6 January 2021
Wednesday after the Epiphany of the Lord
On the one hand, it is easy to make fun of the apostles. They had just witnessed a miraculous sharing of food, and they would not understand Jesus walking on the water because “they had not understood” anything they had experienced (Mk. 6:52). Yet we ourselves have experienced the miracle of Christmas, of God coming to be one of us to help us fall in love with Him, an event far more wonderous than a multiplication of food. If we are honest, our own hearts are as hardened to the miracle of Christmas as the apostles’ hearts were to the miracle of multiplication.
What keeps us from not understanding the gift of Christmas? In the end, it the belief that we did not really need this gift. We said yesterday that we are so incapable of loving God, that God must come to us to elicit that love. To appreciate what God has done, we do have to appreciate how unloving we often are, even to the One who gave us everything. Even if we are not actively hostile to God, we are regularly lukewarm. The more we recognize how often we fail in our enthusiastic love for God, the more we will appreciate the gift of Christmas, and the more we will truly understand this gift.