A Reflection for Christmas Day

Friday, December 25, 2020

On behalf of the Catholic Health Association (CHA), we are pleased to share the following reflection for Christmas:

DO YOU SEE WHAT GOD SEES?

Consider for a moment the image in its entirety, see how it is made up of many smaller moments. Imagine what God saw at the moment of the Incarnation.

Each vignette, each moment, is packed with a meaning unique to those involved. The homeless man in the street knows nothing of the child in the manger. The watchman in the tower can only wonder what the Magi are looking for in the stable. The mother in the window and Mary in the stable — each of these vignettes are so alive and very different. Not only this, but you as the viewer have brought your own meaning to each of these images and reflections.

Today’s Christmas joy breaks upon us in a similar way. Each of our families have special traditions unique and passed down in all their oddity and meaning, but the love that surrounds us is the real gift of Christmas. The presence and promise of God to a hurting world are the same and are true for all of us. Regardless of what form those traditions may take this year, God’s love, born in Bethlehem, born again in our hearts today and ultimately at the end of time, is our bedrock and foundation.

This is both the glory and the confusion of God’s incarnation as one of us through the Christ child. In all of his human uniqueness, Jesus is born to and represents each of us. As God has become one of us, so too, each of us are invited to move closer to God in Christ.

The rooms of Catholic health care witness to this incarnational truth every day. In resident rooms, cafeterias, common rooms, patient and waiting rooms, board rooms — across our ministry no two people experience the same thing, each brings their role, their heart and their gifts to the exchange. Multiple stories are born from a shared moment. Nevertheless, in each moment, Christ is born again and again in each of us, in those we serve and in the promises of God passed on through the ages. No matter where we are or how we celebrate, let our joy be complete in the fact that our God became flesh and makes a dwelling among us, today and always.

And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.
JOHN 1:14

Watch a video of this Advent reflection here.

Visit the CHA online Advent calendar at chausa.org/advent

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