Joy to the World: How Christ's Coming Changed Everything (and Still Does)

by Scott Hahn

“But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” (John 1:12)—

The Christmas story has an unconventional hero—not a warrior, not a worldly conqueror, not an individual at all, but rather a family.

“Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).

The message in both is clear: with the arrival of Jesus, God brings about a new beginning, a new creation, a new Torah, and a New Testament.

God makes many promises in the Old Testament, but only twice does he solemnly pledge an oath to bless all nations, once with Abraham and once with David. Significantly, both events took place at the same site, called “Moriah” in the time of Abraham and “Jerusalem” a thousand years later in the time of David (Genesis 22:1–2; 2 Chronicles 3:1).

“So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations” (Matthew 1:17). Even the number fourteen is a Davidic hallmark. In Hebrew script, numbers are rendered with letters of the alphabet, and the number for fourteen spells out the name David. Matthew has designed his entire opening section to herald Jesus’s royal identity.

The simple fact is that an adoptive father is as much a father as a natural father is. That was true in Jesus’s day as it is in our own; it was recognized in Israel’s law and Roman law, and it remains true of the laws of the state in which I live. With my own eyes, I have seen it to be true in countless families.

There is but one fatherhood, that of God the Father, the one Creator of the world, “of all that is seen and unseen.” Yet man, created in the image of God, has been granted a share in this one paternity of God (cf. Ephesians 3:15). Saint Joseph is a striking case of this, since he is a father, without fatherhood according to the flesh. He is not the biological father of Jesus, whose Father is God alone, and yet he lives his fatherhood fully and completely. To be a father means above all to be at the service of life and growth.

Leaders are discussed as good or bad “shepherds.” David appears, then, as the archetype of the “good shepherd” of his people.

“I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding” (Jeremiah 3:15).

A shepherd’s work required constancy, and his time in the field often kept him from observing the hundreds of laws for ritual purity imposed by the Pharisees.

Among the Proverbs of King Solomon we read: “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles” (Proverbs 24:17).

“God in his deepest mystery is not a solitude, but a family, since he has in himself fatherhood, sonship, and the essence of family, which is love.”1

“The glory of the Trinity becomes present in time and space,” said Saint John Paul, “and finds its manifestation in Jesus, his Incarnation and his history.”2

But that’s still not all! The revelation of Christmas is not merely information, and it’s not only about the forgiveness of sins. For God, these are great means to a still mightier end. God reveals himself and forgives our sins because these are preconditions to a still greater gift, and Cardinal Wuerl touched upon that in the passage we’ve just read. Salvation consists in God making us his children and sharing his divine nature with us.

And Saint Paul put it in terms that evoke the squalor of the stable in Bethlehem: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9).

Salvation is more than knowledge and more than forgiveness, as great as those gifts are. To be saved is to live like God and to love like God.

“God sent forth his Son, born of woman …, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4–5). It all comes down to his sonship. And he himself came down to share it, in Bethlehem.

God had chosen to reveal himself by being born into a human family and the human family thus became an icon of God! God is the Trinity, he is a communion of love; so is the family despite all the differences that exist between the Mystery of God and his human creature, an expression that reflects the unfathomable Mystery of God as Love.… The human family, in a certain sense, is an icon of the Trinity because of its interpersonal love and the fruitfulness of this love.10

When it comes to Christmas villains, truth can be far nastier than fiction. For just as surely as there is a historical Saint Nicholas,1 there are historical scrooges and grinches. The worst of them are the Christian heretics who tried to steal the season’s joy by denying the fact of the incarnation.

we truly celebrate Christmas, we’ll exude a joy that people will want to share. They’ll see the joy in all the holiday traditions we have inherited from our ancestors.

Why do we give gifts? Because God has given himself to us as a gift, wrapping his divinity in true humanity.

Even people who don’t seem to have a clue about what Christmas is really about will sense a joy at the heart of Christmas. Joy is the reason that stock markets rise and fall on the sale of seasonal gifts and decorations. Christmas commercialism often makes me wince, but I have to admit that it is, in its own way, an acknowledgment of Christmas joy.