Father Ken’s Message:
My dear brother and sister human beings Merry Christmas and welcome to the Sapporo Catholic Cathedral on this holy evening to celebrate the birth of our brother Jesus, the Son of God. I chose for a theme for this Christmas’ Mass, “A God Who Wants to Get Close to Us.” On the cover of your print are a few paintings of Nativity Scenes. I chose these paintings particularly because of the way the baby Jesus is reaching out his hands in a gesture indicating that he wants to be touched and held by Mary, Joseph and the visitors to the Nativity Scene. For me these paintings capture the essence of Christmas. God in Jesus is hungry for our touch. Through Jesus, God is grasping and reaching out to draw us closer to him to hold us closely in his love. Like the shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem 2000 years ago called by the angels to the Nativity Scene, 2000 years later we all too have heard the call and traveled in a spiritual time machine to come to at the Nativity Scene of Jesus’ birth tonight so that he can touch each of us and say, “I love you.” This is the true meaning of Merry Christmas. On Christmas Day God is telling us, “Don’t worry. I have come to take care of you because I love you.”
When I see these ancient Nativity paintings, I remember my 2 years of studying Bioethics in Rome and my visits to the Sixteenth Chapel attached to the Vatican on whose ceiling Michelangelo painted the history of human salvation. The first painting is God touching Adam and bringing him to life through love for us human beings. Christmas is a time to remember and rejoice. The joy we experience tonight comes from remembering. Not just the memories of Christmases past but something more. It was a time when our human race knew our true identity. We knew who we were. We knew we were made in the image and likeness of God. We knew we were made for joy and contemplation of God.
But, a type of spiritual disease happened to change our original happiness called “Original Sin.” Original Sin might be explained as a spiritual disease causing us to forget who we really are. Instead starting with Adam and Eve us human beings began creating new identities for ourselves, apart from God. For Adam and Eve, the identity of being a child of God was not enough. Human beings began to think of ourselves as individuals, separated from God and from one another. From that new false identity has come all the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza. From that false identity has abortions, domestic violence, loneliness, suicide, addictions, disinterest for what happens to others in our homes, workplaces, cities, countries and world. These are signs of the devil trying to dismember our human family of God.
Tonight, in this smelly and dirty stable God is making his debut deliberately to remind us how low we human beings have fallen from our true identity because of Original Sin. As a race us human beings have hit rock bottom. From the dirty ashes of our past history tonight God is making a debut appearance in the small body of Jesus to renew the world and recreate humanity in the model of his son. Sadly, Jesus was not graciously welcomed when he arrived on earth from heaven. There was no room for his mother Mary to have a nice room to deliver little Jesus. And after King Herod tried to kill the him. The bad attitude towards Jesus is symptomatic of the effects of Original Sin. I dare say we have all encountered rejection in our lifetimes. Jesus’ response and reaction to such inhospitality is to be calm, cool, and loving in every situation. It is his new model for humanity to stop the plague of hatred in the world by a revolution of love. As my dear mother used to say, “if you cannot say something nice, say nothing at all.”
The census of the Roman Empire brought Mary and Joseph to the stable in Bethlehem. Coincidently by way of the Roman census, Mary and Joseph remembered their esteemed line of ancestry to King David and that the baby Jesus would be born to his lineage in the same city as King David. My friends, for us too joining the Holy Family at the stable this evening, let us also remember our esteemed ancestry. We are all human beings born to the ancestry of Adam and Eve and therefore sons and daughters of God the Father. And, by our Baptism, we are all brothers and sisters of the baby Jesus. We also belong at the stable tonight to welcome our little brother Jesus.
My friends finally, Christmas is a time to exchange gifts. The baby Jesus is our Christmas gift. He came to collect our garbage, the things that we do not need, the things in our life that have hidden our true identity. Let us open up our hearts tonight and give little Jesus our old identity stuff, the old me and the old you. In exchange our little brother Jesus will give you and I back our original identity as sons and daughters of God and as brothers and sisters of little Jesus. This is the miracle of Christmas that John the Baptist talked about during Advent. Jesus is the little lamb of God who has come to take away the sins of the world. By giving up our sins God in Jesus can get close to us. He wants to get close to us. Let us be grateful to Jesus and to his mother Mary and foster father Joseph for saving us and giving us our real lives back.
The life and story of Jesus’ birth is 2000 years old, but the Nativity Set is 800 years old tonight. It was invented by St. Francis of Assisi after a visit to the Holy Land during the Crusades between 1219-1220. Because of the wars in Israel and Palestine Catholics could not safely make pilgrimages. So, he created the Nativity Set as a way to envision the birth of Jesus as recorded in the Bible in a 3-D manner. We are very grateful to St. Francis for his contribution. Pope Francis praises St. Francis this year calling his Nativity Set an important tool in evangelization. My friends, St. Francis’ efforts should inspire us to be creative and think of other ways we can make visible the life of Jesus for others to, see? While there are many ways, I think the simplest thing we can do is to be kind and loving like Jesus in every situation. My friends let us try to carry on the life message of our little savior Jesus through a lifestyle of love. Merry Christmas 2023. Thank you for coming to Christmas Mass, the Birthday of Jesus Christ.