It is Christmas!

“You are my Son, this day have I begotten you” PS 2:7

It is Christmas!

I am in awe at the event we celebrate today: Christmas is here! God immerses God’s own self fully in humanity. It baffles the imagination, confounds the intellect and overflows the heart. How can this be so? And yet I know with every fiber of my being that it is true. God has become human engendering within each of us the possibility of becoming divine.

I recall the first Christmas so long ago. Two parents bow before their newborn son. Shepherds and angels proclaim the glory of God because of what they have experienced. It is the same today. Parents and grandparents continue to bow in adoration before their newborn child. There is a look in the eye, a smile on their faces as they speak of that child. Just take an infant out into the world and watch our modern-day shepherds and angels gravitate toward them singing songs of praise. There is something so totally divine in the birth of new life. People are captivated by it and all the world stands still for a moment in response to it.

People continue to journey to Eremos seeking to respond to the divinity within them and their life stories. They come impelled by the Spirit—knowing only that something different is going on within them and in the world around them. Scripture says that ‘Mary pondered these things in her heart’ and we do the same thing today. We can’t comprehend God’s action within our lives, but we ponder the movement of the Spirit to live life in a new way.

It is Christmas! It is an invitation to stop and reconnect with the amazing grace of this moment. Truly, God has immersed God’s self in our personal history. All that we have experienced this past year is caught up in one moment of glory: today we too are begotten in God. Called to be son and daughter, we are imbued with the grace and strength of that dignity. It is the birth of Jesus! It is the acknowledgement of the Christ within us birthing through us into the world around us.

It is Christmas! I celebrate the gift you are to Eremos and to our world. May you also celebrate that in yourself and those you encounter this today.