Once not long before Christmas, a group of young kids from a housing project across the street from the church where I worked was visiting with me. I asked them what their Christmas was going to be like. Then I asked them a follow-up question: Why do we have Christmas? None of their families were churched, and so the only reason they could give me was that it is a family holiday. Maybe at a profound level they are right. “We are family,” the universe, everything in it, including us and God. It’s not just a cute baby born today but “Christ … the first-born of all creation” (Col 1:15). Centuries ago, the Franciscan Duns Scotus taught that God so wants to be united in flesh and spirit with us humans that Jesus would have become human even if no one had sinned. Or in the words of Father Richard Rohr, another Franciscan, “Christ is the masterpiece of love in the midst of a creation designed for love, not the divine plumber come to fix the mess of original sin.” We long for union with God because we are created images of the “God who so loves this world that he gave his only begotten son” (Jn 3:16). God is the river of love flowing through every living thing, binding us all together. So indeed, it’s a family holiday! Merry Christmas to all of you from all us Sisters of the Precious Blood.
— Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia