Am I worth it?

There used to be a cosmetics advert that ending with a line saying that I am.

It probably meant the product being advertised was quite expensive!

But seriously, am I worth it?

Pope Saint Leo the Great  (AD c.400 – 461) wrote some wonderful homilies about Christmas. One of the most powerful things he said is that the true meaning of Christmas helps us to realise the wonder of what it is to be a human being.

We take our humanity for granted – after all we share it with billions of other people. But it is worth stopping and pondering what a tremendous thing it is to be human - with our capacity to love, to hope, to trust, to share, to feel compassion, to think and to give of ourselves for others. We can see these powers in the animal world but they are present in us to such a huge degree and what’s more we recognise them in ourselves and in others.

We believe that the dignity of human nature is one of the wonders of creation. It is important to think about that when we look at the beauty of flowers and trees or when we gaze into starry skies. We are one of the great wonders of the world.

It is often at the moment a baby is born that this truth really hits us. A mother and father staring at their tiny child are filled with a rush of emotion which seems to rise out of a well-spring deep in their nature. At the same time it leads them to wonder at the amazing idea that this perfection of life should happen at all. Yet it happens every day as child after child is given to the human family.

Sadly even as we rejoice in the birth of another child we know that for every human being there will be not only laughter and love but also tears and rejection. We are all too familiar with the fact that we are not completely perfect and no matter how much we may try we will often make a mess of things.

But the birth of Jesus is our hope because God has come to ‘restore’ humanity. The coming of Jesus is really the centre of the long story of the human race because his whole purpose is to mend and heal us so that we can be truly happy and truly loving.

There is something even greater. This restoration that Jesus brings about is ‘more’ wonderful than the creation in the first place. It is summed up beautifully in the last line of the prayer where it asks that we may share in his divinity. The whole point of God becoming human is so that just as he shares our humanity we in our turn may come to share in his divinity.

You will have recognised the line. It is said silently at every Mass by the priest as he mixes water and wine in the chalice. Centuries ago the Church very deliberately took Pope Leo’s words for Christmas and put them on the lips of the priest to be said every day.

It is in connection with what the wine is to become – Jesus Christ. We understand that in Mass we share in Jesus Christ and as we do this he shares with us his divine life.