Our Precious Moments Christmas

-Fr. Stephen DeYoung writes:

We have inherited a very sentimentalized, Precious Moments view of Christ in general, and Christmas in particular. We're sort of like Ricky Bobby and we really like the baby Jesus because he's meek, and mild, and cute, and wouldn't hurt a fly. And we have our manger scene and we listen to Linus recite Luke 2. And it's all very sentimental, and nice, and pleasant. Right? But what we miss is what this Feast is actually about: the Incarnation. And to have the Incarnation we have to understand, quite simply, that Jesus is God. 

We all say that that's true, but it doesn't tend to be how we think about Him; it doesn't tend to be the image of Him that we have in our heads- very human and almost cuddly.

It's not that Christ isn't human, He is. But He's Not —A— human, he's not just a human person like us who happens to be nicer, and gentler, and kinder, and more loving than us- He is all of those things, but that isn't all He is. He isn't Mr. Rogers, which is who I just described.

Christ is the God who created the universe. Christ was there in the time before time with His Father. Through Him and for Him, His Father created everything that exists, including us. When He comes in the Incarnation, when He's born in a cave, He's coming, He's invading the creation that's fallen plague to the demonic forces to start the battles that are going to lead to this great victory and His enthronement with all authority on Earth from whence He will come to Judge the living and the dead.

That's who Jesus is.

That's who shows up as a tiny infant in a cave. And until we reckon with that, and learn to stand in awe before that and not try to reduce it to one thing or the other: something we can hang our hat on, something we can control in our mind, something we can manipulate, something we can be comfortable with, until we just stand in awe and worship before it, then we haven't understood the Incarnation and we don't understand what Christmas is actually about.