The Message of the Christmas Season and the Challenge for an Engaged Advocacy Towards Societal Transformation

I deeply feel that the central theme of the celebration of Christmas Season is all about the integral, universal and all-inclusive salvation of humanity (and all sentient beings) from all forms of enslavement. The holy name of the Christ-child, Jesus means, “He who saves completely” (See St. Matthew 1:21). Therefore this all-inclusive, salvific, liberative and redemptive message of the Christmas celebration should be the basis of our pro-active response to God’s liberating act in the nativity of Christ in our midst. That the Living Word of God took on human flesh to dwell amongst us frail, weak and depraved humans is an unmerited act of God’s mercy and generosity to us; and this gratuitous divine act of God for us should strongly challenge our inhuman tendency towards bigotry, discrimination, prejudice, judgmentalism, cruelty, violence, sectarianism and exclusivism against our fellow humans.

This Christmas Season should remind us of the way how God values all human beings living on earth (and all sentient beings in the cosmos). As we celebrate His good and loving intentions for all His creatures, may we resolve to uphold God’s love and esteem for one another. Sadly across the world, there is so much violence, suffering and inequality, as well as oppression, discrimination and marginalization of women, children, the elderly, the Indigenous Peoples and peoples with disabilities. There is also discrimination against the LGBTQs, and there exists also much poverty and ecological degradations brought about by these monsters that greedy humans have created, which are called by the names “capitalism”, “imperialism” and “consumerism”.

As we celebrate the joy of God’s redemptive action and liberative purpose as manifested in the holy nativity of Jesus the Messiah, a more relevant and meaningful way of celebrating this Christmastide is by engaging in pro-active and redemptive actions that would affirm the intrinsic value of each human existent whom God have placed in our lives to nurture, love, protect and cherish. Often we hear in the divine liturgy that we are “the People of God”—this is the intrinsic meaning of what the Church is truly all about, that is “to be God’s people” doing the works of God wherever we are situated in life. The Church is the “People of God”; cooperator with Him in the integral redemption, all-inclusive liberation and holistic salvation of the world. In the words of that activist churchman and martyr of El Salvador, the late Archbishop Oscar Romero: “The Church does not exist solely for the selfish spiritual comfort of individuals, nor solely to get the pious yet salvation-obsessed individuals into the joys of heaven. To be ‘the Church’ means to be responsible for the environment and for the world-situation; and to work for the cause of genuine liberation, authentic justice and universal peace for one-and-all” (From the book, The Life of Archbishop Romero: Reflections for an Engaged Spirituality of Struggle; p. 96.).

This Christmas Season, we must therefore strive to give practical value to our celebration by protecting the vulnerable children especially the girl-children from physical, emotional and sexual abuses, by raising advocacy on behalf of people with disabilities, the homeless, the rural and urban poor, the brokenhearted and the lonely, the marginalized poor, the State-neglected Indigenous Peoples/Lumads, and those among us who appear fine and alright but are really depressed and sad deep inside. Our neglect to do whatever small things we can afford to alleviate the sufferings in others and our failure to help people who are within the ambit of our personal care and concern sadly show that we have not truly recognized and have not practically affirmed the value of all relational persons that come our way in the manner by which God intends for us to relate to them in love and in care. For this, we deeply need to ask God’s mercy and sincerely repent for this negligence on our part—that God may forgive us of our sins of omissions against others.

Warm greetings of a happy, blessed and humanity-affirming Christmas Season to everyone. May we become God’s Hands and Feet in our respective spheres of service in society, so we can truly cooperate with Him in the building-up and in the inauguration of His Kingdom/”Kin-dom” of peace, justice, freedom and equality in this benighted earth of ours. Amen, a thousand times Amen!