War. Homelessness. Domestic violence. Genocide. Abortion. Abandonment.

These are among the many sources of darkness in our daily lives. How easy it would be for us to believe that we are doomed to walk in such darkness until the end of time. Yet it is not so! “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Jesus is that light! As we celebrate the day on which God entered our human lives intimately and forever, we are reminded that we can walk through any darkness without fear, because God-is-with-us, Emmanuel. Our joy may be resounding or it may be no more than a tiny whispering, but it is real in any case. We are renewed and redeemed by this Savior Jesus who has made his dwelling place with us.

Our joy in Jesus is not simply that he was born in such a humble manner, nor in the fact that the very heavens were stirred up in a frenzy of joy to announce his birth. Our joy is in the fact that the manger became the cross; that the baby born from the womb of the spotless Virgin to live in time was born again forever from the virginal tomb to live eternally; that the baby placed in the animal’s feeding bin became our Bread of Life.

As we celebrate this festival of God’s love, we are given the strength to go face-to-face with war and become instruments of peace. We are given the compassion to notice the homeless and to find them a place in the inn. We are given the gift of forgiveness and reconciliation to replace the violence in our hearts. We are given the sense of solidarity that values all races and cultures. We are given the gift of respect for all life, in all its stages. We are given a love that includes each person as a member of God’s intimate family.

May Jesus, who is the Light of the World, bring light and joy in abundance to you and to all your loved ones in this holy season of Light!