What do I want for Christmas?

Homily

Solemnity of the Incarnation

25 December 2024

St. Ann Catholic Church Prairie Village, Kansas

AMDG

What do I want for Christmas?  For the 5th year in a row now, it's equal part scandalous and pitiful to admit.  I want someone to hold me. When I first confessed this during COVID, people thought that celibacy and social distancing were getting the best of me.  I got a lot of pity hugs.  

Yet I'm not ready to give up on this Christmas wish just yet.  It's still what I want.  I know it's what you want to.  It's a primal need and desire for every baby born into the world.  I guess I'm still a baby, and so are you.  Jesus told us that unless we constantly turn around and become like newborn children, we will forget where we came from, what it means to be human, the meaning of life, and ultimately, our soul.  When we come into this world what we need and what we want are the same, and this never fundamentally changes.  I want and need someone to notice me, to choose me, to help me, to hold me.   

It's what you and I will always want for Christmas, if we're not too proud to admit it.

Most importantly, it's what Jesus wants for Christmas.  Today we celebrate Jesus' desire to share the human experience with you and me, and to redeem it.  He's just like you, and His first desire and need are the same, just like yours.   He comes into the world as a baby, just like you.  He comes at Christmas precisely to ask you a very intimate, personal question, the original, precise and ultimate question of Christmas.  Will you hold me?

The first Christmas turned on the answer of Mary, Joseph and the shepherds.  This Christmas turns on yours.  

If Jesus asked me what I truly wanted for Christmas in any other way, I would be afraid to answer him.  Fr. Mitchel, can I hold you where you are must afraid, alone, frustrated, rejected, numb, and skeptical?  Can I heal the place where you are the most vulnerable?  Of course my answer would be thanks Jesus but I'm good.  I can take care of myself.  I'm used to my fears and doubts, and I can manage them.  I'm spent my whole life trying to not need or want anything, but thanks for asking anyway.

In order to get past our defenses, which are elite, Jesus has to don a disguise.  He has to trick me.  He has to disguise his desire for me as need, or I'll get scared.  So He finds me by hiding, trusting my faith to find Him.  He loves me by begging my love.  He shows His power to get past my defenses by becoming powerless - cold, poor, naked, and homeless.  He makes sense of my life be becoming an absolute joke.  Instead of asking me the scary question of what I want for Christmas, He simply asks me to hold Him.

How does He ask me this question?  It's through the most surprising disguise of all.  In just moments, the cave of Bethlehem will give way to this altar, the manger to that place in your soul that only the Eucharist can reach.  You're about to put the Mass in Christ's Mass you see.  Your answer to His question comes precisely when you take His body into yours.  It's at that moment that you answer the original, precise and ultimate question that Christ asks you at Christmas - will you hold me?

I have no idea how your answer will save the world.  I just know that's what Jesus wants for Christmas, and that you were born and made for this moment.  The fate of Christmas turns on your answer, and your touch, if only you're not afraid.  

Do not be afraid, Mary, to hold me.  Do not be afraid, Joseph, to hold me.  Do not be afraid, little ones of St. Ann, to hold me!  It's my decision to bet Christmas on you, and it's all I want.

If you've ever held a newborn baby, you know that you're the one being held.  If you're scared to hold a baby, you've scared of Christmas.  You've forgotten who you are, and the meaning of your life.  

Jesus appears as a baby tonight just in case any one of us will not be afraid of the original, precise and ultimate Christmas question - will you hold me?  If any one of us dares say yes, a Christmas miracle will happen here tonight, and what you want for Christmas, and what Jesus wants for Christmas, will really come true.

+mj