GREATNESS COMES THROUGH THE PATH OF HUMILITY A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

GREATNESS COMES THROUGH THE PATH OF HUMILITY

A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

Fr Luke A Veronis

Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

One day the disciples of Jesus were arguing with one another about who is the greatest, who is the first among His followers. Can you imagine that? The apostles of Jesus debating on who among them is the best, the first, the greatest. It’s a bit shocking to think of this especially when we lift up the saints as models for us to imitate in our Christian walk. And yet, it reveals to us how the chosen twelve, together with the inner circle of female disciples who followed Jesus, were men and women like us, with their own egos, insecurities, temptations for power, desires for authority, and their particular struggle for holiness. Saints, throughout their lives, were on a journey toward spiritual perfection, struggling up the Divine Ladder of Ascent, just as we are all on a similar journey.

So, one day, the disciples are arguing amongst themselves who is the greatest, the first of the apostles when Jesus happens to walk in on them. He asks, “What were you talking about?” Now, can you imagine how embarrassed they must have felt. They witnessed how Jesus was the most humble and unassuming rabbi they ever met. He did not demand or expect any seat of honor or privilege like other religious leaders of His day. He lived simply among the most common of people, associating with all types of people. He traveled around as an itinerant preacher with no place to call His home. He had no possessions or wealth. He even was rejected and despised by the people of power all around him. Yet, throughout His teachings, He emphasized how blessed are the meek, the humble, and the child-like. These would enter the kingdom of heaven before the proud and arrogant. The last would be first, he often repeated. Unless we become like a humble, unassuming, innocent child, no one will enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Now why do I begin my Christmas sermon with a topic that seems quite unrelated to the Christmas story? Well, because this Christmas message is all about being last and humble. This spirit is relevant to the Good News of Great Joy that comes into the world through Christ’s birth.

Jesus tells us that if we want to be first under His reign, then we must accept to be last. If we want to become great, then we must become servants of others. This sounds like crazy advice in our contemporary setting, and yet, it was just as crazy during the time of Christ. Who wants to be last? Who wants to serve others? Who wants to be humble and meek?

The world proclaims a different message. To be great means to have a position of power. To be a leader means to assert one’s authority over others. To be happy means we must control our own fate. “I am the greatest,” the athletes and the politicians boast. “I am the richest” the billionaires show off with their latest excessive exploits. “I am the most powerful” the autocrats of the world will cry out.

During the time of Jesus, to be great was to be Caesar Augustus, the Roman Emperor, the most powerful leader at the time of Jesus’ birth. His empire ruled the world. Or to be King Herod, the ruler of Judea, who ruled over his own region of the empire. Or to be Annas, the high priest of all Israel, one of the most important figures among the Jewish people.

Yet the ways of God are not the ways of the world. Greatness is not judged by the same standard of the world. Christ is constantly calling His followers to a path that is counter-cultural, going against the grain of society. For the kingdom of God is not the kingdom of this world.

Jesus’ eternal message of Divine Love is a path of loving God above all else and loving our neighbor as ourselves, including loving our enemies and forgiving those who hurt us. Such Divine Love means putting others before ourselves, placing God and neighbor before our own.

Christmas reveals this Divine Condescension, how God, the Eternal One, the Beginning and End of all history, the One who Is, and who Was, and who Is To Come, the Lord Almighty, humbles Himself for the salvation of the world. Although He is omnipotent and all-powerful, He accepts to be born as a defenseless, helpless child, conceived in the womb of a Virgin and brought into the world like every other little infant. The King of the Universe accepts to be born the child of a poor village woman. The Giver of Life accepts to be born in a humble, dark cave surrounded by animals. The Lord Almighty humbles Himself right from the beginning, from his entrance into this world, by revealing to the world the path that He would take throughout His life, and the road which He call His disciples to follow.

Jesus Christ reveals this path of extreme humility from the moment of His birth, and then proceeds throughout His life to show that greatness doesn't come from power but from self-emptying love, it doesn’t come from control out from sacrifice, it doesn’t come from demanding subservience from others but from serving and loving others.

Christmas reveals to the world Divine Love. Christ showed us the path by first modeling the divine way of salvation. He chose from His birth to be last, and continued to show through His thirty years of quiet, humble service in Nazareth, through His three year ministry of proclaiming the Good News and ushering in the Kingdom of God, through His words of wisdom and actions of love, that humility is the path toward greatness. From the moment of His birth until the moment of His death on the Cross, Christ revealed how Divine Love is all about giving and sacrificially serving others with joy.

Christmas is the prime example of our Lord Jesus beginning His life according to what He would teach His disciples to follow throughout their lives. "If anyone would be first, they must be last of all and servants of all." The entire purpose of the Incarnation was for the Almighty to lower Himself and become one of us, a part of His creation, in order to lift us up to His glory, for us to become one with Him. Yet, this path of union with God can come only happen when we learn to walk with him, imitate Him, follow His path of Divine Love – of sacrificial giving, of humble living.

Christmas not only reminds us, but proclaims to us in a magnificent way, the path toward greatness. It is through becoming the least, becoming the last, understanding greatness through the Divine vision of humility. The defenseless baby in the cave, surrounded by animals, entering into the world unknown by the world, except for the shepherds and the wise men.

Let us follow this path toward greatness by humbly becoming last and servants of all for the glory of God.

Christ is Born! Glorify Him!