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Christmas Day

Readings of the Day 
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For many of us, the cards have been sent and received, the gifts
wrapped and now opened, the meal around the table perhaps still
anticipated.  We have sung the carols of rejoicing in our
parishes.  But what does this confounding mystery of
incarnational love mean for us, going forward to serve our poor and
vulnerable brothers and sisters in the coming year? 

Full confession, I'm solidly in my middle age and increasingly
struck by the acceleration of time.  How can Christmas be here
again so soon?  I swear I just wrestled the decorations back into
storage.  But if I allow myself a moment of detachment from the
busy-ness, I can instead recognize that I am much in need of spending
time with this mystery of God choosing to be born among us in our weak
form.  I am much in need of meditating on the birth - again
and again - of the Divine Presence within my own ragged
heart.  I am much in need of being subtly (or not so subtly)
cracked open to the outpouring of love that defies our rules and
boundaries, our divisions and our distractions. 

Luke's Gospel describes the sign of this great inbreaking into
history as an infant swaddled in a manger.  If ever there were a
divine sign that confounded our human expectations, this must be
it.  In our daily work, we are privileged to encounter God in
these confounding forms, continually challenging us to expand our
notions of who and how God loves.  How can I help Lance, who
persists in his homelessness, having been barred from even the
low-barrier shelters for his violent outbursts, but who thanks us
genuinely when we find him food or clothing?  How can I help
Nora, caring for her stroke-afflicted husband in a trailer whose
heater is broken during our northern winter?  How can I care for
the Hernandez family, farmworkers living in a remote rural community,
whose mother passed away in October, followed by their father taking
his own life in grief a month later? 

To paraphrase the poet, the darkness around us is deep.  The
inbreaking of light we celebrate today is quite small.  And yet
it persists.  It insists.  But it does not impose.  It
invites.  Our work can seem impossible.  Remember, our call
is not to success, but to faithfulness.  Faithfulness to show up
for the ones who come to us.  We all know their names. 
Today, those names are Lance, Nora, and the Hernandez family. 
What are the names for you?  Hold them in prayer for a moment
today.

May God bless you richly in this season of celebration and strengthen
you to recognize Him in the encounters to come. 

Scott Cooper has been Director of Parish Social Ministry for Catholic
Charities Eastern Washington, Diocese of Spokane, for 21 years.




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