In Swaddling Clothes  

Luke 2:1-14

While the authority figure of the time manifests his obsession with power by attempting to count the earth’s population, God is born. While people are forced to migrate because of an absurd census, God simply is born. He is only an infant, but he is there, at the heart of every story. He is at the heart of my own story–as subtle yet as vital as each breath I take.

Lord, may our Christmas this year be marked by your gentle breath over our lives: a vital, warm and loving breath. This Christmas, may we learn that alone you, Lord, are our breath of life.

May our Christmas incarnate the maternal qualities of Mary. May it be a Christmas of swaddling clothes, making us capable of bandaging the frailties of our brothers and sisters, of healing their wounds, of spreading a balm of mercy over family quarrels and misunderstandings…over everything that bleeds life from human beings.

May it also encourage us to lay down the loads we are carrying: pride, resentments, trivialities, violence, fear. Let us deposit our life–our whole life–in the manger, for it will be Christmas only when we realize that we were created to nourish the need for love within and around us.

Lord, give us the bravery to fix our gaze on you this Christmas, to look into your eyes and realize that it is not you who are born today, because you have already been born. We are the ones who must be born–essentially reborn–as human beings, wrapped in the swaddling clothes of self-giving, tenderness, courage, freedom and concern for others. Help us to become people so humane that we dare to behave in a divine way.