Christmas December 25, 2019
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
Are you satisfied? With your Christmas shopping? The gifts you’ve received? The vacation and time with family and friends? For months people have been celebrating and building up to this day, preparing and scrambling to make the best of the most wonderful time of year. Now that it’s here, are you satisfied? And since we’re at the of the year, it’s fair to ask about the past year? What about the rest of your life? Are you satisfied?
I ask because the whole point of Christmas is, in some sense, about the answer to that question. Quite frankly, I hope the answer is “no, I am not satisfied, not completely.” That’s because, well, you’re not supposed to be satisfied in this life. If our shopping and gifts and celebrating and personal relationships were enough to really satisfy us, there would be no point this day ever occurring. Why did the eternal, transcendent, all-powerful God choose to be born as a helpless infant in a stable? To give us warm, fuzzy feelings once a year and an excuse to buy stuff? Of course not.
God was born as a human being because he was not satisfied. I mean, God of course doesn’t actually need anything, but his love for us means that he chooses to care even when he doesn’t need us to be happy. So, he was not satisfied with the way things were going. Not satisfied when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden. Not satisfied when human beings continued to sin, to lie, steal, and destroy each other and the world around them. Not satisfied when he formed covenants with the patriarchs, giving them commandments and promises, only to have them break those covenants over and over. God was not satisfied, but he had a plan to change that. And we celebrate that plan’s success now.
A tiny baby, a sweet child heralded by angels and adored by shepherds. He is born because he was not satisfied to stay away and because he knows that you are not satisfied either, not really. But his solution doesn’t come in a box. It’s not something he can just hand you and you keep. True satisfaction for human beings like you and I is not found things or moments. It is found in a story, the overarching sweep of time and events that leads up to something.
Knowing the end of a book or movie might ruin it, yet we still want to see how we get to that ending. And how often do people re-read, re-watch, and re-listen to books, movies, and songs even though we know how it goes? Something about a story, long or short, is compelling to us. It’s one reason we love Christmas so much, the story of unexpected angels, distant travel, miraculous birth, and mysterious visitors. The human mind loves stories so much that it tells stories to itself when it sleeps.
So God entered into this world to make the story of the world into the most satisfying story ever. But God is not an abstract author, he is a communion of persons. His interest is not cosmic events or historical generalities. His interest is in each and every story for each and every person… to weave those together into the one truly worthy story we call Salvation History. And the best part about this story? It’s true. It really happened: from original sin to final judgment, the story of the world is true and we are each a part of it.
In fact, God so loves writing this story that he wants us to share in the joy of its creation. Rather than forcing us like puppets into his plot, he gives each of us a pen of our own, a chance to freely write whatever story we want with the life entrusted to us. So, are you satisfied with the story of your life? Why?
I hope you’re not satisfied, not yet, but I also hope you haven’t despaired that you truly can be. There are many great stories to tell you, even besides the greatest story we celebrate tonight. This manger, this adorable image replicated a billion times all over the world in churches, homes, stores, front lawns, and car bumpers. The image that captures the story of joy and hope… it has its own story. Did you know that?
Christians didn’t always set up creches with animals and wise men like this. It took over a thousand years before someone had the bright idea to represent this marvelous story not just in words, but in a way we could see and adore. That someone was St. Francis of Assisi, a man whose story is almost as well known as the story of Jesus himself.
And the story of St. Francis starts with his answer to the question I first offered. Despite the money, the parties, the friends… young Francisco was not satisfied with the story of his life. Seeing the poverty of others and the broken mess in the Church, he struck out a radical way. Rather than letting the world’s power and money control his story, he gave it a masterful plot by putting it in the hands of the only author worthy to write it: God himself. The righteous rebel, the practical preacher, the holy homeless man, St. Francis wrote a story with his life that he could be satisfied with. A story that includes creating the first nativity scene and one that was so in touch with Jesus Christ that he literally bore the same physical wounds of Jesus; the wounds that gave him freedom to write his story in the first place. So we call him a saint.
And I want to call you, every single one of you, the same thing one day. The stories of the saints are reminders, shining examples of the many ways our own story can be more satisfying than it is now. The book you will receive as you leave Mass tonight/today is not a collection of pious biographies, but a reflection on some great stories of our Church and the questions they answer.
Much of what I’ve said about St. Francis is there. Listen to this piece from that chapter: “God is allowing that dissatisfaction for a reason. Listen to it… it may be inviting us to go deeper… the other option is to ignore our dissatisfaction, pretend that all is well when it isn’t… Francis was dissatisfied. God used his dissatisfaction to invite him to go wild in a wonderful way by rebelling against the norms and expectations society had placed on him and his life. He surprised people by abandoning himself to God and he wrote an incredible story with his life.”
Are you satisfied with the story of your life? I can’t promise that coming to Church or reading this book will satisfy every need and answer every question. I can promise that these things will lead you toward those answers, that you will have the opportunity to write something beautiful with your life, even if most won’t know the story until its done. Whether this Christmas is a chapter of joy or sorrow, of abundant faith or wrestling doubts, make it a chapter that moves the story closer to the satisfying conclusion, a page written by the only author capable of making a story truly satisfying.
There are as many stories about salvation as there are human beings, but they will only be written that way if each person chooses to make it so. Gaze with joy upon the manger. Listen prayerfully to the Word made Flesh. Receive in faith that same flesh in the Eucharist if you can or make a spiritual communion if you cannot, for it is the only food that satisfies. To give it to us, Christ was born for us all those years ago. Tonight/today, let him be born again in you that your story and his might be united; A story that causes you, me, and all God’s people to joyfully proclaim with the angels forever: Glory to God in the Highest and on earth peace to people of good will.