Believe it or not, today is the last Sunday of the calendar year. 2025 is coming to an end and it’s a natural time to reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re headed. But as today’s readings for the first Sunday of Christmas remind us, as we reflect, we would do well to do so remembering that God was with us in all our ups, and, yes, our downs. Let’s look at the readings more closely and see what wisdom they might have for us as we wrap up 2025.
The Old Testament reading comes from Isaiah 63. This oracle comes from what scholars often refer to as ‘Trito-Isaiah’, a section that at least looks ahead to and addresses (likely even having been written in) the post-Exilic context. And certainly its theme of joy fits this setting well:
I will recount the gracious deeds of the LORD, the praiseworthy acts of the LORD, because of all that the LORD has done for us, and the great favour to the house of Israel that he has shown them according to his mercy, according to the abundance of his steadfast love. For he said, “Surely they are my people, children who will not deal falsely”; and he became their saviour in all their distress. It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. (Isaiah 63:7-9)
But while the tone is joyous, it is still informed by an undercurrent of the turmoil of the past. God has done great things on the people’s behalf, but this was “in all their distress.” If God “became their saviour,” it was because they needed one, trapped as they were in Exile. While this is implicit in today’s reading, verses 10-14 of the oracle make this context explicit: They had broken their covenant relationship with God suffered the consequences. And, even though they are now able to return and rebuild, they still do so within the confines of a foreign empire. The yoke of Persian rule may have been light compared to that of Assyria and Babylon, but it was still a yoke.
The Epistle reading from Hebrews picks up on this context, looking back at this whole period of both Biblical history and Second Temple Judaism from the perspective of one who had come to see the fulfillment of it all in the person of Jesus of Nazareth:
It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. (Hebrews 2.13-14)
In other words, God sent a suffering saviour to redeem a suffering people:
For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested. (2.16-18)
And finally for today’s readings, we have the story of Mary and Joseph’s flight into Egypt (Matthew 2.13-23). King Herod, terrified by the magi’s news of a newborn king born in his kingdom, tyrannically orders all young children in the area to be killed. Fortunately, Joseph had been warned to flee in a dream, and had removed himself, Mary, and Jesus to Egypt for safety. They stay there as refugees for some time, until the king dies and they feel it is safe to return home. While the story doesn’t have the retrospective quality of the other two readings, we still see God powerfully at work in the midst of human sin, suffering, and strife.
It’s important to note however, that not everyone was as fortunate as Joseph to get a warning; and not everyone had the capacity to pick up and leave. It’s a pretty awful story. But what’s interesting is that in telling the story, Matthew refers back to an oracle from the prophet Jeremiah that spoke of the women of this region weeping for their lost children. For an audience familiar with their Scriptures, this would be no idle call-back. For the verses that directly follow this involve God comforting those same bereaved women and insisting that all is not lost and that there is a future for them:
Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears;
for there is a reward for your work, says the LORD:
they shall come back from the land of the enemy;
there is hope for your future, says the LORD (Jeremiah 31.16-17)
Once again, God is present and at work within terrible human circumstances: with us in our fears and anxieties, with us in our grief and loss, with us in our pain and suffering. That is the tie that binds these readings the Church offers us on this first Sunday after Christmas. And it’s this solidarity between God and suffering humanity that is the whole reason for the Incarnation, for this season of Christmas.
For us as Christians, this has two prongs: First, as the reading from Hebrews reminds us, is what we might call the ‘objective’ side of the Incarnation: God becomes a human just like us in all our frailty, fear, and suffering in order to unite us to God once and for all. But this is not magic; the Incarnation is like a patch on our human nature; it isn’t just supposed to undo the damage of the virus of sin, but reprogram us so that we are no longer subject to sin. It’s God saying, “Hey, ‘the way the world works’ does NOT work; here’s a new way, that’s actually the original way the world was supposed to work.’ And so there’s also the ‘subjective’ side of the Incarnation, in which we are to live out that way — of healed, whole, reciprocal, good-faith relationships with ourselves, each other, all creation, and, through all that, with God.
And this is the spirit with which I think we are to approach our own reflections on the year that has been, and on the year that is to come. That’s why I’ve come in recent years to base my Year in Review practices on the Ignatian Examen, a traditional practice that insists we bring God into all of our reflections — our successes, our struggles, our sufferings, and our celebrations. I have a few reflections and tools available here should you like a little help with your own year-end practices this year:
- My year-end Examen template
- A series of posts on planning and goal-setting, including Identifying Values, a strategy for Goal-Setting, and Discernment of Desires.
- A Framework for Resilient Planning, that takes the vicissitudes of life into account
No matter how you may choose to keep these final few days of the year, may we all do so with purpose and meaning, and, with all of today’s readings, in the knowledge that no matter what, God is with us.
Matthew Root 