1. Background
The Christmas stories in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke are not meant to be literal history, like, let us say, detailed descriptions of the Battle of Gettysburg. Rather they are theological stories designed to tell us that with the birth of Jesus a new phase of the history of humankind had begun. The stories may not be true in all their details but they are True in the sense that they disclose to us a sudden, dramatic, and total transformation in the human condition. As Father John Shea says in his book Starlight, we discover at Christmas, not only the light that is God and the light that Jesus came to bring to the world, but the light that is and has always been in us because we are creatures who share in the light of God, beings in whom the spark of God's light and love has always shone. Christmas reveals to us that like Mary and Joseph we too can be the light of the world and that indeed our own frail and often dim lights are not completely discontinuous from the light of Jesus, from the starlight that shone at Bethlehem.

2. Story
Once Father Junipero Serra was riding through the desert on his mule. It was a dark and cold winter night. Though the desert usually was very dry, it was snowing that night. He was worn out from his travels and dead tired. All he wanted to do was find a warm and peaceful place to sleep. But in the darkness, he encountered a young Indian man and his wife trying to find their way through the snow to a place where they could find shelter so that the young woman could give birth to her child. Father Serra put her on the mule and led the two of them to a hut about which he knew at the foot of a great mountain chain. He lit a fire for them and gave them some of his food and water. He realized how similar their situation was to that of Mary and Joseph. But the latter were Jews, not Indians, and had lived long ago. To give them privacy, he pitched his tent outside the house and shivered underneath his blankets for most of the long night. He thought he heard a baby crying during the night, but he was so tired that he did now wake up. The next morning the sun was shining brightly, the air was warm, and his mule was grazing happily. He tried to remember what had happened the night before. Then he recalled the young couple. He rushed into the house, but they and their child were gone. The room was filled with flowers. Father Junipero took as many as he could carry back to his mission were they bloomed for many months. When he told the story, he said that it didn't matter whether the couple were anything more than just two young Indians. What mattered was that they needed help. Would two young Mexican Americans trying to enter the United States today to find work be received as well?