In so doing, Christ allows us to truly become ‘like Him’, and like His heavenly Father.

Salvation itself finds meaning only in familial relations.Ĭhrist truly took on our human ‘form’, entering into time and space in the womb of the Virgin, being born at Bethlehem under the reign of Augustus in the pax Romana, with a guardian father of the line of David named Joseph, assuming into His divine Person a true body, soul, mind, emotions, so that He could say with the Roman poet Terence, ‘homo sum, et humani nihil a me puto’: ‘I am a Man, and nothing human is alien to Me’, that is, except sin, which is not really human, if one ponders it and, yes, He chose to be a child of a true family, sanctifying and redeeming all that it means to be ‘human’. He made it an image and sacrament of a divine mystery. Since the family is the ordinary setting of human life, he came to share it, redeem it and perfect it. When God came to save us, he made salvation inseparable from family life, manifest in family life. Pope Saint John Paul II noted that everything good- history, humanity, salvation – passes by way of the family. Someone sent me this morning these words from Scott Hahn, which are worth reflecting on as we celebrate and rejoice with what families we have, or are part of, wherever you may be, far and wide. A very merry, blessed and joyous Christmas to all our readers, which we hope is filled with God’s grace and good cheer.

Christus natus est meaning