“God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9)

When on a clear and frosty night we look up at the sky sparkling with stars and strewn with the stardust of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, we sense the wonder of it all but we do not really comprehend it.  It seems vast indeed, but not unimaginably so; remote yet friendly and secure.  And it is easy to forget that there are hundreds of millions of other galaxies far beyond the range of human sight, so that for all the vastness of what we see, it is only a relatively minute part of the whole.

And the same is even truer of our vision and understanding of God.  For all man’s confident and sometimes critical discussion of him, he is infinitely beyond the bounds, not only of the human intellect but of human imagination.  And at the spiritual level, our ability to understand God’s character and to enter into communion with him has been vitiated by our rebellious attitude to his will and by our deliberate choice of wrong in preference to right.

And so, in our plight – and in his love – God took us as we are and came down to our human level and revealed himself to us in terms we could comprehend – all so that he might restore us to himself and lift us up to his Divine level there to share his Divine life.

And so, in the words of the carol, “Love came down at Christmas” – for love is the key to the nature and character of God.  It is not only that God loves all that is good and beautiful and true; not only that he loves all those whom he has made, whatever their own attitude to him may be.  It is that God himself is Love.

We can understand love in our own lives when it is practical and personal.  Actions speak louder than words and so we recognise love only when it expresses itself in deeds and sacrifices.  But besides that, it must also be infused with the warmth of a human heart for us to respond to it.  Without that warmth it will be as the proverb goes, “as cold as charity”.

So God has shown his love in a practical and personal way that all can understand and to which all can respond, by coming to us as a babe.  He has taken us not only as we are but as we are at our weakest and simplest.  He came to us as a babe because babyhood is most easily understandable by all he came to save – by men, women and little children alike.

We know how the sight of a peaceful infant brings a smile of tenderness to us all, whatever be our age or lot in life. So, by his helpless infancy he has sought not only to tell us of his love but also to coax from us our love in return.  That is why the Christmas narrative, centring as it does upon the winsome Babe, makes its appeal to many who do not profess or practise the Christian Faith.

For us who are Christians, as we contemplate the contrast between the eternal glory which God the Son laid aside, and the lowliness and poverty of the crib which he embraced for our sakes, then our hearts should indeed go out to him in love and joy for, in St Paul’s words, though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty we might become rich (see 2 Corinthians 8:9).

The joy of Christmas is different from that of any other festival of Our Blessed Lord, for in all the others there is an element of suffering.  The Wise Man’s gift of myrrh at the Epiphany foretold his burial; the Feast of the Presentation has its reminder of the sword which was to pierce his Mother’s heart on Calvary; the joy of Easter is the joy of victory won at the cost of agony.  And at the Ascension the hands which Christ holds up in blessing on the Mount of Olives bear the imprint of the nails.

But the joy of Christmas is pure and unalloyed: the peace is one which the sin and rebellion of man has not scarred; the shadow of the Cross falls just short of the stable door.

So throughout the world, even among many who do not profess to follow him, the celebration of his Birth in Bethlehem has awakened festive merriment.  For the light that streams from the manger has shone to the far corners of the Earth; and even the darkness of this troubled world cannot hide the face of the Holy Babe.

May we for our part gain a deeper understanding of his love for us which shall in turn evoke in us a deeper love for him.