We've come to celebrate the birth of our Savior.  Is anyone having a birthday today?  There must be one or two. Is it your birthday Miranda?  How about that?  Happy birthday.  Anybody else?  Happy birthday. So, you get a two-for-one.  You get double gifts, correct? Is there anyone who has not yet opened their Christmas gifts?  Oh, quite a few.  I better get going then.

We're all here this morning to receive a gift, the perfect gift of Christmas, the gift of Jesus Christ. Those who receive Holy Communion receive Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the perfect gift of Christmas.  That gift comes with peace, another gift.  As a matter of fact, Christ is peace. There is a beautiful expression in Spanish; one of the loveliest things you can say to someone is "Tu es a la paz”.  You are at peace. Jesus Christ is peace.  He gives us that gift today.  He gives us that gift every day but we acknowledge it more on Christmas day.  We thank him for that gift of peace.

We should be at peace in our hearts because of what happened--the Christ coming into the world. God gave us His only son who took on Himself all of our brokenness, all of our pain, all of our sins and He destroyed it.  He joined us to Him in baptism so when the Father looks at you, He sees Jesus.  He unites us to Himself and promises us eternal life.  Now, if you really believe that, if I really believe that, then I have this life now that leads to eternal life with God in Heaven.  How can I then be anxious and fearful if I really believe in that gift? Let me say instead of us, you.  I was told in seminary you should never say you in sermons.  I don't believe that you shouldn't say you.  We should say you.  Take this personally.  First John 3 says this perfectly. "You are God's child. What you will later come to be has not yet come to light but when it comes to light, you will be like God for you will see Him as He is. Anyone who has this faith in Him keeps himself pure, as God is pure."

Jesus said, "Peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you.  But not as the world do I give peace.  Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Do not be afraid."   The peace that God gives us in His son's sight is not the absence of violence.  It is something much greater.  It is the shalom of God.  It is the knowledge that you are unconditionally loved by a God that is all-powerful, all loving, all knowing, and all present.  That peace is in your soul because of God's promise. Nothing can take it away--not sickness, not fear, not war, not terror--nothing because it is God's peace. So, we need Christmas, don't we? We need Christmas because God knows we need peace.

I remember three years ago it was a very special Christmas after 9/11.  The churches were absolutely packed that year because something happened to us as a people. Something happened to us individually after the events of 9/11.  Christmas was different that year because we were different. Before 9/11, we counted our money.   After 9/11, we counted our blessings.  Before 9/11, we believed in the power of money and material goods. After, we believed in the power of prayer.  Before 9/11, our heroes were movie stars. After, they were firemen.  We used to think about the madness of the holidays but on that Christmas day, we thought about the meaning of the holidays.

I think we need Christmas this year as much as we did then.  2004 is about to end.  I’m 58 years old and 2004 doesn't make my top ten.  Does it make yours?  Perhaps you had some special blessing this year--a child, a marriage--something you'll never forget and are deeply grateful for.  But I think I'm speaking for most of us when I say that I look back on this year and it's been a tough year.  It's been filled with division, conflict and anger, war and terror.  We have, as I speak, 150,000 men and women who are our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, in harms way, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Every day when we read about the casualties of war, it hurts us.  It gives us great pain. Regardless of what we believe or think about our commitments in those lands, we all love the men and women who wear the uniform of our nation.  It's been a tough year.  It's been a year filled with division and friction that I haven't seen in a while.  Our country is blue and red.  Republicans and Democrats are fighting and angry at one another.

We've had a difficult year here in Los Alamos. Please, make 2005 better.  Many of you are worried about your employment, your jobs.  That's not just money.  That’s your life in terms of supporting your family and providing for your children. You are not at peace because of these worries and concerns.  Perhaps you've had divisions within your family.  Is there a family here without trouble or division?  See me after mass. We’ll have statues carved of you and placed right up here. Do you know all families have the same problems?  I didn’t realize that until I became a priest and heard confessions. We are all the same. We really are.  There is no perfect family.  Every one of us had our divisions and conflicts and we have a great need to forgive and love each other. 

The problem is we lack the peace of Christ in our own lives.  The peace that He gives us that we refuse to live. Because of that lack of internal peace in each one of our hearts, there are so many divisions and conflicts. We are not going to solve the world’s problems until we are at peace in our own hearts.  Christmas gives us the reason or the means to achieve that peace.

It’s been a tough year.  I had an e-mail two days ago from a friend who is a writer for a newspaper.  He wrote this and I want to read it to you.  “I have a generalized sense that things are not quite right.  I am not sure what I’m looking for.  Actually, I am--a sense of peace.  A place to go where the carping and whining and incessant fault finding don’t constantly run in the background like so much white noise."   Agree?  That’s the problem here with all of us but it shouldn’t be that way with us.  Not only today but tomorrow and the next day and next week.  We should be a people of deep down peace because of Christ.  I think this peace we want is not something to be attained. It is something to be regained.  I think most of us would say we knew this peace once.  However imperfectly, we knew it once as children.

We had our children’s mass yesterday at 5 pm. It was the scariest hour and a half of my year.  I stood there and about 60 or 70 children gathered around me.  You know they are happy--it’s Christmas.  They are filled with joy about things and about people.  Their parents and grandparents are there smiling.  There is a story that I told them that they could relate to.  When a school bus driver was picking up a preschooler, there was a lady with her, not her mother but older than her mother.  The bus driver said, “Is that your grandma?  She said, “Yes, she comes every Christmas. “  And the bus driver said, “Well, where does she live?" And the little girl said, “She lives in the airport.  Anytime we want her we just go out there and get her."

The look on those children’s faces is to remember the joy of being a child, the peace that children have.  I am not saying you should be childlike.  Yes I am.  A life that is well lived spiritually, progresses from childhood to adulthood and then hopefully to what’s known as a second naivete-- a second childhood--where you are just like you used to be.  Despite all the conflict, trouble, bills, worries, relationships, all that stuff, pain and sickness, you’re a kid again.  It is a spiritual gift that God wants all of us to enjoy.  We knew that peace once and we want to achieve it again. 

Many of you know the song “Piano Man" by Billy Joel.  You know it was his big hit and it was the story of his own career.  He was a very gifted musician who played a piano in a bar.  He tells in the song about all these people who come in the bar and have problems. They’re all lonely.   They’re all broken.  They are just like us.  They come together so that in their loneliness they can have some friendships.  In the song "Piano Man," one fellow comes up to Billy Joel and he says, “Son, can you play me a memory.  I’m not really sure how it goes but it’s sad and it’s sweet and I knew it complete when I wore a younger man’s clothes."  That reminds me of the memories of Christmas, the sweetness of Christmas when we were children. 

My mom tells a story, God rest her soul.  I would ask her if she remembers any great Christmases.  Tears came into her eyes and she had this look of tremendous joy in her face and she said, “I’ll never forget the Christmas when me mother gave me an orange."  And I said, “An orange?  Was that your only gift?  “Yes. It was enough, you know."  An orange.  This was 1916 in Ireland and there were no oranges.  This was a great gift indeed. And she had never seen an orange before. She said, “I kept that orange for about a week.  I smelled it.  It almost went bad. I didn’t want to eat it because it was so beautiful."  How does that orange explain the joy my mother experienced at the memory of it?  It was a time when all was well in spite of the war and conflict and the poverty that was Ireland in 1916.  I told that story when I was on Sabbatical to Sister Yvette, who is a religious sister. She is a missionary in Africa. When she heard my mother's story, she smiled and said, “The same thing happened last Christmas in Zambia." There was a little girl she had known for a while, who was generally sad.  She had received for a Christmas present a package of Oreos--Nabisco is everywhere.  She kept that for the next week.  Every time Sister Yvette saw her, she had that package of Oreo cookies. She had opened the package and she was smelled them and savoring this tremendous gift that she had been given.  She was so happy. 

Remember how small gifts made you so happy?  How little things meant so much to you?  Lionel trains or a doll?  Now it’s a Power Ranger Mezadon Mezasword.  I’ll take the orange.  But seriously, do you remember how little it took to make you happy?  How good life was and how well you slept?  You were complete.  What happened to you? What happened to me? When did we stop trusting in God’s providence and love for us and start relying on ourselves? 

You know, if all of us perished this moment, the sun would still come up in the east tomorrow and set in the west.  We’re important in God’s plan, of course.  But it is God’s plan, not your plan.  It is God’s world.  We play an important part in it but we are not God.  So, we need to do the best we can. We need to go home and sleep the sleep of the just.  When did we lose our sense of gratefulness and develop this sense of privilege or entitlement?  The fact is no one owes me anything.  My mother used to say; “They’re not doing anything for the old people."  I said, "Who is they?  You’re son will take care of you.  Don’t worry about them."  We have this general sense of entitlement that is not right.  No one owes us anything.  God gives us everything we need.  When did we lose our sense of trust and start relationships with suspicion?  Recently, it seems that this past year's discussions, all too often, began with shouts.  There are too many negative bumper stickers out there.  There are too many angry people and those angry people are us. 

Christmas is God’s reminder that all is well if all is well with God.  Remember Christmas when you were a kid.  It was sad and sweet and you knew it complete, this peace, when you wore a younger man’s clothes.

Christmas brings us together today. It brings us back home.  Many of you are back home.  It also reminds us that we are all kids.  Even if you are 90 years old, you are God’s kid.  And He loves you.  He has great gifts for you.  Not something under the tree but something on the tree, His son.  A gift that will last forever.  It’s a total and unconditional promise of salvation in Christ Jesus. A gift that is sad and sweet and absolutely complete.

We play the same memory and melody today.  Glory to God in the Highest and on Earth Peace. Peace on those whom His favor rests.  That’s you.  Merry and Blessed Christmas.