Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalms 24:1-6; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-24

Amidst all the activities that swirl around these final days before Christmas, the Church wants to make sure that we don’t forget the real meaning of this great Christian holiday.

Christmas is the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ, the day when we celebrate the “Mass” of “Christ’s” birth – Christ-Mass.

The exchange of gifts that we are getting ready for; the time that we will be spending with family and friends – these are good things. They are good ways to celebrate. Exchanging gifts reminds us that on Christmas God gave us his greatest gift, our Saviour.

Spending time with family members reminds us that the result of that gift was our salvation, which consists in our adoption into God’s family through the grace we received at baptism.

This is the heart of what Christmas is all about. But it is not just something that happened in the past.

Through the Church and the sacraments, Christ has wanted to stay with his newly adopted family all throughout history. In a sense, every Mass is a new Bethlehem, a new coming of Christ among us. And every day he renews his invitation to us, the invitation he brought when he arrived on earth that on the first Christmas night.

What is that invitation? St Paul described it well in the Second Reading. He wrote that a Christian is someone who is “called to belong to Jesus Christ” and “called to be holy.” Christ comes at Christmas, but he doesn’t come passively – he comes to save us, to call us out of a self-centered life and into a Christ-centered life.

That’s what it means to “belong to Jesus Christ” and “to be holy.”  And that’s exactly what all of us are called to. We are called to be holy through our service to our brothers and sisters. This is exactly what Jesus did: He showed God’s love to us through his service to others and ultimately through his total sacrifice in his death for us. This is true love!

This is the kind of God we believe in.Jesus Christ is a God who comes to save us; who will never abandon us; who was willing to leave the very throne of heaven and come to take our place in this fallen, sinful world; just because he couldn’t bear losing our friendship.

God is our Father – the perfect Father that we can always count on. Christmas reminds us of that. It is the fulfillment of all his promises. At this time of year, then, our hearts should be especially full of gratitude. And what is the best way to express that gratitude? By following in Jesus’ footsteps. God has kept his promise to us, so let’s renew our commitment to keep our promises to him.

At our baptism we first made those promises – or, if we were too young, as most of us were, our parents and godparents made them on our behalf. At our confirmation we freely and consciously renewed them.

We promised to reject evil, sin, and the temptations of the Devil.We promised to imitate Christ in our daily lives, most especially in following the two greatest commandments of loving God with all our hearts and loving our neighbor as ourselves. And we promised to put our God-given talents to work in supporting the mission of the Church – to bring Christ’s gospel to people who have not accepted it. In short, we promised to avoid evil, do good, and build up the Church.

God is hoping we will do our best to fulfill these promises – not just for duty’s sake, but because they are the path to true meaning and happiness, to a deeper friendship with Christ.

At the same time, God knows that we can’t fulfill these promises if we depend just on our own human strength. But if we keep trying, he will make sure our efforts bear fruit. This is his ongoing promise – which he will renew again today in the Eucharist.

And so, when we receive him in Holy Communion, let’s give him an early Christmas present by renewing our ongoing, baptismal promises – trusting not in our own strength, which always fails, but in his, which never fails.