Dear friends,

Christmas is a wonderful season! One full of wonders! During these days we reflect upon the very meaning of our own being.

Like Jesus, we are challenged to discover that our life is in fact a profound participation in God’s Life.

As humans we are limited. We need time to deepen and to understand the reason for our existence; why we were created. The word that keeps coming to my mind in this context is AWARENESS.

Awareness is more than thinking and knowing. It is something like “experiencing; enjoying the presence of God”.

At times, even I tend to use the word: sensing the glow of God’s presence in our body.

Isn’t that the very meaning of incarnation?

God is not an abstraction. God is not a theory. God is not a doctrine.

God is love!

And the love of God is becoming flesh and blood in us; in all our relationships.

We are called to be the visibility of the invisible God.

In the Gospel of Saint John 1:14 we read:

The Word was made flesh and lived among us and we saw his glory,
the glory that is his as the only son of the Father, full of grace and truth.

I am afraid that we have read these words too much in the past tense, as if it happened long time ago. Then we practice in fact “archaeology”, and look with nostalgia and some self-pity to the far remote past.

Christianity is not archaeology; Christianity is burning actuality!

If we really believe, then God’s word and God’s love are becoming flesh and blood in us and between us, right this instant! Maybe the Gospel of Luke 1:78 is more to the point, here and now:

The loving-kindness of the heart of our God,
who visits us like the dawn from on high.

In these special days of grace, I wish and pray that God’s loving-kindness may grow in you, and between all the people you come close to: your family, friends, colleagues, Church members.

It happens today; it is happening right here and now. Each and every interpersonal encounter is potentially, a divine encounter. This then, is truly Christmas.

The Book of Revelation 21:3-4 summarizes it all:

Here God lives among men. He will make his home among them;
they shall be his people and He shall be their God; his name is God-with-them. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes; there will be no more death and no more mourning or sadness. The world of the past has gone.

A Blessed Christmas! I pray for the experience of the divine life in you!

A Happy New Year 2008!

Frans De Ridder