See who’s missing

God keeps on saving people in history. Christmas is the beginning of this salvation history. And so, in turning once again to the episode of Christ’s birth at Bethlehem, we come not to recall Christ’s birth twenty centuries ago, but to live that birth here, in the twenty-first century, this year, in our own Christmas here in India.
The Council says humanity’s mystery can be explained only in the mystery of the God who became human. If people want to look into their own mystery – the meaning of their pain, of their work, of their anxieties, of their suffering, of their hope – let them put themselves next to Christ. If they accomplish what Christ accomplished – doing the Father’s will, filling themselves with the life that Christ gives the world – they are fulfilling themselves as true human beings. If I find, on comparing myself with Christ, that my life is a contrast, the opposite of his, then my life is a disaster.
If what the Council expects of us is true, then, no one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God – for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, the marginalized, the oppressed, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.
If God has come for the poor and marginalised then all the stuff that our culture identifies with Christmas-the trees, the lights, the shopping, the dinners and Santa himself-may be just a diversion for us. The Christmas trappings are not bad in themselves. But they may distract us from the uncomfortable truth that Christmas isn’t a celebration that the rich and comfortable can fully celebrate.
Christmas for the poor and the humiliated of our world is the beginning of a revolution that lifts them up. Mary our mother had already said why God sent the child she bore: “He has brought down the rulers from their thrones, and has exalted those who were humble. He has filled the hungry with good things; but sent away the rich empty handed.” (Luke 1:52-3)
If what Mary said is true, then the hungry kids in Africa have more to celebrate than we do. The children in our slums and rural India have more to celebrate than we do. The poor can rejoice because God so identifies with them, that in Christ God entered the world as one of them. That is the real Christmas. We who are rich and powerful in the world can acknowledge Christmas intellectually, but it isn’t good news for us in the same way.
Our celebration of Christmas can grow richer and more genuine as we identify and accept in ourselves our points of poverty and humiliation. The place of our greatest weakness is the humble stable where Christ can appear in our lives. Christmas shows us that our pain and humiliation are not things to reject but are windows through which God’s love and grace can enter.
God has in his goodness, incarnated himself even to the concrete events of the injustices, tortures, humiliations, rejections of our own sad history. That is where we are to find our God.
Advent time is given to us to remind ourselves that we need to prepare for Christmas. Ample time is given to us by the Church before we could worthily celebrate the birth of the great God amidst the simplest and the poor.
But what are we going to prepare? How are we going to prepare ourselves for Christmas? I am sure there will plans and preparations for clothing, cakes, sweets, decorations and dinner with close friends. In a parish level there might be a greater preparation. There might be an elevating singing with a well trained choir, an elaborate liturgy, and there might even be a mighty crib for baby Jesus.
While all these are needed for an external celebration, do we feel the need for preparing ourselves during this advent by making ourselves simple? Do we include the poor, the simple and the marginalised for whom God planned the incarnation?
But see who is missing! In all our preparations, and later in our celebrations, the poor will be missing. We shouldn’t be surprised if Jesus himself, the protagonist of this great celebration, is missing. It might even turn out to be our celebration setting Jesus aside, to make our celebrations more comfortable and enjoyable. We can never meaningfully celebrate Christmas without including Jesus who is in the poor.Let us carefully see who is missing in