Good morning everyone and Merry Christmas to you all. It feels like Christmas in here anyway.
I am sure my dear friends at this very relatively early hour of Christmas Day there are countless young children and perhaps those a bit older who are running to their Christmas trees to look at what Saint Nicholas and their loved ones have left them as gifts.
And of course that tradition, my dear friends, you know in this season comes from the three great gifts of the Magi; a feast we will celebrate in a few weeks with the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh offered to the Christ child to reveal Him to be priest prophet and the one who was born into the world, to die to give us life.
And yet, as beautiful as it is to have the tradition to leave gifts under the Christmas tree, it seems to me that it is a far more beautiful tradition to not just give gifts but to exchange gifts…to look (at) the person, greet the person, and give over the gift that you and I have purchased for them.
Because we all know how difficult it is to get the perfect gift. Because a gift says something about the giver and the receiver. For certainly the person to receive the gift, it is a sign of our love, our esteem, our affection, and we want it to be just right.
But it also says something about the giver and his or her generosity and desire to lift the person; to grant them not just their material goods but a share of happiness and joy. Because the gift represents the love that you and I have in our hearts for the person before us.
The exchange of gifts is a beautiful gesture and it is the reason we come here this morning with joy in our hearts. For my dear friends, we have come here to celebrate the birth of a gift who is our Savior and Redeemer.
But we also come here to remember that He came into the world to exchange a gift. And that exchange is the source of our redemption.
For consider my friends, St. John says: and the word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. Literally, He pitched His tent in our world.
For Jesus was offering to us and all who believe in Him a great gift: a share in His divine life and glory, a place in heaven where we could have the fullness of what it means to be human.
But He is also accepting a gift from you and me, and all who share humanity. For we gave Him our broken lives, our lives that are marred, our lives that are burdened, our lives at times that are broken. And the child accepted the gift joyfully.
Christ gave us His divinity so that we might grant to Him His humanity, our humanity, and all of what needed to be healed.
My friends, consider how much God loves us to empty Himself of His glory and power; to receive such a fragile gift and to accept it with His fullness of love and joy.
To put it simply my friends on Christmas, Christ became poor by what we gave Him, so that you and I might be rich by what He gave us.
That is why, my friends, when you come to this creche and kneel before it, remember how much the Giver loves us in the gift He has given us this day.
But allow me to offer you a challenge; for Christmas for Christians is not just celebrated one day of the year. We celebrate the exchange of gifts every day of the year.
For Christ offers us His life and His love, His joy, and a share in His divinity every moment of every day. Most especially, we become here to His altar to receive His body and blood, soul and divinity. And so He offers us His riches so that what might we do; we might lift up the poverty of those around us, try to heal in our own way the brokenness of those whom we meet.
For my dear friends, you and I come here to be strengthened with the gift of Christ’s life so that we might go out into that world and meet those who have not yet met Him, who do not know the love that you and I know in Him.
We go out in word and action so that those who we will meet, who will be very poor, lonely, sick, afraid, hopeless, looking for just simply someone who they can turn to you. And I will go out into that world and exchange gifts with them a share of the life Christ has given us. And accept back from them their loneliness with friendship, their tears with a smile, their empty hand with our hand in their hands, to let them know that they are not alone.
That is the great challenge of Christmas. And it seems to me my friends, as we leave this church to celebrate the rest of this day with our families and with our friends, perhaps to exchange more gifts, and to share a meal which is the Bounty of the Lord, let us remember that we must keep giving. We must keep exchanging until the miracle of Christmas brings us all home to the glory of everlasting life.
My friends, may you have the merriest of Christmases and may God bless you and your families all the days of your lives, through Christ Our Lord, amen.
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Bishop’s Sunday Mass: Bishop Frank J. Caggiano has begun celebrating Mass at St. Augustine Cathedral on Sundays at 8:30 am, and the faithful throughout the diocese are welcome to join him. For those who plan to attend in person, St. Augustine Cathedral is located at 399 Washington Avenue in Bridgeport. The live-stream will be available Sundays at 8:30 am on the St. Augustine Cathedral website (www.thecathedralparish.org), while the replay will be available on the Diocese YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/c/BridgeportDiocese/streams) once Mass concludes.
