Christmas and Communion

The Collect for this morning’s Mass quotes from a prayer prayed quietly by the priest at every Mass, as he mixes a drop of water into the wine in the chalice, praying “that we may come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”

Christmas, then, is the perfect time to meditate upon the gift of Christ’s presence in the Holy Eucharist. For just as the Word became flesh in a manger in Bethlehem, so Christ is given to us as “real food” in the Mass, as “the source and summit of the Christian life.” This is why we join our voices with the Christmas song of the angels at Mass today: “Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth.”

Both in the redemptive mystery of Christmas and by the flesh of the Son of Man which we receive in Holy Communion, we experience the mystery of God’s redemptive love: “For, by his Incarnation, he, the Son of God, has in a certain way united himself with each man. He worked with human hands; he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things save sin.”

Christmas and Holy Communion are really part of the same mystery, and a fulfilment of the vision of the Book of Revelation: “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them.”