By Father Alex Fry
Special to The Texas Catholic
I used to go hunting with my dad. Well, technically, he went hunting, and I tagged along for the adventure. I was never much of a gun guy — more of a fisherman — but I loved everything that came before the hunt.
We would get up early, long before sunrise. I would pull on my camouflage, and once I was fully geared up, I felt ready — head to toe in camo, like a green beret preparing for something important. We would drive into the middle of nowhere — my dad somehow always knew exactly where we were going — park the truck, step out into the cold, and quietly make our way through flooded fields until we reached the edge of a pond.
And then … we waited.
It was still dark — the kind of darkness where your eyes cannot quite make sense of what is around you. Everything feels sharper: the cold air, the silence, the sound of your own breathing. My instinct was always the same — to scan the horizon, to search for signs of life.
But slowly, the world began to wake up. A flutter of wings. A ripple on the water. A distant splash. As the first light crept in, what had felt empty suddenly revealed itself as full of life. The ducks were there all along. I simply didn’t yet know how to see them.
That experience has stayed with me, because it reveals something true about Christmas.
Christmas is not about light overwhelming the darkness all at once. It is about light arriving quietly and patiently, teaching us how to notice. The world does not suddenly change at dawn; it is revealed. What was hidden becomes visible. What seemed empty is shown to be full.
The Christmas story tells us that the light of God entered the world in much the same way: not with spectacle or force but with humility. A child born in the night. A family unnoticed. A star rising quietly in the sky, bright enough to guide those who were watching, but easy to miss for those who were not.
That star did not remove the darkness of the world. It gave direction within it. It taught people where to look. And at the end of its light was not a throne or a palace, but a child — God made small, God made near.
This is the heart of Christmas: God choosing to be seen but easy to miss if we are distracted by other things.
From the beginning, humanity was created for light — life in communion with God, ordered toward truth and love; but sin distorted our vision. We learned to chase false lights: power, success, comfort, control. Christmas announces that God does not compete with those illusions by shouting louder. Instead, he enters quietly, offering a different kind of light — the kind that heals our sight.
That is why Christmas matters.
Because Jesus does not just illuminate the darkness around us; he teaches us how to see rightly. In him, we discover that God is closer than we imagined, that love is stronger than fear, and that hope is not naïve — it is real.
So, this Christmas, resist the urge to rush past the stillness. Let your eyes adjust. Sit with the mystery of the manger. Follow the light you have been given, even if it seems small.
Because once you learn how to see it, you realize the truth that Christmas reveals every year: The light has already come, and the world is fuller than we knew.
Father Alex Fry is parochial vicar at Christ the King Catholic Church in Dallas.
