Homily
Christmas 2022
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
25 December 2022
AMDG
What do I want for Christmas?
I invite you tonight to be bold, aggressive even, if what you dare to ask God. Can we all agree that this Christmas is too important to approach with a tepid faith, and measured expectations? If I don't dare faith this Christmas, when will I ever?
A couple years ago I confessed in my Christmas homily that for Christmas I wanted someone to hold me. It didn't work. A lot of people felt sorry for me. I got a lot of pity hugs. .
It's still what I want for Christmas. I think it's what we all want. It's the first need and desire we all have, the first question from every baby that enters the world. It's the question that perhaps makes us most human. Most importantly, it's what Jesus wants for Christmas, as we mark the mystery of His taking on flesh just like us.
Even if you aren't here tonight to ask boldly for what you want for Christmas, Jesus is. He is here to dare you to answer the pivotal question of Christmas - will you hold me?
At the moment of our birth, our desire and need are the same. So also tonight want and need are blurred in the mystery and paradox of Christmas. Jesus disguises His desire for you as need. He helps tonight by being helpless. He loves you by begging your love. And on this ridiculous night, He is just getting started. He feeds the world by getting eaten. He finds us by hiding from us. He restores life by getting Himself killed. He crushes the enemy by becoming as weak as possible - by being poor and naked, and homeless and cold and forsaken, ad nauseum unto infinity. Jesus makes sense of our world by becoming an absolute joke on this most ridiculous of nights.
Jesus reveals His desire to save the world disguised as need in the ultimate Christmas question - will you hold me? Yet the scene in Bethlehem only sets the stage for Jesus' most stupid move ever. He is here to bet all of Christmas on your answer to the question, and yours alone.
Try to talk Jesus out of this absurd strategy if you can, then let me know how it goes for you. I have no idea how my holding Jesus makes any difference. I have no idea how His begging for my touch saves the world. Don't ask me! Ask Him! He is right here, and his why for this Christmas is to ask you the question as desperately as He can - will you hold me? Feel free to ask him what difference your answer will make.
When I ask Him for myself, His answers baffle me. He can't imagine a life without me in it. He says He doesn't want to save the world without me. He wants the future of the world to pivot on my faith, and my touch. He doesn't want to know any different. For Him, that's just the way it is.
His last hurdle on this night is to find a way to slip past my defenses, which are elite. If Jesus were to ask me what I want for Christmas, my tepid faith conditioned by my fears, doubts and pains want to tell Him I'm fine. I got this. I don't need or want anything for Christmas. I'm fine!
To reach that place where I still hide and escape and avoid, that place where I think no one can see or care or understand, and that place where I think nothing will ever change, He has to wear the best of disguises. Which tonight He does, disguising His desire to be my savior as need, not being ashamed to beg for my love in the pivotal question of Christmas - will you hold me?
As the scene of Bethlehem gives way to this altar, and the cave where Jesus is born gives way to the place in my soul only the Eucharist can reach, I have the chance to put the Mass in Christmas, and approach the Blessed Sacrament with Jesus desperately begging my love in the question - will you hold me?
If a dare say yes with all my heart, the miracle of Christmas is new tonight, and I may even discover that I am the one being held, and the dream of what Jesus and I both want for Christmas, might really come true.
+mj
