The True Meaning of Christmas

Fr. James Rooney

“Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people...”

We are all familiar with this famous passage of Scripture, and every year, in the weeks preceding Christmas, we hear it read and sung in any number of Christmas plays and hymns. We all know, of course, that it refers to the birth of Jesus Christ, He who is considered by Christians to be the Savior of the world. However, most Christians focus upon the death and resurrection of Christ as the pivotal events in the Gospel, and consider the “good news” to be the resurrection. How can His birth be “good news?”     

In theological and philosophical circles, a common term which defines Deity is the word “transcendence.” Transcendence means to “go beyond” and refers, in theology, to the fact that God, in His essence of Godhead, is greater than anything we can imagine Him to be. As so many ancient Christian writers have pointed out, God transcends [is greater than] whatever we can say of Him, and if we can somehow grasp that notion, He transcends that too. In fact, the essence of God is pure transcendence.  As we would say in Orthodox theology, and the Bible bears out this position [Job 42:3, John 1:18, Romans 1:20, 1 Timothy 1:17, 6:16] God is, in His essence, unknowable.

This has led one theologian to state that, philosophically, agnosticism is the highest form of human religion, since it’s main tenet is the absolute transcendence of God.  However, if agnosticism were absolutely true, we humans would be the most pitiable species on the earth, since we alone would be capable of being aware of a Being whom we also could not begin to know or understand.    

Consider; transcendence could very well be the highest philosophical/religious concept, yet it renders us incapable of having any meaningful relationship with the notion of God, since whatever He is and wants is unattainable to us. This means then, that we can never really know what our purpose is in this life or what God expects of us, and we can certainly never know God. Whatever we can say about Deity will simply be our opinions as to what is true. We can  be so close to Truth, and yet be so far away, and all religions ultimately become futile attempts to know the unknown! Can such a concept REALLY be the truest form of human religion?

There IS another side of this theological story, however, and it is this. The notion of God’s transcendence is real, and while we cannot know God as He is, we CAN know Him if He makes Himself known on a level comprehensible by us. God, Who is our Maker, knows what we CAN comprehend. Has He then, ever made Himself known in such a way? Indeed He has, and that is what Christmas is all about.     

“Christmas” derives from the name given to the Christian celebration of the Nativity of Jesus Christ. In other words, the Mass is celebrated in honor of the birth, and manifestation,  of Christ. It is the “Christ Mass”, the commemoration of the One who is God Incarnate, God made flesh,  or God made man. God has made Himself known in a form we humans can fathom, humanness, and He has revealed Himself in our own likeness [with the exception of sin, which is NOT human].  If we truly want to know God, if we want to transcend the unknowing of agnosticism and the ultimate failure of human philosophy, we must look to the story of God Incarnate, the story of Jesus Christ, the story of God’s self-revelation. 

Christmas is the celebration of the story that God no longer eludes us by His transcendence, but makes Himself available to us. By making Himself known, by coming to us,  He makes His Truth and expectations known, and we, who long for life with God, can now follow, our paths lit by His self-revelation. If we enter into the experience of what God has revealed to us, and abandon the futility of unknowing, or knowing falsely, we will begin to experience a true encounter in the knowledge of God. Transcendence will no longer be a term referring to the chasm between our knowledge and God’s existence, but a word which describes the magnitude of the spiritual journey which we have just entered. It is this experience for which we give thanks when we celebrate the Mass of Christ, or Christmas. “Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people...”