Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord
One of the questions I am commonly asked is what I do on my days off. And when I get the chance, I like to see a good movie (when there are good movies out). In early November I saw a movie called “Hacksaw Ridge.” It’s based on a true story about a Seventh-Day Adventist, Pfc. Desmond T. Doss, who wants to be a medic in the Army during World War II. Unfortunately, the Army makes a mistake (even though, as one character states, the Army doesn’t make mistakes), and he is assigned to an infantry division. I don’t want to ruin the movie for you, but I will say that at one point during the movie, as Private Doss is stationed at a Pacific island, his division tries to take an elevated position, Hacksaw Ridge, which the Japanese have held on to despite multiple sorties. As the healthy soldiers evacuate after being pushed back, again, by the Japanese, Doss states, at the top of that ridge, “Lord, help me get one more.” And he rushes back, into enemy territory, to try to save injured members of his division. He pulls them back, one at a time, and lowers them down the ridge, and then always goes back to find another soldier while saying, “Lord, help me get one more.”
Now, it might seem odd to talk about a war movie on Christmas Eve/Day. And this movie is certainly not a Christmas movie. It’s Rated R for good reason: it’s one of the bloodiest movies I’ve seen in a while. Children should not see it. But that line has stuck with me since I saw it: “Lord, help me get one more.”
The Letter to the Hebrews states that, “In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he has spoken to us through the Son.” All of the Old Testament was a story about God seeking His people, who had fled Him because of their sins, and the people seeking God, who was no longer able to walk among them because of their sins. All of the Old Testament pointed to God ending this separation by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, the Word through whom all things were made, as St. John says in the Prologue of his account of the Gospel. It is as if Jesus, God-made-man, God-with-us, was saying about us to His heavenly Father, “Lord, help me get one more.” We were not injured in a pitched battle, but were beat up by our sins and Satan, who enticed us into evil, but then accused us after we gave into temptation. We could not save ourselves, and we were dying in the battlefield of the world. So Jesus came to us to save us. He came for all of us, but we can also say He came for each one of us individually. We are the one more Jesus came to help.
Jesus helped us by being the light to those who walked in darkness, by destroying the yoke of sin and death which enslaved us, by being born as a defenseless child in a part of the world that no one cared about. Seeing how wretched we were, how lost we were, how injured we were, Jesus could not help but enter our world of sin and sorrow, though He had no sin Himself, and give us the healing, without which our souls would perish eternally.
“Lord, help me get one more,” was fulfilled in the Blessed Virgin Mary, in Joseph, Jesus’ foster-father, in Zechariah, in Elizabeth, in the shepherds, in the magi, and in all those who came into contact with Jesus. Jesus, whether as an infant at His Nativity, or as a man in His earthly ministry, or hanging on the cross in the sacrifice that put an end to sin and death, came to offer every person the gift of eternal salvation. Jesus came to rescue us from Hacksaw Ridge.
But Jesus offering to help us didn’t end when He ascended into heaven. Jesus established a Church to continue His saving work, by the power of the Holy Spirit. He gave His apostles, who gave to their successors, the bishops, and their assistants, the priests, the authority to act in His name. They are the ones now who are called to live out, “Lord, help me get one more.” As long as there is a human on earth who has not come into contact with Jesus, Jesus remains on Hacksaw Ridge to help one more.
Tonight/Today, as at every Mass, Jesus comes to us under the appearance of bread and wine, which are truly the Body and Blood of Jesus. Every time Mass is celebrated, Jesus becomes flesh once more, and so says to the Father, “Lord, help me get one more.” He offers to heal our wounds through sacramental confession, and then gives us the food that strengthens us, because we are allowed to partake of Jesus’ own divinity, and puts us on the road to heaven, where there is no more battle, no more Hacksaw Ridge.
If you’re here tonight/today as a Catholic who attends Mass every week, Jesus is here to heal you and strengthen you; He is here to save you. If you’re here tonight/today as a Catholic who has been away from the Church or doesn’t come that often, Jesus loves you no less, and wants to heal you through the Sacrament of Penance, and strengthen you through the Eucharist; He is here to save you. If you’re here tonight/today as a visitor who is not one with us in our Catholic faith, Jesus loves you no less, and is still seeking you on the battlefield to bring you into a full relationship with Him, and heal and strengthen you; He is here to save you. Tonight/today, Jesus says to our heavenly Father about each and every one of us: “Lord, help me get one more.”