How We Can Make Each Day Christmas

A warming meditation by a Seton staff member from our pre-magazine newsletter.

Let us relive for a few moments that wondrous night. Imagine Mary and Joseph bending over the Infant Jesus.

He smiles up at them extending His little arms and demonstrates in the silence of this Church of the home,

“This is how much I love the entire world. Although they did not have room for Me tonight, I will still love the world and one day I will again stretch out My arms wide on the cross to prove how much I love them in spite of their rejection. I will make sure that they know there will always be room in My Sacred Heart for all who repent.”

Mary and Joseph found no room in a city of parties and celebration, and so they came to a stable to flee the cold. There, the Savior of the world was born.

They had no bed, and so they placed the Baby Jesus in a manger, a feeding trough for animals, prefiguring the fact that this Divine Child would give His Body and Blood as food for those who believe.

He would sustain His faithful and live within their souls so that they would never feel alone.

Mary had brought along swaddling clothes because she knew that her time had come. These clothes and the breath of the animals inside the stable were the only warmth that could be generated.

There were animal smells all about the stable but the Holy Family did not seem to mind. They knew that this Divine Child would forever after seek out the foul souls of sinners who would repent in confession and throw open the doors and windows of the soul to let in the Divine mercy and forgiveness.

Jesus and the holy parents would continue to give us these beautiful memories every Christmas to contemplate. They hoped that somewhere, one Christmas, each one of us would come to realize the love Christ has for all, and at that moment we would turn around our lives and throw open the stable door to get rid of the beasts that have dwelt within.

How Jesus hopes that even now we would abandon our stable where sin has dwelt and open the door to Him who would change our sin-stained soul into a brilliant Tabernacle where He would dwell forever!

What gifts the Infant Jesus holds out to us each Christmas: a brand new year to start over and change our lives, the Church to point out the roadmap to eternity, His peace, His Body and Blood to nourish us along the way, His Blessed Mother as a model for all mothers, and St. Joseph as a role model for all fathers. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every day were Christmas?

We can make every day Christmas. We can do this by eliminating all those little things which keep us from Christ and by ridding our souls of them.

So many times we desire what is not real and permanent. We have fallen in love with the imitation, the counterfeit, the facsimile, the fake happiness in this life. Every Christmas, Christ asks us again,

“Will you give up the imitation for real happiness? I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. I can adorn your soul with real gems, real joys. I can give you adornments you never thought possible. Give Me your stable and I will make it a Basilica. You have fallen in love with catalog pictures. I will give you the real merchandise.”

What a present God holds out to us each Christmas. This year, let us trade in the imitation joys for the real thing.

It will then be Christmas every day within our hearts.