Christmas Begins with Mercy, Not Decorations

The readings for this homily: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/122325.cfm

Christmas does not begin when the stores say it does. It begins with prayer. As Fr. Chris Alar, MIC explains, the Church enters Christmas at Vespers on Christmas Eve, because the mystery we celebrate is not sentimentality but the Incarnation itself — God entering history to heal what humanity could never repair on its own.

Why did God become man? Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches that it was fitting, because the rupture caused by sin was so total that only God could heal it, yet justice required that humanity offer the remedy. The answer was not condemnation but mercy. Mercy is love encountering suffering and acting. From the moment of the Fall, God responded not with rejection but with a promise — the gift of a Mother and the coming of a Savior (Gen 3:15).

This is Divine Mercy in its purest form. God sees suffering and acts, not from obligation but from love. The Incarnation bridges the infinite divide between God and man, a bridge completed when Christ gives Himself to us sacramentally. Christmas reaches its fullness not in nostalgia, but in the Eucharist — when God enters us as He once entered the world.

The Church prolongs this mystery through the Octave of Christmas and the full Christmas season, reminding us that this mercy is not fleeting. Mystics testify that more souls are released from Purgatory at Christmas than any other time, because Christ’s coming in the flesh repairs what sin destroyed.

Prepare well. Worship deeply. Receive Him worthily. Christmas is mercy made visible.