Christmas is coming to town! ha3

FROM THE MOUTHS OF BABES

by William F. Wegher

Last ADVENT, just a few days before Christmas,
I decided to visit my brother in a neighboring town.
Exhausted from teaching, from three unexpected funerals
and dreading even the thought of putting a Christmas homily together,
I decided I needed and deserved a break.
I figured that a quit evening with my brother,
his wife and their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter
-- my niece and god-daughter --would do me good.

After I had been at their home for a while, my god-daughter,
Shelby, took me by the hand and asked,
"Uncle Bill, do you want to see something?"
"Sure," I obliged, as I reluctantly pulled myself out of the comfortable chair
to follow her tugging hand. She took me over to a coffee table
on which her mother had placed a fragile white porcelain nativity scene
in anticipation of Christmas. As i knelt down to be at her eye level,
she pointed to the infant Jesus in the manger and said, "See!"

I was overjoyed! Amid all the consumerism
and commercialism that surround Christmas these days,
here was a child who was just beginning to speak
and who was showing me the true meaning of Christmas already.
This beautiful little girl was about to tell the story of Jesus' birth.
To top it all off, she was my god-daughter!

Filling with pride, I asked her,"Shelby, do you know what that is?"
She nodded her head in the affirmative.
"Can you tell Uncle Bill about it?" again, she nodded her head to say yes.
"What is it?" I finally asked, filled with anticipation.
In the most innocent and matter of fact way, she responded, "breakable!"

Breakable? her response caught me totally off guard,
and it took me the next several minutes to stop laughing
and overcome my complete surprise. Yet, when I did finally compose myself,
I began to realize that this little girl was right.
It gave me a new insight into the true meaning of the Incarnation.
Breakable. Isn't that exactly what makes the feast of Christmas
so precious and special? A God who loves the world so much
sent his only son to into a broken world to be breakable.

THIS REALLY IS the meaning of Christmas after all.
All of us in our "brokenness" -- have a God
with whom we can identify and in whom we can find comfort.
A God was born among us who identified with the poor from his birth,
who knew the trials of a prisoner, the rejection of being an outcast,
the desolation of being deserted by his friends,
the pain of torture and execution.

From the mouths of babes?
Yes, this little child taught me,
with all my theological degrees,
that Christmas is about a Jesus who was breakable,
who came into a broken world, to be broken,
so that a breakable people could be redeemed and live for ever...
and break no more.

(from the notes given to us when we had

our Inter-Congregational Modular Classes

Our Lady of Peace Guidance Center, Manila)