“Beloved, let us love one another, for love comes from God.  Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. . . This is how God showed His love among us:  He sent His one and only Son into the world.” 1 John 4

“And we are put on earth a little space, That we might learn to bear the beams of love.” William Blake

In the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions today is the Feast of St. John the Apostle.  He is known as “John the Beloved” or “The disciple whom Jesus loved.”  He is the one pictured as reclining on Jesus’ breast in the depiction of the Last Supper.  His Gospel, along with the first epistle that bears his name, speaks most clearly and cogently about love.  And therefore it is not surprise that his the most loved of all the Gospels by the Celts.  It is this theme of love that best sums up the message and the meaning of Christmas.  I wonder if perhaps this is the reason that the second day after Christmas was reserved and observed as his day.

Regardless of what one believes about God, or how they do (or don’t) observe Christmas, everyone knows of love.  It is impossible to have a beating heart and not know love in some form, because love is at the heart of God, and we as God’s creation are His heart.  In creation God gives us the heart of the divine.  Both St. John and Blake make this point in the quotes above.  To be human is to be love.  We may forget that love, forsake that love, squander that love, or do our best to escape that love, but as long as our hearts beat we bear the beam of God’s love.

Love is God’s gift to us.  God’s greatest gift.  Love is, by its very nature, pure gift.  We exchange gifts as a means of expressing and sharing the love of God that lives within us, whether we realize it or not.  This is the beauty of the title “Emmanuel”, which means “God with us” that John so eloquently expounds upon in his writings and which direct our eyes to God’s greatest Gift.

The gifts at Christmas may have great monetary value, or hardly any at all.  The most meaningful are those that come from the heart.  I received many of those this year. I hope you did too.  One was a donation to the Ray of Hope ministry for street children living in Cambodia.  Another was coffee mugs, one of which has a photo of my two grandchildren, the other which reads “The only thing better than having you as my Dad is my children having you as their Grandpa.”  But the most precious gift was being able to spend time with those whom I love.  It is for many the gift most cherished during this time of Covid, and for others the gift most missed. 

Our human love, and the expressions of it, can far too often be incomplete, unappreciated, even self-serving.  As C.S. Lewis wrote, Love can be, and often-times is, mercenary.  We give love, or something masquerading as such, in order to receive something in return.  Sometimes we keep a tally, a love-ledger if you will, that tracks what others give or do to us or for us, and in turn all that we’ve done for them.  And then we expect somehow to be repaid, or to be able to collect on what we believe is owed to us.  We even do that with God.  But though it is human, it illustrates the disparity between God’s love and ours.  For the pure love of God expects nothing in return, keeps no tally.  St Paul summed it up best in 1 Corinthians 13.  I believe the beauty of God is that God loves all that is most unlovable, and everyone that is incapable of reciprocating that love.  That type of love is what we can only hope to aspire to.   

God is Love! And Love is Love.  In a sense it is one and the same and far beyond our human abilities to describe, define, or delineate.  And that is what makes the Love of God and the Love of Christmas even more invaluable. At the end of the day Christmas is not only all about love, Christmas IS Love. Merry Christmas Love!