BLESSING BEFORE A CHRISTMAS MANGER
Lord Jesus, as I kneel before your manager in adoration, let my first Christmas word be: thank you. Thank you, Gift of the Father, for coming to save me from my sins.
Without you I do not know even how to be human. The characteristics of your human body express the divine person of God’s Son. And in that wondrous expression, Lord, you reveal me to myself. Thank you for the saving revelation in your sacred humanity. As the Christmas liturgy proclaims, in Christ we experience “the holy exchange that restores our life.” Thank you for coming as one like myself to save me from myself.
Newborn Savior, the very silence of your Incarnation proclaims that the answer to the misery, the strife, and the meaninglessness we often experience in life cannot be found within us. You alone are the answer. As I kneel before you, eternal King, I surrender to you to all my selfishness, self¬absorption, self-indulgence, self-righteousness, self-assertion, and self¬exaltation. Even as I adore you on this night of your birth, rid me of the nagging desire to be adored.
Word become flesh, you make your dwelling among us. Yet you do not live your life for yourself, but for us. And you enable us to live in you all that you yourself lived. Help me to embrace this truth with all my mind and heart. Come and live your life in me. Empty me of my wilfulness, my petulance, my hardness, my cynicism, my contemptuousness. Fill me with your truth, your strength, your fortitude, your purity, your gentleness, your generosity, your wisdom, your heart, and your grace.