Homily for December 20, 2019

In a concentration camp during World War II, a Nazi guard was taunting his Jewish prisoner, who had been given the filthiest job in the camp: cleaning the toilets. Towering over the poor man, the guard looked down on him and sneered, “Where is your God now?”

The prisoner replied, “Right here with me; in the muck.”

That is the mystery of the Incarnation: God enters human history and embraces the human condition in all its messiness, in all its confusion, in all its anxiety, and in all its anguish.

God is Emmanuel – “God-is-with-us.” God does not give advice safely from the sidelines but is there with us in the “muck” of life. God does not take our suffering away but bears it with us and strengthens us to bear it. He does not remove the “muck” but lifts us out of it. God shows us how to transform the darkness into light, despair into hope, and death into life. +