the world to reveal in our lives God’s Word, who seeks to be made flesh again, to come alive in our lives in a way that is fresh and relevant to each of us.

Christmas is about the gift of life continuously being given, and experiencing a new birth of what it means to love. This birth of our self-worth that Christmas represents by the birth of Jesus expresses our common cry to arise from being a mess to becoming a masterpiece; from agony to glory, from depression to passion, from pain to purpose; for it is better the pain than to remain the same.

And the context of this metamorphosis is the raw realities of our human existence, the physical, psychological, social, moral and emotional dimensions of life. Life in all its beauty and brokenness abiding as one. Our hearts, scars, and resilience, fragility, and fervor are our unifying experiences.

The compassion of Christ has the power to transform poison into medicine and wounds into wellsprings of healing; for in love’s army, only the wounded can heal. In the words of Gandhi, our struggles develop our strengths. When we go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is the strength of love, and where there is love, there is life and light.

St. Francis of Assissi said that all the darkness of the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle so I can do more good if I ignite a candle than curse the darkness and scandal. That candle  can give pleasure to a single person by a single act of love, one step, one smile, one day at a time.

We are to shine right here and now, where we are, in the sphere of influence we have been strategically placed, suited and destined to sow and to reap, to plant the seeds of peace, and to enjoy the fruits of freedom.

What is more important is not so much our work, but the love that it is done.  What matters is not what we have, but who we become and who we are for others. Our greatness lies not in remaking the world, as in remaking ourselves. And the fact is we can’t remake ourselves by ourselves. We need someone greater than ourselves. That is why Jesus came to the world as a child – that we may no longer be the same.

May we be remade with Him, in Him, and through Him in what it means to love like Him. As we celebrate Christmas, may we be open to God’s presence working in us, speaking to us, breathing with us, and above all, loving in us.

Merry Christmas. May you be the reason someone experiences love this season. God bless you.