"Christmas is a child of Palestinian Jewish parents desperately fleeing politically ordered genocide.
Christmas is a dark-skinned refugee, born amid the smell of damp straw and animal dung, because no human-worthy welcome could be found.
Christmas is a poor, itinerant, street preaching rabbi, living off the generosity of those around him.
Christmas is a compassionate caregiver, feeding and clothing and healing whoever crossed his path.
Christmas is a liberal activist fighting for the poor, condemning violence, shunning material wealth, and calling the world to live sacrificially for the common good.
It is the weary father of four taking refuge from ICE in a suburban church building.
It is the exhausted family sprinting through barren borderlands under the cover of darkness.
It is the transgender teenager trying to feel at home within their own body, while being terrorized by lawmakers and preachers from without.
It is the homeless veteran starving to death on the corners of its opulent megachurches.
It is the grievously ill toddler whose parents have exhausted their resources trying to keep him breathing.
It is the young black man terrified during a traffic stop, because he has seen this viral body cam video a hundred times before.
We who seek to emulate Jesus and guard humanity need to speak this truth...
We need to fight for the sick child, the migrant family, the transgender teenager, the homeless veteran, the young black man; because when we do, we are perpetuating the heart of the Middle Eastern child, born under duress in the place where livestock dined — the one who turned the world upside down in the name of a compassion that knew no borders and a love that had no walls."
...and finally a quote from Thomas Merton:
“Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited.
But because he cannot be at home in it,
because he is out of place in it,
and yet he must be in it,
His place is with the others for whom there is no room.
His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power,
because they are regarded as weak,
those who are discredited,
who are denied status of persons,
who are tortured, bombed and exterminated.
With those for whom there is no room,
Christ is present in this world.”
This Christmas, may we live with "a compassion that knows no borders, with a love that has no walls," and so become "Christ present in this world."
Peace and Blessings!
