First Reading • Isaiah 62:1-5
Psalm • Psalm 89:4-5, 16-17, 27, 29.
Second Reading • Acts 13:16-17, 22-25
Gospel • Matthew 1:1-25
My brothers and sisters, look at these empty hands for a moment.
Empty hands can mean many things – need, hunger, loneliness, or simply having nothing left to give.
Many people come before God this way, whether they admit it or not. And sometimes, life has made our hearts feel as empty as these hands.
A group of Franciscan brothers in the Bronx know this reality well. They run St. Anthony’s Shelter for Renewal, a place where men who are homeless, broken, or forgotten come seeking help.
Every Christmas Eve the friars put on a celebration: a warm, abundant meal, Christmas carols, and then – three entire rooms filled with new gifts the men can freely choose from.
One Christmas Eve, a man known simply as “Fitz” arrived straight from prison. Years of hardship had hardened him. Like many of us, he sat with his arms folded—hands closed, heart guarded.
But everything he encountered that night challenged that hard exterior.
The food was fresh and warm – not scraps, not leftovers. And it was served not with suspicion, but with smiles.
When the men were invited to go through the rooms of gifts, Fitz assumed there would be nothing left. But when he walked in, he found new coats, new blankets, new socks – far more than he imagined. Volunteers helped him pick whatever he needed.
At the end of the night, a friar found him in a corner, head in his hands, crying. All Fitz could say was:
“It’s too much… it’s just too much.”
For a man who had known only rejection and violence, the experience of real love – unearned, unconditional – was overwhelming.
And it happened on Christmas Eve, the night when the world first encountered a love that truly is “too much.”
This wrapped gift represents what God gives us on Christmas.
Not a thing.
Not a rulebook.
Not a reward for being good. But Himself.
Inside the gift of Christmas is the very Son of God, born in a manger, given fully and forever to us. God looks at our empty hands – our wounded hearts, our failures, our fears – and He does not turn away.
Instead, He fills them with a gift beyond anything we could have imagined.
Not a small gift…
Not a temporary gift…
But a gift so great that, like Fitz, we might whisper:
“It’s too much.”
Because it is too much.
Too much love.
Too much mercy.
Too much generosity.
Too much forgiveness for our sins.
Too much patience for our failures.
Too much hope for our broken hearts.
Too much closeness—
God not staying distant, but choosing to be with us.
That is the miracle of Christmas:
a God who gives not just something, but everything. A God who places Himself into our empty hands.
So many of us go through life like Fitz – protecting ourselves, expecting disappointment, closing our hands and hearts so we won’t get hurt again.
But the love of God in Jesus Christ invites us to open our hands… even if they feel empty. And once we receive this love, we become able to give it away.
That is why places like St. Anthony’s Shelter exist. Every volunteer who serves there has been touched by this overwhelming love.
They give not because it is easy, but because the love they received compels them to love others.
The same miracle happens every time we come to Mass.
In the Eucharist, Jesus gives us everything He is – His Body, His Blood, His Heart – offered to us freely, without limit. He places Himself into our empty hands, asking us only to make room for Him.
This is Christmas.
Our empty hands…
God’s perfect gift…
A love that overwhelms and transforms.
May we let ourselves receive it.
May we allow it to change us.
And may we share it generously – so that others, too, may one day say:
“It’s too much… and yet it is exactly what I needed.”
Merry Christmaskness to light, from death to life.
