A personal relationship with the Christ of Christmas

Life in our modern world can be a terribly impersonal experience. But then Christmas rolls around, and we think once more how we care for certain people and how empty life would be without them.

How they sustain our courage, brighten our way, and make life livable. At this season of the year, we are reminded that if anything in us is worthwhile, it has come from personal relationships.

In this atmosphere, when our hearts are made sensitive by the spirit of Christmas, it ought to be easier for us to think of Christianity as a personal relationship.

There's a Gospel reading which tells how an angel visited the young woman and told her that she was going to have a baby sent from God. And that was the beginning of our Christian faith.

It all started with a baby. What could be more personal than that? When the baby grew to manhood, he gathered around himself a group of followers, whom he called friends.

They lived together for the better part of three years, sharing their joys and sorrows. Then at last, he "laid down his life for his friends." There is nothing more personal than that.

From beginning to end, all through the New Testament, Christianity is a very personal thing. Yet many people today have a great difficulty thinking of themselves in a personal relationship with Christ.

They may love the stories of his life, but those are ancient history. They may even think of him as the Son of God and the Savior of the world, but correct theology and a personal relationship are not necessarily one and the same.

What is needed and what, so often, is lacking is an inward, transforming awareness of personal fellowship with Christ.

The angel, who brought to Mary the glad tiding of a son, promised her that "he will rule over the house of Jacob forever and his reign will be without end." In other words, the presence and power of Christ would not be limited to the few brief years of his public ministry.

His rule would be forever, and his reign without end. I assume that includes us. Forever is a long, long time. Could it be that even now people can still live in intimate fellowship with Christ?

This Christmas time, let us entertain the thought that such a relationship with him is not outside our possibilities, that it is no mystical experience reserved only for the saints, but an available resource for ordinary people.

Many of our outward fellowships are beyond our control. We don't always get to choose the people with whom we work, the people with whom we go to school, the people with whom we visit at a party.

Some of those decisions are made for us. But when it comes to inward fellowships, the personalities with whom we keep company on the inside, those choices are entirely our own.

Make no mistake about it, we all keep such company, we all have such fellowships. Have you not found yourself engaged in an imaginary conversation with a friend who is not there?

At least, in a physical and bodily sense he is not there. But you know that friend, you know how he thinks. You understand his system of values. You are reasonably sure of his reaction to a given situation.

So when that situation arises in your life, you talk with him about it. Despite his physical absence, you draw upon his insight and you share his strength.

And someone may doubt the significance of such companionship because it involves the use of imagination. Well, I would be slow, to deny the worth and meaning of imagination. It is one of our most noble gifts and how we use it, in large measure, determines the quality of our lives.

By the power of imagination, we can walk in the company of the saints. By that same power, we can wallow in the gutters of sordid living. The choice is ours, but which way we choose will have a tremendous impact on the way we live.

Only a fool would condescend to the power of imagination. To a large extent it is our mental images, the thoughts we think, the inner fellowships we keep, that either make or ruin our lives.

With this power at our disposal, we need not leave Christ back there in history. What does it matter that he is not with us in a visible, physical sense? We can saturate our souls with his thoughts. We can draw up his insights. We can share his strength. Call it imagination if you like, it is nonetheless real and how we use it determines the quality of our living.

What about our world today? We are absorbed in some tremendous events. Powerful nations with powerful armies and devastating weapons occupy our thoughts. These things are critically important, but we need to remember that they too will pass.

And when they are gone, the gentle Christ will still rule and reign over the hearts and minds of people. Our hopes and dreams for a better world seem like babes in a manger.

They are so small and so frail that they appear in danger of destruction at the hands of brute power. Can it be that the future really belongs to these hopes and dreams? Such a thought seems incredible.

But it also seemed incredible that first Christmas Day. Let us hold onto our hopes. Let us be true to this ideal that Christ believed in and died for. He is with us yet and always will be. The future belongs to him. Happybirthday to the Jesus who lives within us.

Msgr. Frank C. Wissel, D.Min., is pastor at St. Mary Church in Greenwich and the founding director of the St. Maximilian Kolbe House of Studies for boys in Bridgeport. You can reach him at 869-9393.