Learn from Christmas,  Live by Christmas

- Sunday within the Octave of the Nativity(2024-12-29) 

The Birth of the Savior is certainly a very, very great feast, and it is only surpassed by the feast of Easter. So great is the importance of Christmas that the Holy Catholic Church celebrates it for 8 days, which is called a feast with octave. So much so that even today, until January 1st, I can still wish you a happy and holy Christmas. Only after having celebrated this historical fact we change the calendars as a sign of having already celebrated the 2025th anniversary of the dawn of the true Sun that gives the true light to 

the world.

 

But why is Christmas so special? Why celebrate it for several days? Why the decorations? Why the presents? Why all the joy? Unfortunately, there are Catholics who would not know why. 

It seems to me that we have been left with the gifts and the celebration but we have already forgotten the cause, we have been left with the shell and we don't even know where the nut is. Some will say “Father, how

exaggerated. Here we are at Mass”. Well, let's ask ourselves: what is Christmas? Why do we celebrate it? Why do we do everything we do?

 

Well, what is Christmas? St. John answers in the Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was in God, and the Word was God...and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory which the only begotten was to receive from the Father, full of grace and truth. 

These words are a bit difficult to understand, so let us turn to St. Gregory the Great: Christmas is when God, without ceasing to be what He was, became what He was not.God, the Eternal Son who is eternally born of God the Father, today in time is born as the Son of a Woman. The Supreme Lawgiver today submits to the laws of our created nature—he will grow, learn, rejoice, grow weary; the Supreme Artificer today puts himself under the care of a carpenter; God made man, God made a Child: humble, simple, docile! 

If God becomes man it is for a reason, if God takes our nature it is not without 

reason. God never works without the why or the wherefore. Let us listen to what the preface of the Mass says: “By the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word a new radiance of your glory has been manifested to the eyes of our soul; in order that coming to know God under a visible form, we may be drawn by Him to invisible love.” 

God made man, God made visible, palpable, observable and above all, above all, God made imitable by men. Why? So that we may be attracted to invisible love.

What is this invisible love? It is the love for which God has made us. It is the love of God, or rather, it is God Himself. God has made us for Himself, that is why it is impossible to be happy without Him. 

Some will say, “And why is that love invisible to us?” Because our self-love has placed us on a false and illusory pedestal. Hence the long and painful time of waiting that Advent represents. It was more than 5 thousand years. That is why God, even after His Incarnation, has placed us in a valley of tears—so that we may recognize in our misery our need for Redemption and a Redeemer, that we may come down from that pedestal and not seek a Savior as represented by our tastes and whims, but recognize Him our true Savior, in a cave, in a manger, surrounded by animals, wrapped in swaddling clothes. 

God shows himself to be a man in order to attract us to invisible things, to invisible love. It is an exchange, it is a trade. And since it is love, this means that it must be voluntary not only on the part of God (God has already wanted to give from all eternity) but above all voluntary on our part. What does the Church sing in her liturgy: “O admirable exchange, the Creator of the human race, taking for Himself a body, has deigned to be born of a Virgin; and presenting Himself as man, He has given us abundantly His very deity”. 

That is the reason for Christmas and all its joys. When someone in the family has a birthday, we rejoice. Today we rejoice because God was born as Man to make us more than family—to make us God's children and Jesus’ own brothers and sisters in spite of our unworthiness. God became Man to make us sharers in his divinity. 

That is why the joy of Christmas is essentially spiritual and interior. It is such a great inner joy that it overflows outwardly and is then exteriorized into celebrations. It is the joy of being able one day, thanks to the Incarnation of God, to be able to participate in the same infinite and eternal joy of God with the Saints and Angels in heaven, which is why we gather with the people we love the most. 

And why are gifts given? Because we have seen God's great gift to us while we were totally unworthy. We have seen God's great gift out of pure goodness. What is that gift? Himself. God is such a perfect giver that He can give nothing else but Himself. In God the Gift and the Giver are one and the same. God gives Himself as a Child and He gives Himself to us as a piece of bread. Why? So that we may enjoy His grace in this valley of tears, making us worthy to be called His children, and so that we may enjoy Himself in the 

next life. 

That is why we give gifts. To spread the joy that we have received from God and that we are to receive from God. It is to imitate God. 

We celebrate, we gather, we give to share the inner joy that comes from God. When a walnut tree produces nuts, it also produces shells because of the nuts. When men organize parties not because they have the holy and inner joy but to seek the joy that is confused with mere pleasure, and that even by committing sin (something that is so common today) is because men have a big problem, a serious disease of which they are not aware. When a walnut tree produces shells but without the nut inside, it is because there is something terribly wrong. 

So what to do with this great gift? What should we do? It is not enough to believe the truth of Christmas. It is not enough to seek and have the joys of Christmas. We must live Christmas. 

If God became Man in order to make us children of God, we must make ourselves worthy of that title. It cannot be that we are children of God only by the baptismal certificate. For if we are children of God only on paper and in our daily life we do not distinguish ourselves from the rest of the world then we will be like one more of this modern world where men seek joys but not those that satisfy, they seek the shells but without ever finding the nuts. The worst thing is that men are happy and content as if finding the shells without the nuts is the most correct and the most normal thing in the world. 

What are the joys that truly satisfy the soul? They are those that purify the 

conscience and make us ever better followers, better disciples and better imitators of the Incarnate God we are celebrating today. And, precisely, He became man so that we can see what God is like and, at the same time, how to live this life. This will be possible if his invisible love has already become visible and palpable for us. 

How to do it? To begin with, to become as little children. Because Our Lord came to this world not only to bring us the remedy of Redemption but also to show us how to make the remedy useful to us. 

To become as children, children like the Child God, children with the humility,  simplicity and docility of the Child God, to learn from Him, to think, act and love in the same way as Him. 

And above all, to become children in Mary's arms, children similar to their Mother, children with a true and deep Marian devotion, devotion through knowledge, devotion through veneration, devotion through invocation, devotion through imitation. 

“Father, Christmas is only once a year. I would need a living manger to learn about Jesus from. Isn't there a living manger I can turn to from time to time everyday during the year?” Of course there is. “Where, Father?” Here at the Altar. “The Altar? What's that got to do with it?” 

The Altar represents not only the Cross of Calvary but also the manger of 

Bethlehem. Who does the Altar represent? It is Christ. And the Altar represents not only Good Friday but also the Annunciation and Christmas. How? 

The words of consecration take the place of the words of consent of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the hands of the priest take the place of the most pure womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the bread takes the place of the flesh of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Mass repeats before our eyes not only the Redemption but also the Incarnation. 

“But Father in the Mass there is no stable/ manger.” There is. God who takes the flesh of the Blessed Virgin Mary, on the Altar is the same God who takes the appearance of bread. If in Bethlehem Our Lady places God-made-Man in a wooden manger with straw, in the Mass the priest places it in the very poor manger our tongue and our heart to enter into our unworthy soul. 

Dear friends, let us learn from Christmas, let us live by Christmas. I wish you still today a very holy and, therefore, merry Christmas.

Fr. Ferrer