Dec 24: Jesus Saves Us from Our Sins

Christoph Weigel: The Angel Appears to Joseph
Biblia ectypa: Bildnussen aus Heiliger Schrifft Alt und Neuen Testaments, 1695

Vigil Mass of the Nativity of the Lord

Gospel: Mt 1:18-25

“Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins (NRSV, Mt 1:20b-21).”

Father in heaven, as the author of Matthew’s gospel tells us, Joseph learned from the angel in a dream that your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is our Savior. He is the one who saves us from our sins.

Father, you are without bounds. Your infinite being is one with your act. Your being is the very act that begets your Word the Son, and with the Son spirates the Holy Spirit. It is the same one act that creates the world, and within the world sanctifies and forgives. This act which is your being, Lord, knows no here or there, now or then. It just is.

For me, Lord, in my encounter with you, it is the same one act that is you that called me into existence in the womb, that summoned me at that same moment to share in divine life, and that empowered me to say “yes” even though I was still without language or the natural ability to reason. It is the same one act that sanctified me under the sign of water in baptism, that nourishes me in the Eucharist with the communion of saints with whom I share the same life, and indeed summons all of us to further growth in your divine life in every moment of our existence.

My meeting you, Lord, at every moment of my life, is always a response to your one act that cannot be divided. You resist my turning away from you in sin, you challenge me to return to you, and you extend your forgiveness, all in the same one act.

Every human being that has ever existed, exists and will exist, in every time and every place, meets you as I do at each of life’s moments in this same one act.

Father, it is through your Word that you create and sanctify, through your Word in the unity of the Holy Spirit. In Jesus Christ, that Word has become flesh, one of us, here in the world, God incarnate, God fleshed out in a human body.

It is through Jesus then, because your being is your act, which cannot be divided, that you create and sanctify the world. Jesus is the embodiment in space and time of what you are and do, Father, from all eternity. Jesus is the savior, therefore, of every person who has ever lived from the very beginning up to now and will live up to the very end.

We rejoice, therefore, Father, in the birth of our Savior because he is your incarnation, because he is for us the Sacrament, the effective visible sign of that life which you offer to all of humanity at every moment of history and in which you challenge all of us constantly to grow.

Alleluia. Amen.