As Christmas is upon us, everyone is probably hurrying to finish up their Christmas shopping, wrapping presents, and getting ready to have a big family gathering, maybe even a big family dinner to share light and love with each other. But Christmas isn’t just about being with our family and getting presents – at its deepest core, it’s about remembering Christ and His teachings more than anything else. The teaching Christ emphasized more than any other was to love one another as He loved us, as we love our brothers and sisters, as we love ourselves, to love everyone, even our enemies… and in doing so, we’re instructed to take care of the poor, the hungry, the sick, the lonely, and “the least of these.”
Corinthians states between faith, hope, and love, that love is the greatest, which is a word used synonymously with the word charity, as seen in the various translations (Biblehub, 2016a). Matthew Henry, a protestant minister and author during the late 1600’s and early 1700’s in Whales and England, wrote in his published expanded Commentary on this scripture that:
13:8-13 Charity is much to be preferred to the gifts on which the Corinthians prided themselves. From its longer continuance. It is a grace, lasting as eternity. The present state is a state of childhood, the future that of manhood. Such is the difference between earth and heaven. What narrow views, what confused notions of things, have children when compared with grown men! Thus shall we think of our most valued gifts of this world, when we come to heaven. All things are dark and confused now, compared with what they will be hereafter. They can only be seen as by the reflection in a mirror, or in the description of a riddle; but hereafter our knowledge will be free from all obscurity and error. It is the light of heaven only, that will remove all clouds and darkness that hide the face of God from us. To sum up the excellences of charity, it is preferred not only to gifts, but to other graces, to faith and hope. Faith fixes on the Divine revelation, and assents thereto, relying on the Divine Redeemer. Hope fastens on future happiness, and waits for that; but in heaven, faith will be swallowed up in actual sight, and hope in enjoyment. There is no room to believe and hope, when we see and enjoy. But there, love will be made perfect. There we shall perfectly love God. And there we shall perfectly love one another. Blessed state! how much surpassing the best below! God is love, 1Jo 4:8,16. Where God is to be seen as he is, and face to face, there charity is in its greatest height; there only will it be perfected.
1 Corinthians 13:13 Commentaries (Biblehub, 2016a)
In Matthew 25, the Bible talks about feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, helping the poor, and emphasizes not being selfish, greedy, even the evil of charging interest to make money… and states that by these acts, whether one lives helping and caring for these people in society while alive, is how God will decide who’s going to heaven and hell precisely – by how we each cared for “the least of these” and whatever we do or fail to do to help and care for them, we do unto Him, for these are His beloved who “will inherit the earth” (Biblehub, 2016b).
So often presents, materialism in general, and other ego-driven things take the limelight in America, even at Christmas. We have forgotten what truly matters, because we’ve been distracted as a society by the sparkle and glitter in this world, that in the end, we will remember once again actually means so little. In fact, it has no value at all in the end, but we sell our integrity and souls while we’ve forgotten, turning our backs on our Divine Creator, from which we ALL came – ALL of earth and her inhabitants, not just some of us. We have forgotten that we all come from the same Source and belong to each other, that we’re all connected to one another, which science has now observed repeatedly is not only a metaphorical connection, but a literal connection to each other in quantum physics – it’s just not visible to the naked eye, sort of like energy or wind, yet it exists nonetheless (Science & Nonduality, 2016). It’s merely that our worldly eyes have fooled us into thinking we’re separate, and so we’ve not only forgotten our connection, but instead of always caring for each other, now believe in our manmade ideations and fears of lack, leading us to compete with each other instead of work together in all we do.
This is our root cause for the repeating cycles of dysfunction, crime, violence, poverty, hunger, homelessness, discrimination, and warfare throughout history, which many great men have echoed throughout the passing years. T.S. Elliot wrote a poem called Little Gidding that also echoes messages from the past about this very topic, about time being interwoven between past, present, and future, as between those who have gone before us, and who will come after us, but most importantly that we usually make mistakes in our youth that upon departing we learn the gravity of, and how meaningless the things we frequently value really are in the end (Columbia University, n.d.).One of the main messages I receive from his poem is that we can stop the cycle of warfare and suffering in general by looking to the past for patterns, then forward into the future with insight, and then coming back to the present moment so that we can identify these tragedies sooner… before they happen again. Ironically, this poem was written during WWII and the Holocaust, so perhaps there’s a reason it echoes so loudly right now at a time where people have been pitted against each other instead of uniting as one in love, charity, and compassion for each other – for every sentient being on earth.
To have compassion, love, and charity would be the best way to honor Christ at Christmas this year. Even for the people you may be afraid of or have anger towards… even those you think are your enemies. Perhaps fear is just a tricky liar. Perhaps we can finally start to move past the repeating cycles of the past by loving everyone, even our enemies. Perhaps even remember that Christ was a Middle Eastern man whose family had to leave for religious persecution, fearing for their safety. Perhaps this Christmas we can remember Christ for who He really was and for what He really taught… and perhaps if we do, we can finally achieve world peace.
~Kristin Karuna Walsh
Budding Into Fullness: From Broken Pieces to Masterpieces 