Christ wants to be born in us

Fr. Roy Cimagala

YES, Christ wants to be born in us. That, in a nutshell, is the meaning of Christmas. All the festivities and merrymaking associated with this day should point us to this truth. We have to correspond to it and act on it as best as we can.

Let’s hope that the beautiful decorations we have everywhere, especially the Christmas crèche, Christmas tree, lanterns, the Santa Clauses, etc., lead us to this realization, instead of being distractions or, worse, a sweet poison to our soul.

Let’s hope that when we look at the Child Jesus in the belen, we get moved to thank him for wanting to be born in us, and to promise him that we will do our part to welcome and receive him in the best way we can.

Christ wants to be born in us because he is our savior who comes to re-make us after we have fallen into sin. Let’s remember that we are children of God, made in his image and likeness.

Christ is the Son of God, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, who is the very pattern of our humanity. What we are supposed to be can only be known if we closely look at him and follow him. It’s no exaggeration to say that how he is, is also how we ought to be.

Since we fell into sin, leaving our nature deformed and wounded, this Son of God had to “re-do” us. For this, the Son of God had to become man to identify himself with each one of us, assuming all our sinfulness and dying to them only to win over sin and death with his resurrection.

Christ wants to be born in us so he can start and continue with his work of redemption which takes place in the whole span of our earthly life. He wants to grow and live with us, experience what we experience so he can guide us.

But do we welcome him? Are we willing to have Christ in us, to work in us and with us? Do we actively cooperate in his redemptive work in us? Are we willing to be another Christ, “alter Christus,” as we ought to be, so we can recover and enrich the dignity God intended for us?

We should consider these questions very seriously and deploy all our resources to come up with the appropriate answers, roadmaps, and action plans.

We have to convince ourselves that it is very doable for us to allow Christ to be born in us. This is no fantasy. On the part of God, he is already giving us everything that we need for this wonderful divine will for us to be carried out.

On our part, it is also very doable, because all we have to do is to be open to this divine will and act on it as best as we can. Christ can be born in us by allowing him to enter first into our mind and heart which are the proper places for him to be with us.

Let us get our mind and heart to be engaged with him, knowing him more, increasingly developing the ability to know his will and ways, being docile to his promptings that we can discern in our consciences.

When we acquire a certain intimacy with him, we can start to feel his love, his goodness and affections, his mercy and compassion that will always fill us with joy and a deep sense of confidence proper of the conviction that we are truly children of God.

When we see Christ as a child, let us also feel loved by God as the infant Jesus is loved by the Father, and by Mary and Joseph, and the hosts of angels, the shepherds, the magi, etc.

We need to feel loved by God and by others because only then can we be able to love God and others in return, especially when we will be experiencing different trials, difficulties, crises, etc. in the later part of our life.

We cannot give what we do not have. And we cannot have anything that we have not received from the ultimate source and giver of all good things—God in Christ through the Holy Spirit.

And so we just have to receive Christ, allowing him no less than to be born in us, because that is what he wants. And let’s follow him, without fear, all the way to his death and resurrection.

Yes, there’s suffering, but there’s also victory.

Merry Christmas to one and all!

E-mail: roycimagala@gmail.com