The irruption of God
For many people, Christmas is a cherished family celebration. For Christians, however, it commemorates the birth of Jesus, but the profound significance of this event—the extraordinary intrusion of God into human time—is often overlooked. Humans live marked by the passage of time, as indicated by nature's cycles of days, months, and years. The biblical tradition breaks with this cyclical view and presents a linear narrative in which God promises his people dominion over other nations. But while in biblical stories God addressed the patriarchs or Moses, over the centuries the Hebrews witnessed God's withdrawal, leaving them alone to face the hostility of other peoples. Christianity continues this history of salvation, yet even today many believers perceive God as a distant and inaccessible being. God is not a "someone," as in the time of Moses, but a "what," an idea or a force that can inspire or encourage us. However, we maintain the idea of the linearity of time in history, although instead of leading us to divine glory, we now think more about technical and social progress. The future depends on us, and God, at most, acts as a spectator.
Christianity is incompatible with this view of a distant God, and this can only be explained by Christmas and the belief that Jesus is God, and not simply a messenger or a prophet with superpowers. Only if we accept this premise can we understand what we mean when we say that the birth of Jesus implies the irruption of God into the time of humanity. Because God is eternal, and this means that, for him, time does not matter. Therefore, Jesus is not just an event, but a breach of eternity in history. To clarify, we could think of the image of black holes that, in science fiction films, allow travel thousands of light-years in seconds. But it's more than that, since here we're not talking about fiction or science, but something more serious: religion.
God's interruption not only reminds us that time is a human contingency, but also allows us to reflect on the false emancipatory nature of progress. Faith in humanity's potential prevents many people from seeing the trail of misery we leave behind. The future can never undo past suffering, and that's why the gap God creates in time with his arrival is an uninterrupted denunciation of injustice, the channel through which the voice of the helpless is heard. It is also a call to resistance, to stop a time that only works in favor of those who prefer to think of a distant God who trusts in human initiative and creativity. The good god, they will say, is the god who doesn't bother us.
That's why Christmas is much more than a birthday celebration. It's God's rebuke of human pride. It's also a wake-up call about the folly of entrusting everything to a future we don't control and about forgetting the brother or sister we've left behind. I can understand that, with the modern mindset, this vision of God bursting into history is difficult to accept and, moreover, will make many uncomfortable. But Christmas also has to do with pointing out those unjust economic and social structures that need to be denounced and fought against, even—as Pope Leo XIV said—to Dilexio tea– at the cost of looking stupid.