Ps 96 1-3, 11-13
Ti 2:11-14
Lk 2:1-14
In his reflection on the Great Feast of the Nativity of Our
Lord, Saint Pope Leo the Great wrote, ". . .
today our Savior is born; let us rejoice. Sadness should have no place on the birthday
of life. The fear of death has been
swallowed up; life brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness . . Our Lord, victor over sin and death . . . came
to free us. . . . "
This evening we gather to recall and celebrate the birth of
Jesus, Son of God, and Son of Mary, the Theotokos. We gather to celebrate the birth of the
Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the One who redeemed us from sin and
freed us from death. We cannot help but
be joyful.
The Gospel just proclaimed is familiar. One need only hear the first few words to
settle into warm Christmas feelings.
Sometimes that comfort factor, the sloppy sentimentality that mars the
observance of Christmas, hides the reality that Jesus’ birth was not easy. Mary and Joseph struggled just as we
struggle. They were not immune to the
same fears and anxieties that attack us on a regular basis. Because of Mary's fiat and Joseph's silent obedience, we celebrate that Jesus, fully
Divine and fully human, truly God and truly man, was born in a stable in
Bethlehem and placed in the manger.
Forget the images on Christmas cards in which everything is
clean and neat. Ignore the paintings
where Mary’s elaborate silk robes are beautifully draped. And of course block the halos and the chubby
angels completely out of your mind.
Jesus’ birth was a slice of life, a part of real life, just as we live
it. His birth involved: Pain.
Blood. Cold. And the odor of animals. His life affected all lives ever since. His
life affects our lives. Here. In Ljubljana.
In sv. Jožefa. In these last days
of the year A. D. 2016
After four weeks of prophecies about Jesus today’s readings
burst into song. Several verses from
the first reading were set to music by Handel in his glorious masterpiece,
Messiah. They include: "The people
that walked in darkness have seen a great light", "For unto us a child is born." The responsorial exploded with joy:
"Tell his glory among the nations; Among all peoples, his wondrous deeds. Today is born our Savior, Christ the
Lord." Today we celebrate what the
second reading proclaims: that Jesus
Christ gave himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness; to cleanse for
himself a people as his own.
We are not celebrating a holiday. We are celebrating a Holy Day. We are not celebrating a secular,
alcohol-soaked, sugar coated, and materialistically driven "holiday
season." We are celebrating a Holy
Season. We are celebrating a season of
grace.
Christmas is not an end in itself. Jesus’ birth is meaningless without His
preaching, healing, and passion. Without
His death, resurrection and ascension to the Father, there would be no
celebration today. Jesus’ life on this
earth began in Bethlehem. It ended on Calvary in Jerusalem. The life that began lying in the wood of a
manger ended hanging on the wood of the cross.
Today we celebrate the entire arc of what theologians refer to as
"The Christ Event."
For now the purple vestments of Advent have been replaced by
the white that marks the Christmas Season.
On March first, however, the joy of the Christmas season will give way
to the penitence of Lent. Today we sing Silent Night, Joy to the World, and
other carols that attempt to capture the joy and mystery of Jesus' birth. But there is something we must always
remember.
Some of the greatest theological statements in history have
been written not by academic theologians but by men and women who didn’t just
talk the talk in their ivory towers.
They walked the walk. They did the heavy lifting. One of them was the late Dag Hammarskjöld,
third Secretary General of the U.N. Hammarskjöld was a deeply religious
man. He captured the history of our
salvation in a haiku . . . just twelve words, a total of only seventeen
syllables:
On Christmas Eve, Good
Friday
Was foretold them
In a trumpet fanfare
The Gloria in Excelsis
Deo we sing today will lead to the Alleluia, He is Risen at Easter. We move from Gloria to Alleluia by way of the
cross. And only because of that cross
can we sing today
Venite adoremus. Dominum.
Come let us adore him, Christ the Lord.
St. Mary's Church, Plymouth, PA
Sanctuary at St. Joseph Abbey, Spencer, MA
+ Fr. Jack, SJ, MD
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