Dear Friends,

Our malls are crowded. Carnival Corp., the world’s largest cruise operator, announced that fourth-quarter profit jumped 24 percent, because of demand for European trips, according to the Chicago Tribune, December 22nd.

CEO’s across the nation are pocketing bonuses beyond their dreams of Christmas fairies and sugar plums. They’ve been swooping up luxury cars, frequenting high-priced hotels, trading old estates for newer and better.

At the same time, our working poor subsist at the poverty level, and their idea of luxury is to be able to pay the telephone bill and keep the electricity flowing throughout the house.

Then, in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, December 21, we saw where sectarian violence and economic hardship are accelerating the exodus of Bethlehem’s Christians.

George Baboul, the proprietor of a dusty souvenir shop, whose children have all left the city except the youngest, according to foreign correspondent, Joel Greenberg, said, “There’s no work, no jobs for the kids to build their future. There’s no peace in the Middle East, especially here.”

No peace in the Little Town of Bethlehem -- our town -- for Bethlehem belongs to all of us; love and tradition have made it so. Bethlehem in the Middle East. Bethlehem in our hearts. Broken hearts, which is all war is good for, breaking hearts, destroying lives, and whatever made those lives worth living.

For what do we long this Christmas? Things? Every newspaper, every newscast, tells us we cannot buy our way into peace. No department store is selling it, not for any price.

But Christ has come to rescue us from the morass of confusion and despair, offering us now, as in every Christmas past, his friendship, the way to learning to pray for the wisdom to live in peace in our families, churches, neighborhoods, and in foreign lands, to turn our swords into plowshares.

It is my prayer that the following article, which first appeared in 2003, will offer the comfort of the First Christmas message, and remind us that our friendship with Christ is his best present to us, one with an everlasting guarantee.

Peace and Christmas joy to you and yours. Amen.

Friendship comes with Christmas

We’ve been on this journey to Bethlehem over a lifetime of Christmases, not one the same as the year before or after. The story never changes, but its impact on our minds and hearts is, in the words of Augustine, “ever ancient, ever new.”

Each Christian’s history is inexorably intertwined with the life of him whose birth we celebrate this night, for to each has been given a kind of Annunciation message, an invitation to friendship.

Friendship with the Son of God isn’t something to be taken lightly, like a fifteen-minute interlude over a cup of coffee at the neighborhood café. It’s a lifetime proposition, or it’s not friendship at all. Acquaintanceship, perhaps, like knowing someone’s address and telephone number, but nothing more.

Risky business, friendship. Makes us vulnerable, made Christ vulnerable. G. K. Chesterton once said, “Alone, of all the creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator.”

Courage for the Father to send the Son into this world, whose people had the free will to accept or reject him, a gift not to be taken back, even to protect the Son from those who would do him harm.

It was a messy world, that first Christmas, demanding heroic faith and courage on the part of the Royal Couple, homeless refugees, awaiting the birth of the Prince of Peace.

Mary had visited Elizabeth, and we can be sure she was with her for the birth of John the Baptist, the miracle baby that called for celebrations far and wide.

But for Mary, there was no Elizabeth, no mid-wife, no grand family celebration, only faithful Joseph, and the compassion of a stranger to offer some semblance of privacy. Isolated from family and friends, Mary gave birth to him who would be the Friend of every seeker’s heart, beginning with the shepherds, those of low esteem.

Out of her complete poverty, and possibly her fear of giving birth away from home, she offered to every lost, frightened man, woman and child, not only the Son of God, but his way of life into life, a life beyond loneliness, beyond fear, beyond near-despair, a life of light and love, of friendship with no threat of betrayal.

No one would ever be able, from that day to the end of time, to reject Christ’s friendship on the grounds of unworthiness. It was for the unworthy he came. Besides, it is the Lord who extends the invitation, so there is no point in standing around asking, “Who, me?” Of course, of course, you, and you, and you, all of us, who stop long enough to hear the words, and take them in, and act upon them.

God plays by different rules from those who sit behind grand desks and shuffle papers of people’s lives into “in” and “out” baskets, mistaking Catholicism for a grand country club with membership dues and credit checks.

Christ has paid our dues, and he’s not overly fussy about the credit checks. That’s the thing about friendship. It’s free. Even friendship with the Son of God, begun in a stable, with a Mother who had nothing, yet the whole world would be at her feet because of the Son she bore. And Joseph -- almost invisible in Scripture-- steady, protective, gentle, loving Joseph. A Holy Family. Our family. Yours and mine.

Thus, we have arrived together this Holy Night, singing the familiar carols that are really prayers of petition, thanksgiving and joy without limits.

A circle of friends are we tonight, not bound by neighborhood or city or country, but, yet, with the capacity to be separated from one another by fear, greed, and pride, by bombs and bullets, hunger and thirst.

Lord, beneath the carols and Angel voices, we are sore afraid,
afraid of ourselves, afraid for ourselves, lest in these perilous
times, we forget the power of friendship with You, the poverty
that holds untold wealth, the humility that lays aside the sword.
Please, give us your grace in supreme abundance, that we may
ever walk in peace with one another, in the light of this Holy Night.

Amen.

first published here on December 19, 2003 

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