Christmas Day
Thursday, December 25, 2025
St. James Cathedral (10:00am)

Today we celebrate God’s overwhelming and unconditional love for us. Whether you are a visitor to our cathedral this morning, or are among those who worship here week in and week out, that message is for each and every one of us.
 
Isaiah makes clear that all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of God. He tells this message to captives in Babylon centuries before the birth of Jesus. The “glad tidings,” the good news, is that Israel’s 50-year captivity will soon end. That’s why even the feet of the one who announces this are beautiful, so welcome is this news.
 
That Good News reaches its pinnacle in the coming of Jesus, the Word Made Flesh. As the Letter to the Hebrews notes, “In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he has spoken to us through the Son.” This action of God, coming to dwell among us in flesh and blood, exceeds even Isaiah’s vision of salvation extended to the ends of the earth.
 
God’s reaching out to us – to all of us - in mercy and love, is what this feast is about. We don’t earn that mercy or that love. If that were the case, then the message of salvation would have been only to devout religious folks. But it’s not. It’s a message to all nations, a message that goes out to the ends of the earth.
 
And it is God who takes the initiative in delivering the message. He does the unthinkable – he comes among us as a human being. This great feast of Christmas reminds us that the direction of God’s movement, of the creator and sustainer of all that is, is toward us. Sometimes we need this reminder because we can tend to forget that the initiative belongs to God.
 
The dominant Christian narrative is often the following: The Son of God came to earth, died and rose to forgive our sins. He opened the gates of heaven so that if we live a good life, we will go to heaven when we die, and if we don’t live good lives, we will go to hell.
 
While this narrative is certainly not wrong, it is woefully inadequate.
 
Directing all our energies and desires toward what happens after this life - in heaven - makes earning a place there the focus of the Christian life, rather than knowing and serving Christ, the Word Made Flesh, in this world.
 
For this is the world that the Word came to redeem. So to read the Christmas story correctly, to read the gospel correctly, we must reorient ourselves to the direction of the story of God’s involvement with creation. This story moves from heaven to earth rather than from earth to heaven.
 
This change in orientation can transform our thinking about this feast as well as the whole of Jesus’ life and ministry. Jesus did not come simply to get us into heaven after death - although that is certainly important. But just as important, he came so that he might bring the life of heaven to earth.
 
He is the one through whom the fullness of God’s grace and truth enters our world. This is God’s most loving act. The Word, who was with God from all eternity, beyond space and time, enters our space and time so that the life of God could flood our world.
 
God reaches out to us in love and rescues us from the power of sin and death for one reason – He loves us. He does not reach out to us because we are good or worthy. He reaches out, and comes among us in flesh and blood, because he loves us.
 
In the Word Made Flesh God has brought the glad tidings of heaven to earth. He comes to those who are held captive to any kind of personal or societal struggle. He comes to people who are filled with joy as well as those who are burdened by sorrow. He comes to those who worship here each Sunday as well as to those who are here infrequently. He comes so that all of us might be caught up in the life of God right now.
 
And so may all of us, gathered on this Christmas morning, nurture hearts of gratitude for such love. May such love inspire us to reach out to those in need so that they might get a glimpse of heaven on earth.  May such love make all of us messengers of the glad tidings of peace and salvation that our world so desperately needs to hear. 
 
With grateful hearts, we turn to the Table of Thanksgiving, the Table of the Eucharist, this sacred altar. Here the Word Made Flesh comes to us now to feed us with his very body and blood.
 
May our sharing in this sacrament plunge us into the life of heaven, right now, this Christmas day!

Father Gary F. Lazzeroni