The (Deeper) Meaning of Christmas

If you remember from the story of the Prodigal Son, you will remember that the son left his father and went, as the Gospel says, to a “distant land.” But where is this place?
The Gospel doesn’t say and it doesn’t say because one cannot name it. It is not a place that one could find on a map and the distance traversed by the son is not a distance measurable in steps or miles.
He could have stayed under his Father’s roof and even be in his presence and yet be “in a distant land.” For the distance of which the Gospel speaks is the unbridgeable distance opened up by the son’s claim to his autonomy.
It is, in other words, the distance of forgetting his Father; forgetting that he has a Father, which, in turn, amounts to forgetting that he owes his existence to his Father.
This distant land, the chasm, if you will, in which the prodigal son found himself is called sin. It is a land we often find ourselves in and, the most frightening aspect of this place is that, it is not a land that one visits but rather a land that one becomes.
The greatest tragedy of humankind is the chasm we experience between ourselves and God which is expressed and experienced by the chasms we create between ourselves and one another. It is the most serious problem of both humanity and of creation which we bear witness to with acts of malice such as bullying, with acts of ignorance such as pollution, and with acts of deliberate violence such as terrorism.
God created the world in order for all of creation to commune with him. He wanted to introduce creation into his own life so that it may become glorified though him. But such a blessing must be accepted freely for it is not possible for creation to become forcibly blessed, glorified, and made divine.
And this free decision was entrusted to humanity, who is a microcosm containing within himself all of creation since it is only humanity that has the ability to join the physical creation to the heavenly creation of God. As we know, however, humanity decided that this communion with God should not come to pass, and thus, the chasm between God and the world widened.
But on Christmas Day a little over 2,000 years ago, we were given cause for joy because Christ was born precisely to bridge this chasm. With his incarnation he united those who were scattered and brought together a union of the created and uncreated world therefore bridging the chasm that was formed by the sin of humanity.
Even though Christ brought this solution to bridge the chasm, the freedom of humanity still allows for a chasm to exist. God respects our choice and he respects our freedom, but it is in light of this season of Christmas that we are reminded to take advantage of this freedom that we are given and to mend the bridges we have destroyed between one another; whether it be between old friends who had a falling out or family members who never got along, or even a co-worker you have a difficult time putting up with.
In mending these bridges with one another we allow ourselves to mend the bridge that leads to our eternal communion with God.
It is my sincerest hope that we all make every effort to at least bridge these small gaps which we have in our lives so that we all achieve unity of soul with one another.
Then we will have learned the deeper meaning of Christmas as we bear witness to the pre-eternal God humbling himself so much so as to become like us in order to show us this path away from divisions and towards unbreakable unity.
Mercado is a student of Canon Law originally from Court House. He is studying Eastern Canon Law at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome after having studied theology in Boston.