I forget how the topic would come up, but a Marist Brother who taught me religion in high school back in the late 1950s used to explain to the class that Easter was a more important holy day for the Church than Christmas.
I suspect that the question arose when the class was getting into the holiday mood too soon in the last days before the Christmas break. Things could get a bit rowdy in school that time of year in the Bronx. (The ride home on the subway even more so.)
I understand the Marist brother’s point, more so now than back then. The Savior came to earth on Christmas day, but His divinity was demonstrated through the Resurrection. That was when the gates of Hell were opened for us. But, you know, if I were ever to bump into that brother again, I think I would suggest that he could have made his point in another way. The joy that Christians feel at Christmas is not rooted in gift-giving and holiday merriment. The world’s history pivots on the Birth of Christ.
Consider what would happen if some perceptive space alien came to earth and studied this planet’s great religions. I am convinced he would conclude that Christianity is the most compelling of the earth’s religions precisely because of the story of Christmas. It would be more coherent to him than the stories behind Islam, Buddhism and the world’s other great religions. The Christmas story is not just a pleasant tale that appeals to the young. It is the central element in the plot of salvation history.
I would go so far as to say that the birth of Christ is the logical consequence of believing in God the Father. Why do I say that? Only an atheist would fail to get the point. By the standard of even unaided human reason, if there is a God the Father, it is logical to hold that He created the world for a purpose; logical to assume that He intends for His creation to proceed according to His plan. The planets move in their orbit according to His design. The tides roll in and out for the same reason. The seasons come and go as He set them up to do. Humans are part of the equation. We have free will, but we are meant to live with each other the way beings “made in the image and likeness of God” should live. The biblical descriptions of life in the Garden of Eden give us hint of what that existence would be like.
All the world’s great religions and philosophical systems understand this concept. All teach that there is a standard of right and wrong that defines the way we should interact with each other and the Father, whether it is called the Ten Commandments, the natural law, pietas, the telos, the Tao, or the golden mean. Thinking men and women know that we cannot live lives of dignity and purpose in a world of fang and claw. Life is worth living only when it is lived the way it was supposed to be lived. For theists of all religions this means as the Creator intended.
Let us move back to the time of the birth of Christ. For nearly a thousand years of recorded history (and we have to assume thousands of years of unrecorded history before that), mankind had searched for an understanding of how life was to be lived. And made a bloody mess of it all. The insights of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and their Roman counterparts did not prevent the world from becoming a place where brutal military conquest and slavery were the order of the day. Cruelty had become a spectator sport in the Roman Coliseum. The barbarian tribes to the north and the east were no better off. Mankind was lost and gone astray. It looked hopeless. Humans were not going to create on their own, through the free will given to them by the Father, a society in line with His plan.
Was this failure of mankind part of the Creator’s plan? Answering that question — of how humanity’s free will coexists with the existence of an omnipotent and omniscient Creator — is beyond my pay grade. What is clear is that there was a need for a divine intervention, a Savior. God had to enter history, to “make all things new,” for His will to be done on earth as it is in Heaven. The Word had to become Flesh and dwell amongst us to save us all from Satan’s power, to bring mankind to the Way, the Truth and the Life. There had to be a Nativity, an Incarnation. Salvation history could not proceed without this intervention of the Father, in the person of the Son.
Am I sure of that? Oh, I guess God could have intervened in some other way to lift mankind from its degraded state. Your alternative scenario is as good as mine. But His intervention through the gift of the Ten Commandments had not been enough. The words of the prophets had been ignored. Something more direct was needed. The Father’s decision was to walk amongst us in the person of the Son, who would end the moral disarray. Fallen men and women would learn that the will of the Father centered on our obligation to “remake all things in Christ.” That learning process began in a stable in Bethlehem. That is why the herald angels sang; that was the triumph of the skies. God and sinners would be reconciled. The earth received her King.
James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, is available from our online store. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
