| Christian, remember your dignity |
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Dearly
beloved, today our Savior is born; let us rejoice. Sadness should have
no place on the birthday of life. The fear of death has been swallowed
up; life brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness.
No one is shut out from this joy; all share the same
reason for rejoicing. Our Lord, victor over sin and death, finding no
man free from sin, came to free us all. Let the saint rejoice as he sees
the palm of victory at hand. Let the sinner be glad as he receives the
offer of forgiveness. Let the pagan take courage as he is summoned to
life.
In the fullness of time, chosen in the unfathomable
depths of God’s wisdom, the Son of God took for himself our common
humanity in order to reconcile it with its creator. He came to overthrow
the devil, the origin of death, in that very nature by which he had
overthrown mankind.
And so at the birth of our Lord the angels sing in joy: Glory to God in the highest, and they proclaim peace to men of good will
as they see the heavenly Jerusalem being built from all the nations of
the world. When the angels on high are so exultant at this marvelous
work of God’s goodness, what joy should it not bring to the lowly hearts
of men?
Beloved, let us give thanks to God the Father, through
his Son, in the Holy Spirit, because in his great love for us he took
pity on us, and when we were dead in our sins he brought us to life with Christ,
so that in him we might be a new creation. Let us throw off our old
nature and all its ways and, as we have come to birth in Christ, let us
renounce the works of the flesh.
Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you
share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base
condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a
member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of
darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.
Through the sacrament of baptism you have become a
temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive away so great a guest by evil
conduct and become again a slave to the devil, for your liberty was
bought by the blood of Christ.
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