Reflections
REJOICING AT A BIRTH
CHRISTMAS, the celebration of the Birth of Jesus, is considered the most happy and joyous Feast in the world and the moment of the Birth of Jesus is most precious not only to Mother Mary but also a moment of Rejoicing to all human race and to the world. The Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Virgin Mother, was flooded with immense Joy when she received her Divine Child for the first time in her sacred hands, when her arms embraced Him over her most pure bosom and when her lips impressed her first kiss upon Him. These sentiments of Joy filled her and her spouse and later all angels, saints and the human race.
As a writer, Cornelius Lapide comments: “It was midnight…when the Virgin Mother Mary was rapt in a most sweet ecstasy of love from which she did not recover until the Angels had laid the Divine Child in her arms.” In the same way, the Gospel writer St Luke beautifully describes in 2:6-7: “And it came to pass that when they were there, her days were accomplished that she should be delivered; And she brought forth her first born Son and wrapped Him up in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger.”
It is this moment of great Joy that is celebrated at every Christmas, to make us all joyful in the Lord. The same Joy was expressed in the appearance of a great company of heavenly angels, praising God and singing: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to people of goodwill.” Luke.2:14.
It is that Joy which is needed at this time of the world’s happenings when the sadness of war and violence is gripping the entire world, when famine and natural disasters are occurring in many parts of the world. While we wish one another a Happy Christmas, we should internally fill our hearts with the Joy of Jesus and exchange it with others with a broad smile on our faces, pleasant words in our lips and a generous help and support to the needy among us. That is the way the Joy of Jesus’ Birth should take over the whole world. May the Joy of Jesus be with you all.
A JOYOUS CHRISTMAS.
Fr. Joseph Rathnaraj
Parish Priest
13 December 2023