Nativity of the Lord–Second Mass
How many of us here have been in George Bailey’s shoes? Maybe not wanting to jump into a freezing river off a bridge, but wondering if our life has made a difference, or if anyone would really notice if we didn’t exist. Maybe we feel like they would be better if we didn’t.
Clarence, George’s angel, grants, if even for small while, George’s wish and shows George just what an effect he had on others: from his family, to those who benefited from his reasonable loans, to local citizens. Spoiler alert: George realizes just the impact he has had on others’ lives. He recognizes that when one gives of himself, when one treats others as human beings and not as means to gain power or money, one becomes rich, no matter how much or how little one has. George recognizes that, despite what seems like earthly failures, he is, as his brother Harry calls him, “the richest man in town.” Or, as his angel, Clarence, writes in the front cover of his Bible, “No man is a failure who has friends.”
How poor we humans were, even the Chosen People of God. We found ourselves trapped in cycles of sin. The greatest king God had provided for His people, King David, was long dead, and his descendants no loner occupied a throne. Even the voice of prophets had fallen silent. A foreign, pagan power controlled the Holy City and daily oppressed the ones whom God had promised never to abandon. We walked in darkness. We were poor.
And God revealed to us that we were not poor, as long as we enjoyed friendship with Him. As long as we remained close to God, we had everything, because “everything belongs to you…and you to Christ, and Christ to God,” as St. Paul says in his first epistle to the Corinthians.
But it was not only the Chosen People who felt the sting of their poverty. Even we, who have been washed clean from original sin and made the adopted children of God in Christ through Holy Baptism can feel like George Bailey. We can feel like we don’t add anything to society, or even our friends or family. Life gives us lemons, and we make sour faces.
The Good News is that God found us worth saving, though we had no worth in ourselves. The Good News of the Incarnation is the grand love story of God for His People, who, though they walked in darkness, God did not abandon, but illuminated. God doesn’t have to show us what life would be like without us; He shows us that we are worth humbling Himself and taking on our frail humanity in order to prove His love for us. Our debt consists of much more than $8,000 that Uncle Billy lost and Mr. Potter took. But like the village that rallied around George Bailey, God gives us what we need so that our debt does not mean that we are lost to eternal bondage to sin and death. And unlike the fellow citizens of Bedford Falls, we didn’t do anything for God. He owed us nothing. And yet He still gave, up to and including the Precious Blood of His Beloved Son. If the donation of money from George Bailey’s neighbors signified their support for the banker who had carried them through the Great Depression, financed their homes and businesses, and saved them from foolish decisions, how much more does the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery show us just how much God supports us and loves us.
And this gift from God, the reason for Christmas, truly changed the world. Without Christ we don’t truly understand human dignity and individual liberties. Without Christ we mark time altogether differently. Without Christ we don’t have universities, hospitals, magnificent cathedrals, the scientific method, so many things that we take for granted. But, above all, without Christ we don’t have salvation, and the kingdom of heaven remains locked to us, which would be the saddest fact of all.
But God gives Himself to us, to prove just how much we mean to Him. Though we are poor, like the shepherds in Bethlehem, God calls us to Himself by the voices of other messengers, other angels, to let us know the good news that our lives have value beyond what we could ever imagine, no matter how good or how bad our lives seem to go.
One of the reasons that “It’s A Wonderful Life” continues to be a Christmas classic is because it tells a timeless truth on the silver screen: even when we are at our worst; even when life seems to crash down all around us; even when things seem the darkest; God loves us and values us and is willing to pay any price to save us and help us walk in the light. If I may be so bold, I would slightly change Clarence the angel’s words to George Bailey, as words that we should always keep at the front of our minds, not only at Christmas, but every day: “No man is a failure who has God as his friend”: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
