Thomas Griffin 12/27/23
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Ever been in a situation where there was absolutely nothing you could do to make your circumstances better? Ever felt helpless and completely unable to bring about change in the life of a loved one or in your own life?
I would imagine that people who have been rescued from a burning building by a firefighter or rescued from a violent storm at sea by a lifeguard have felt that way. In their minds, it was all over. There was no way out and they were stuck. No matter how hard they tried or how hard they pressed forward their circumstances appeared unchangeable. They were helpless. They were lost.
Many Catholics today decry that the culture, and many aspects of our country, are crumbling. Morals and faith appear to be at all-time lows. Even if some people had their elected officials win political races and even if some laws changed there would still be so much broken in our times. There are no easy fixes to the brokenness of the human condition.
The reality of the times of the Jewish people who lived during Jesus’ life were immensely worse than our current age. Forget about all of the modern comforts we have like running water, medicine and sanitation. Forget even that their land was occupied by a foreign and oppressive power (the Romans). The Jewish people of Jesus’ time, and their ancestors, had faced seemingly insurmountable odds for thousands (not hundreds) of years.
We think that Americans have it bad because of a few years of strife – imagine if our families had experienced that and thousands of years of oppression on top of it? Imagine the sense of hopelessness and despair that so many would succumb to? They must have felt helpless. They must have believed they were trapped with no way out. Some might have convinced themselves that life is just something that we have to “get through” or endure.
Except for one important factor – a promise. A promise that arises over 300 times in their sacred book. That God would come and set things right. That an individual person (the Messiah) was going to be sent on a rescue mission for the heart of every single human being who has ever lived. With the birth of Jesus Christ, God enters time to make good on His promise to save us when we could not save ourselves. He came to give hope to the helpless.
For someone who has never experienced something that is out of their control, or anyone else’s, to fix this might not make sense. However, for the majority of us we know what it is like to have zero power over a loved one’s illness or paying your bills or troubling family dynamics. When we cannot save ourselves we must turn to Someone bigger than ourselves.
So, we need to be rescued. But what is even more important is how God chooses to rescue us. As one of my favorite songs of the season called Winter Snow by Chris Tomlin notes:
You could’ve come like a mighty storm
With all the strength of a hurricane
You could’ve come like a forest fire
With the power of heaven in Your flame
But You came like a winter snow
Quiet and soft and slow
Falling from the sky in the night
To the Earth below
Oh, You could’ve swept in like a tidal wave
Or a big ocean to ravish our hearts
You could have come through like a roaring flood
To wipe away the things that we’ve scarred
But He came like a winter snow
So quiet, so soft, so slow
Falling from the sky in the night
To the Earth below.
God becomes so close to us that we can miss Him. He becomes an infant who is completely dependent on his parents for life. In becoming so small, God gives us access to Him in an intimately powerful way. He could have come with an army of force and He could have easily crushed all opposition, but He comes as a baby.
Even in 2023, God still comes to be with us but He continues to do so in a very small and simple way. Every Sunday, Catholics all over the world gather in churches where they believe that a tiny piece of bread is Jesus Christ – His true and living Presence. Just like that first Christmas Jesus makes no worldwide public service announcement. However, we believe that the key to this life exists in that small and unimposing little Host. We believe that if you hand Him what is most troubling you that He will provide you with the answer. The answer is His unfailing and loving Presence.
This Christmas season, become fascinated by the majesty of our God who comes to pull us out of the fires and storms of our lives, especially the ones that we cannot save ourselves from. But pay close attention to the small and seemingly insignificant ways that He chooses to do so. And, if you want to see the manger of Bethlehem continued – never miss Sunday Mass.
Thomas Griffin is the chairperson of the religion department at a Catholic high school on Long Island where he lives with his wife and two sons. He has a masters degree in theology and is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Empty Tomb Project: The Magazine.
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