Joy to the World

Our celebrations are human and divine. Through the festival of Christmas, we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. This year’s Christmas is more significant for us as the nation celebrates the golden jubilee of its independence and the birth centenary of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. In this festive mood, we also remember the freedom fighters who sacrificed their lives for our independence.

We expected that the Christmas 2021 would bring about a brighter and more blissful feeling than those of last year when the world witnessed a much worse pandemic. But the unusual spread of the Omicron variant has permeated this year’s festive mood of Christmas with a deeper concern. What still keeps our hopes high is the fact that we have a stronger wall of immunity as a result of vaccination and prior infection.

Jesus was born into the world and into our lives to save us and set us free, once for all, and every day. The yearly celebration of Christmas is a call to pay attention to how we may receive Christ anew. He is a gift to us! Then, as now, it is a time of peace, joy and happiness. The reason of this unending delight is that the Lord is with us. So it is a time for celebration with family and the people we love and care for. The outward expression of this joy may be in the decorations, carols, gifts, food, and gatherings, but it is and always has been a joy calling for transformation. It is a season of mystery awakening expressions of joy and love felt as much through the symbolic gestures as it is within the heart of all those celebrating. God became man and thus, gave us this same gift of liberation.

Jesus Christ gave the world a model lesson of love, compassion and forgiveness. He taught us that we all are children of God and have our share of His Kingdom. Christmas calls us to herald the message of Jesus. This is the apt time to forgive people and forget all the past resentments and to make up all our broken relationships and start all over again. Let love flow in with its real essence; let the light of enlightenment glow all through the world.

During Christmas, we become more open to God’s presence in our lives. We are called to a deeper mindfulness of the divine glowing in all our relationships. From the earliest years Christian artists, writers and musicians have presented the Nativity as a scene of stillness and gentle wonder. And in this 21st century, surely nothing of the original scene essentially changed, despite the commercial overtone of today’s festive season. Christ comes into our hearts as gently as ever, if we are waiting, because he can come in no other way.

In 'Gitanjali', Rabindranath Tagore raises questions and answers at the same time to highlight God’s manifestation in one of his songs of: “Have you not heard his silent steps? He comes, comes, ever comes. Every moment and every age, every day and every night he comes, comes, ever comes.” In the Christian context, God’s continuing presence takes a definite form in the promise of an Emmanuel, that is ‘God is with us’, that is eventually in the child born of Virgin Mary. This promise is fulfilled by another promise mentioned at the very end of Gospel of St. Mathew that of his of continual presence: ‘I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ (Mt. 28: 20)

This joyful celebration of life reminds us of something vital in the Biblical tradition. When we hear the prophet Zephaniah’s call to shout for joy, we are, first and foremost, hearing that ancient spirit of human celebration (Zeph. 3: 14-15). It is the voice of a group of people that had been crumpled, but that has now been brought back to life. In a delightful, gracious and joyous moment of history the people got freedom to return to their land to make a new beginning, a new journey. In that moment of history, they recognize the saving action of God. This experience of one people becomes the experience of the whole humanity. From the same spirit of joy is born the call to rejoice that runs throughout the season of Christmas. Salvation means being rescued from our enemies, being allowed to live in peace, rejoicing in the freedom to be ourselves as children of God.

We have a mandate to share this joy with men and women of good will. We all are invited to announce the Good News like the angels: “Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.” (Lk. 2: 14) This proclamation cannot bypass the actual joys and sorrows of those around us, in a world of often harsh political, social and economic realities. Authentic worship is doing good to others. It is a sign of our lives before God in a world ever-groaning to give birth to his word, and not an endless flight from a godless generation.

Indeed, the politics of today’s world fit all too well with the politics at the time of the Nativity of Jesus Christ. When the truth and the goodness of God appears among us, at times we try our best refuse it, as they reveal the dark enigmas of our minds. Today, we lack these truth and goodness in our political schemes and decision-making methods and in our social and religious organizations. God is to be found in that which is always missed out, and never caught. When we think like the self-interested king Herod that we will manage to find Jesus, he remains out of our sight. He can never to be controlled, even though we try our best to control him or make him fit our own self-centered schemas and systems. He has changed the terms of any true human relationship beyond the nexus of hatred and fear into the realm of hope, trust and love.

Jesus’ birth is an eternal challenge for the politics of domination, he himself being the victim of it himself.. Yet, God calls us to be with Him in the event of the birth of Christ, in spite of our endless folly and our relentless longing for prestige and power, by which we have rejected him. Because of the coming babe of Bethlehem, we are not only bold to call God ‘Father’, but dare to go out and be his instruments to transform the society.

Christmas is the festival of light, love, and life. The light of the shining star will illumine the entire world. It should ignite us to take a new path and show rays of hope to all people.

Christmas is not only a time for fun and feast, but also an occasion to practice the message of Christ in our life. Christ is born to bring the message of redeeming the poor and the oppressed marginalized by the discriminations of caste, creed and color. Christ has taught us that love and service must be shared by all. Worship and adoration must be given to the loving, living and working God in the cradle of Bethlehem. But the savior, whose birth we delight today comes to take in our joys and sorrows in life. When our eyes and hearts are opened to see the world clearly and correctly these joyous moments may change everything around us. Let this Christmas bring unending joy and jubilation, new hope and harmony and bliss to everyone in the country and world.

* Pradeep Perez writer is a Catholic Priest