Christmas: a Child is born to us

Christmas and childhood go closely together, and the celebration is therefore attractive even for those who do not believe that the child Jesus is God’s only begotten Son. I remember once, during a catechetical lesson about the Virgin Mary, asking some grade school children what you always have when you have a baby. I thought they would answer: a mother; and then I could talk about Jesus’ mother, the Virgin Mary. The young girl who answered first, however, said: diapers. With the clear-headedness of someone still herself a child, she knew what taking care of an infant demanded.

Adults sometimes project their own desires and projects on children, because children, just beginning life, can be imagined by others to be anything or anyone an adult wishes. Yet children will find their own voice, if they can find an adult to trust and rely upon. Living as a child is different from our memories of being a child, but most adults can remember feeling defenseless and yet trusting in a parent or another adult. For most adults, protecting children, putting the care of children before adult desires, is a happy duty, even when caring for children includes changing diapers.

The Archdiocese of Chicago has undertaken in recent months an extensive process designed to make every adult employed by the Church in any capacity a protector of children. Earlier programs for protecting children concentrated on teaching children to protect themselves against predators, especially sexual predators. The recently launched program puts the onus of protecting children where it belongs—on adults. The program is part of fulfilling the promises the bishops made two years ago when they adopted the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young people in the Church. When a child is betrayed by an adult, especially by someone who has been respected and trusted, the damage can be deep and long lasting. Part of the care of victims of sexual abuse by a priest or bishop or other minister of the Church includes offering therapy and spiritual counseling to try to repair the damage; but how much better it would be to prevent the abuse from ever occurring in the first place. This is what most victims say they want most of all: to prevent others from suffering what happened to them.

The most drastic form of child abuse is, of course, the killing of a child in its mother’s womb. One sign of hope this Christmas is the gathering recognition that abortion takes a human life, a child’s life. Especially at Christmas, however, this sin should lead no one to despair. The Church, herself a mother, forgives mothers and fathers and others involved in aborting a child. One who has been forgiven in sacramental confession is then free to pray to an aborted child for comfort and protection. The link is re-forged, and the child becomes a source of spiritual life for its parents.

Our news reports on warfare in Iraq, the Holy Land, parts of Africa and elsewhere become more poignant at Christmas when we reflect on how war affects children. Some children are killed or wounded, but all children in a war zone see their world destroyed. For the children’s sake, we need to intensify our prayers and work for peace this Christmas.

Writing about childhood in a letter on family life some years ago, Pope John Paul II said, “Acceptance, love, esteem, many-sided and united material, emotional, educational and spiritual concern for every child that comes into this world should always constitute a distinctive, essential characteristic of all Christians, in particular of the Christian family.” (Familiaris Consortio, 26) The spiritual care of children in Catholic families includes, first of all, their baptism within the first few weeks after their birth. The newborn child, a creature of God, becomes, when baptized in Christ, a son or daughter of the Father. At baptism, parents promise to raise their child in the faith, in the knowledge of who Christ is and of how he wants us to be his disciples in the Church. The Church sponsors schools and catechetical programs for the formation of children in the faith, but only about half of the Catholic children in the Cook and Lake counties are currently involved in any of these schools and programs. Seeing that a child can have a Catholic education in one of our schools, seeing to it that a child is regularly present for catechism, is one of the best Christmas presents one can give a Catholic child.

Those who live in Christ are always children in his kingdom. Dependence on Christ is the way to maturity in the spiritual life. Freedom is not found in isolation from Christ and others but in surrendering oneself to Christ, who surrendered himself for our salvation. Unless we become like little children, Christ tells us, we will have no part in the kingdom of heaven. When the divine son of God took on human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary, God showed the eternal significance of being born, the blessedness of coming forth from a life-bearing womb. Because God has become a child, all childhood is exalted in Christ. Pope St. Leo the Great said in the fifth century: “By his own beginning, Christ consecrated the early days of little ones.”

The paradox of Christian humanism lies, therefore, in God’s becoming anthropocentric so that his human creatures might become theocentric. Every child is a treasure for its parents; but, since a child comes from God, every child also reveals to us the promise of life with God without the distractions of our own projects and willfulness. No one comes to God without the heart of a child. In the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the entryway is so low that one has to stoop to get into the birthplace of the child Jesus. A Christmas rhyme sums it up: Because the Maker of us all lay with the cattle in a stall; because the Great comes to the small—I thank my God.”

Each day, but especially at Christmas, I thank God for each of you. Have a blessed Christmas.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago

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