Corpus Christi Blog

Seek His Face

12-25-2014HomiliesFr. Chad King

I bring you good news of great joy.  Today we celebrate the birth of the Savior Jesus Christ into our world.  What an exciting time this is.  From the beginning of time, ever since sin entered the world through the pride and disobedience of our first parents, God has put a plan of salvation in place.  God continued this plan of salvation through Abraham the father of faith, and then Moses, David, and through all the prophets.  And now in Jesus Christ, the plan of salvation has come to fulfillment.  The Savior which every person has longed for, the One that was promised to come has arrived. God’s presence lit up the sky with a bright guiding star.  He was proclaimed by the angels and witnessed by the shepherds and wise men.  Jesus is the messiah who came for you and me. 

In the Father’s love for us, He has sent his Son to save us, God has seen us walking lost in darkness, he has heard our cries of hopelessness, he has come to fulfill our longing to be set free.  Our Savior has come.  God has come into the messiness and chaos of our world to bring us peace.  He has come to walk our journey on earth with us.  The Son of God, through whom all of creation exists, has humbled himself and taken on human flesh.  The almighty God has become one of us, God has come into our world to save us.  Indeed, let us rejoice and be glad.
In Jesus Christ, God has become human.  And that isn’t just a cliché.  If we take time to ponder this event, it will put us in awe, as it is truly amazing.   God walked on this earth with his two feet, worked with and touched others with his human hands.   He used his voice to heal and to raise the dead back to life.  Our God is really present, He has a human face.  Truly awe inspiring, think about that for a second, God has a human face.  God has really come into our world. 

But for many of us who live 2000 years after the birth of the Savior, it is sometimes difficult to keep that faith in God’s real presence alive.  It is sometimes easy for us to go about our daily lives hardly thinking about or remembering what our God has done for us.  We can get so wrapped up in the busyness of our lives that we don’t see God’s activity throughout it.  But the fact of God coming into the world should shake us to our soul.  It should create change in our heart, our lives and our world.   In this Christmas season, God wants to remind us that He is real.  And not only has God come into our world, but that He is still here, alive in it.  Now I know that God’s plan of salvation includes the death and resurrection of His Son, and that Jesus Christ is now seated at the right hand of God the Father in Heaven.  But God is with us now, just as the real presence of God was given through the Virgin Mary, witnessed by the shepherds and wise men, and then encountered by the Apostles and all the followers of Jesus, healed by all those we read about in the Scriptures.  Just as real as God’s real presence has been experienced by the thousands of people who have received his love down through the centuries, including myself and many of you gathered here.  Our God is real.  Do you know His real presence? He is truly with us, His presence is still active in this world, but we need to seek his face.   

And, we need to intimately seek his presence in the Eucharist.  Just as Jesus was real when He walked on this earth, so he is real and present in the Eucharist.  Just as God came into the world in the form of a little baby, so God comes in the form of bread and wine which become his Body and Blood.  God is present.  Oh how our hearts need to seek His face in worship every Sunday.  As the sign in our Adoration Chapel reminds us “I look at Him and He looks at me”.  Do you know the way God looks upon you?  I encourage you, and I, to seek His face, seek the love and mercy with which he looks upon us with.

And so my brothers and sisters, during this Christmas season let’s take some specific time to be in awe of our Lord.  Let us ponder the birth of the Son of God into our world.  We must remember that even though God’s plan for our salvation has come to fulfillment in Jesus Christ that does not mean the plan is completed.  No, God’s great plan of salvation is not completed until every human person has chosen his and her destiny.  Our God has come and has offered salvation to us, but we need to accept God’s love and mercy every day of our lives.  Yes, the good news this Christmas is that our God has come to us, but great news is given to those who accept and receive God’s Presence in their lives.  Will you seek his face?

Seek his face every morning we wake up.  In prayer every day, we need to seek his face and the love with which he looks upon us.  We need to seek his presence in the busyness of our days, seek his will upon the decisions we make.  We need to acknowledge God is present in our lives and give Him thanks every Sunday.  We need to see God’s activity in ourselves and the world around us.  We need to seek his face in every person we encounter, and ask that others will be able to see Him in us.  Yes, God is truly present in this world, but it up to us to know Him by seeking His face.  

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