It is proverbial that Christmas is a time of peace and goodwill to all. For some, Christmas is a time of nurturing warm family bonds, of traveling home for the holidays, or of rest and recuperation from the rigors of working life.

But for some, Christmas may not be a time of serenity and reconciliation at all. Rather, it may be a painful time of poverty, loss, or melancholy.

Whatever our situation, few tend to think of the truth about Christmas: that Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem was God’s desperate, high-risk mission to save humanity by dropping behind enemy lines. 

God’s plan was to hide his divine nature in the form of a defenseless baby, lying in an animal’s feeding trough, in a hovel, in a backwater of the Roman Empire. This infant would become a human being, work as a humble carpenter, then as an itinerant preacher, and lastly be brutally executed as a criminal. Not the sort of plan that is guaranteed to appeal to the likes of us. But such is the brilliant, some might say bizarre, logic of God.

The incarnation of Jesus looks like the biggest failure in history. Surely this was Satan’s greatest triumph: he incited us to crucify God. And yet, as we know, God thwarted Satan’s plans by raising Jesus from the dead as the redeemer of all humankind.

St. Paul tells us that Jesus “did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness.” (Phil 2:6-7) And that astonishing humility is what saved us all from our inevitable fate.

Jesus’ incarnation repaired the unbridgeable gulf created by the sin of our first parents. Through that sin, all hope for heaven disappeared and we were left with the baleful inevitability of unending hell. The incarnation opened for us a path back into a loving relationship with God. It threw open the gates of heaven once again.

So, as we celebrate Christmas this year, no matter our circumstances, let’s thank Jesus for his humility and for the genius of his stealthy and inspired plan to rescue us from what seemed like inescapable doom. Through Jesus’ coming as a baby in Bethlehem, we have hope for the peace and joy that this season brings. We have hope for eternal life, for life in abundance.

Thanks be to God.