GOOD NEWS OF GREAT JOY FOR ALL PEOPLE

GOOD NEWS OF GREAT JOY FOR ALL PEOPLE

Fr Luke A Veronis

“Behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people.” These are the words that the angels proclaimed to the shepherds on the night of our Lord’s birth. Not good news for some. Not good news for only those who are worthy. Not good news for the righteous, the powerful, or those who are legal. But good news of great joy for all people.

This angelic message is not simply a poetic announcement we remember once a year. It is the essence of what we believe. Here lies the foundation of how we are called to live. It reveals who God is and what kind of life He invites us into. Good News of Great Joy!

Saint Paul tells us, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” The Christian life is not merely about believing certain ideas about Jesus. It is about allowing the very mind, the very spirit, the very way of being in Christ to take root in us. Our faith reaches its fullness not when we defend Christianity with our words, but when our lives begin to resemble Christ Himself.

And who is this Christ whose mind we are called to share? He is the eternal Son of God who did not come with force, but in humility. He did not enter history with weapons but wrapped in swaddling clothes. He did not appear among the powerful, but among shepherds, people on the margins, people of little status, people easily overlooked.

This is the God we believe in and worship. This is the God who reveals Himself fully to us, not in abstract theories, but in a concrete human life at a particular time in history. That is why the Church insists, and has always insisted, that Jesus Christ is the full and perfect revelation of God. As the great Apostle says, “He is the image of the invisible God.” If we want to know what God is like, we look at Jesus Christ. If we want to understand God’s heart, we look at Jesus Christ. If we want to interpret Holy Scripture rightly, including and especially some of the difficult and troubling passages of the Old Testament, we interpret them through the lens of Jesus Christ.

We never focus on some obscure passage in the Old Testament that confuses us – an eye for an eye, or the slaughter of innocent women and children. Instead, we look and see how we understand things through Jesus Christ. In Him, we never see hatred. We don’t see a God of war. We do not understand God as One who divides humanity into us and them, allies and enemies.

Instead, we see a God who heals the sick, touches the unclean, forgives sinners, eats with outcasts, and lays down His life even for those who crucify Him. In other words, He is One who has no enemies. Thus, whenever Christianity presents itself to the world as a religion of fear, exclusion, hostility, or violence, something has gone terribly wrong. Bad theology always produces bad fruit. When the mind of Christ is replaced with political agendas and ideologies, especially focusing on worldly power, the Gospel becomes distorted, and the Good News of Great Joy is lost.

This is why I am deeply troubled when I see some Christian leaders proclaim a message that contradicts the very Christ they claim to serve. When God is described as a God who hates, or a God of war, as Franklin Graham, the son of the famous evangelist Billy Graham did at the recent Pentagon Christmas service, we must ask: Which God is being proclaimed? Because the God revealed in Jesus Christ does not hate, and He does not promote war. He weeps over violence. He absorbs hatred rather than returning it. He conquers not by killing His enemies, but by loving them and dying for them.

And I am equally troubled when the Gospel is reduced to legal categories and political boundaries, when people are labeled first as “legal” or “illegal,” acceptable or unacceptable, rather than seen as human beings created in the image of God.

In the Church, we do not divide people into good people and bad people. We do not separate humanity into deserving and undeserving. The only honest confession we make is the one we repeat every week in St. John Chrysostom’s pre-communion prayer, which acknowledges what Saint Paul had proclaimed first, that “I am the first among sinners.”

The Church is not a gathering of the righteous. It is a hospital for the sick and broken. And the only distinction that truly matters in our journey of faith is not whether someone is living a perfect life, which no one can do, but whether they are turning toward God or turning away from Him at this present moment. And if we are honest, every single one of us is in need of ongoing and never-ending repentance.

This is why the angels’ message matters so deeply. The coming of the Christ is “Good News of Great Joy for all people.” For simple shepherds. For sinners. For strangers. For foreigners. For immigrants, whether legal or illegal. For the marginalized. For the fearful. For the forgotten. For the ones who do not yet know where they belong.

This Divine Joy is not shallow happiness. It is the joy that comes from knowing that God is with us; that God has not abandoned His world or its people; that God has not written off humanity; that God entered into the darkness of the world, our darkness, to bring light, to bring healing, to bring life. It is the joy of knowing that we are loved.

When Saint Paul calls us to take on the mind of Christ, he is calling us to live this Good News of Great Joy. To embody it. To reflect it in our relationships, our choices, our speech, and our love.

The mind of Christ is one of humility. The mind of Christ is one of compassion for all. The mind of Christ is one of mercy. The mind of Christ is love poured out for the other. This is how we live out the Good News. This is what it means to proclaim Christmas, not just with our lips, but with our lives.

Our world today doesn’t need louder Christians. It needs Christians who look like Christ, Followers of Jesus whose lives radiate His Good News of Great Joy. Christians who love God above all else and love their neighbor as themselves.

As we continue on Day 4 of the Nativity season, may His coming renew us, form our understanding of God, soften our hearts, and help us put on the mind of Christ. In this way, the Good News of Great Joy proclaimed by the angels will be made visible through us for the life of the world and for the glory of God.

Christ is Born! Glorify Him!