faith in action

A very merry Christmas

General Secretary Susan Henry-Crowe offers this Christmas reflection.


One winter night, a 2-year-old was sitting with his parents bundled up on the porch with their beloved Bernese Mountain dog, Lou. Looking at the stars, this 2-year-old in his little voice turned to Lou and said, “What you doing, Lou, looking at the dark?”

It is a sweet reminder that as Advent turns toward Christmas new birth and life will come.

For a world turned upside down, there is a deep longing for God to intervene. The obsession with power and profit, greed and ambition is deep. Our deepest longing is for God to intervene in history, decisively, to bring redemption to the people. This longing for God to act is palpable. For 65 million migrants and refugees across the world in exile and alienated from their homeland, living among foreigners, suffering and estranged, there is the deepest desire was for freedom and redemption. For those escaping poverty or displaced by climate change, there is yearning for relief and healing. For those grieving losses, there is an aching desire for comfort.

We all have experienced times when our world was changed forever. Our world can be turned upside down with the death of a loved one, the loss of a child, a mental health illness, no money for health care, a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, a broken relationship, the loss of a job, an unexpected move, no money to continue school. It is in this shattered darkness, vulnerability, poverty of spirit, the need within us, the conflict that surrounds us to which the Christ Child comes.

Archbishop Oscar Romero in his Christmas Eve homily in 1978 said,

“No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need of God – for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit, there can be no abundance of God.”

For all of this brokenness, there is One who does come; One who comes with every loss, who crosses every border, traverses deserts, rows oceans in rubber rafts, enters broken hearts and gathers us up when the world is shattered and broken. There is One who comes to offer healing, redemption, wholeness, and salvation in this time. As we hold this One, healing, restoration and new life are being breathed into the world.