Love thy neighbor
Some of my favorite Gospel stories are those read this time of year, especially the Christmas story with its beautiful imagery of angels and shepherds, stars and kings, oxen, mangers, and humble beginnings. It inspires wonder and warm feelings with its depiction of a young family delivering its first-born in the still of a cold winter’s night in a stable with only animals to witness and give them company and warmth.
While this story – which has inspired artists, poets and musicians for twenty centuries – is an intimate portrait of one small family on society’s margins, it simultaneously concerns events of cosmic significance, as is beautifully explained in the Prologue of Saint John’s Gospel, which we read today.
This prologue reveals that Jesus – the child born in the Bethlehem manger because there was no room in the inn – is also the divine, eternal “Word” who was with God – and indeed WAS God – at the beginning of time: the Creator of all things who entered history in the flesh that first Christmas morning in the humblest of ways to dwell among us and restore humankind to God’s plan through his Incarnation.
In this telling of Christ’s origin, Saint John helps us put Christmas in its proper perspective: that on that first Christmas morning, Jesus – the Word that called all creation into being – came down from Heaven out of love to dwell among His creation, sharing His divinity, restoring grace and truth and dignity to all, showing us how to live, and giving his followers a mandate that the Church – through its individual members as well as its institutions like Catholic Charities – continues today in sometimes small, but often profoundly significant ways.
During this Octave of Christmas – as we approach the start of a brand New Year – may the simple story of the infant of Bethlehem whose birth changed the world, inspire us to continue to live and act as Jesus calls us to, caring for one another – particularly the poor, vulnerable, and those on the margins – recalling that such sometimes small and ordinary acts continue to have cosmic significance.
Tom Dobbins Jr. is the Deputy Director of Public & Community Engagement, and Director of Social and Parish Engagement for Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, a Producer for the “JustLove” radio broadcast on Sirius/XM’s Catholic Channel 129, and a Board Co-Chair of the National Association of Catholic Social Action and Mission (formerly known as the Roundtable Association of Catholic Diocesan Social Action Directors).