My Dear People,
We are deep in Advent as I write this, and shimmering dawn is faintly visible in the darkened sky. The Advent end is near. The feast of Christmas is near. The child, the child, is near.
But we hardly know it. It has become politically correct to banish Christ from Christmas, to put Halloween, and Thanksgiving, and New Year’s Day, and Valentine’s Day on the same level as Christmas. We are not interested in knowing what Christmas meant.
And even in the Church it has become acceptable to banish thoughts of Christ from Christmas, to put the Commandments, and the virtues, and the demands of social justice on the same level with him. We are not interested in knowing how it came about, this Incarnation. We are not interested in the dusty, musty, battles of our ancestors at Nicea and Chalcedon. We are not interested in him.
That swaddled little child, that manger, that woman and that man held fast by wonder. What had they done? What had happened to them?
The truth is simple. She had been chosen to be the mother of the child. He had been chosen to make a home and a family for the child. And the child had been chosen to reveal his Father in heaven, to tell us everything about him, and to gather the sheep who had strayed and the sheep who had been lost.
The truth is the child is near. The truth is hungry love is near. Do we see it? Do we feel it? Do we accept it?
+ Most Rev. Ronald M. Gilmore
Bishop of Dodge City