Homily for Christmas 2021

In the Christmas Readings for Midnight Mass and for Mass at Dawn, we hear from the same three authors: the Prophet Isaiah, Saint Paul writing to Titus, and Saint Luke. The key that unlocks the profound Mystery of God’s Will in the Birth of Christ is given to us in a particular word used by Saint Paul, the Latin “apperuit” which translates into the English as “there has appeared.” In this very word the Church seeks to express the essence of Christmas, and it is this: 

 

Formerly people had spoken of God and formed human images of Him in all sorts of ways, based in anthropocentrism, a means of attempting to make sense of the cosmos by humans projecting human aspects onto God in order to make Him seem more approachable, understandable, and easier to love. We’re not talking about idolatrous images, such as the Hebrews fashioning the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai, but an earnest attempt to transcend the abyss between heaven and earth, employing human reason and imagination to find God and to come close to Him, but limited in its human capacity to grasp divine mystery.

 

But now, something new has happened: He has appeared. He has emerged from the inaccessible light in which He dwells. He, Himself has come to us. No longer is He merely an idea, no longer do we have to form a mental picture of Him based in mere words. Now He has appeared. The Christmas mystery assures us that God has visited His planet; God has walked the earth.

 

Beyond the Babe in the stable, to whom we shall return in a moment, questions arise, such as: How has He appeared? Who is He in reality? Let us look first at the “How.”

 

Saint Paul tells us in his Letter to Titus that, “the kindness and love of God our Savior for mankind were revealed.” This provides a very important anthropological phenomenon. For the non-Jewish people of pre-Christian times, whose response to the terrors and contradictions of the world was to fear that their pagan gods might not be benign, that they might be cruel and arbitrary, this was an epiphany in its truest sense: a great light has appeared, revealing God as pure goodness.

 

Even in our day, people whose faith is not strong, or who have chosen agnosticism or atheism as their worldview, wonder constantly whether the ultimate power that sustains the world is truly good, or whether evil is just as powerful and primordial as the good, the true and the beautiful which reveal the radiant power and love of God for His Creation. Think back to those words of Saint Paul: “The kindness and love of God as Savior for mankind were revealed.” This is the new and consoling certainty that is granted to us at Christmas.

 

Now we look to the “who.” In whom is that kindness and love revealed? Of course, it is in the Christ Child born so humbly at Bethlehem. It is the Prophet Isaiah who makes this clear to us in the passage read at Midnight Mass: “A child is born for us, a son is given to us, and dominion is laid upon His shoulders, and this is the name they give Him: Wonder-Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. Wide is His dominion in a peace that has no end.” This is the only text in Sacred Scripture in which it is said of any human being, let alone an infant, “his name will be Mighty God, Eternal Father.”

 

Imagine that: a child in all its weakness and dependency is named “Eternal Father!” And it is said further that his peace has no end, bringing to an end the egregious images we just heard of boots trampled in battle and cloaks stained with blood.

 

God appears as a child. Saint Augustine explains that had God shown the fullness of His light and glory — even in love for us — that we could never bear it, so He appears in the form most appealing to the human heart: an infant. In the Child born at Bethlehem, the invisible God of the Heavens becomes not only visible, but truly human, an infant in whom one can touch and even caress God.

 

This event ushers in a new era of God’s love, and His communication of that love. In ancient days God had given the Commandments to Moses as a sort of school of love. In the first three Commandments we are instructed specifically in how to love God:

Make nothing or no one more important than God.

Revere God’s holiness by respect for His Name and all that is holy.

Carve out time to be with God, for time itself is His gift to us.

 

Appearing to Moses not as Himself, but as a burning bush, God employs human language to communicate to human beings how something so esoteric as love for God can be made real and human. Thus, God here commands us to love Him.

 

But now, in the Christ child — dependent, needy — God puts Himself into the position of asking for human love. Who would ever have imagined such humility? This would be the same loving humility that would later lead this Holy Child, as a man, to accept the Cross in love for us.

 

Having considered the “how” and the “who” of Christ’s Birth, the truest, deepest celebration on the Lord’s Incarnation at Christmas leads ultimately to the “Why.” The name Jesus, in Hebrew, “Ieshuah,” common enough at the time Christ was born, and even now in the boy’s name Joshua, means, “Yahweh saves.” Therefore, this name at the heart of Christian faith acknowledges that God is incomparably good (for He is in the business of saving) and that something has gone wrong with God’s Creation. Indeed, something has gone so dramatically wrong that the intervention of God Himself is required to set it right.

 

What went wrong, of course, was the commission of Original Sin by Adam and Eve. In their pride and disobedience, Adam and Eve make for themselves their own criteria for good and evil, and, therefore, turn to themselves, rather than to God, for moral judgment. This is known as “the fallen condition” from which it is impossible for them — nor for us — to extricate ourselves. Since now, the compromised human Will is the problem, more human willing will not bring the solution. Since the fallen human mind is the problem, more human thinking will not ultimately solve anything. Humanity then, and humanity now are in need of a Savior who will be fully human — tempted, but sinless — and fully divine — capable of saving.

 

Only One who is “God from God… Light from Light” can accomplish this saving work. For the salvation of humanity God will send only One who is “consubstantial” with Himself. Consubstantial? Bishop Robert Barron describes this as an “eloquently ambiguous word.” This word was re-introduced into our Creed about ten years ago, replacing the phrase “one in being,” more understandable, perhaps, but less accurate. It means that the Son of God, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, being fully divine, one in being with the Father from who He proceeds, is truly “other” than the Father in a manner in which divine unity is never compromised.

 

On Christmas Day we gaze upon the Christ child in the manger, perhaps with some sentimentality, but as we will momentarily profess in the Creed, and look at God-made-visible, indeed, God-made-man, knowing that this truly happened as an historical event in human history, and is not any from of mythology.

 

God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit knew, before the first sin, indeed, before Creation itself, that Man would require redemption, for God alone is perfect. But the Incarnation of Jesus Christ was more than merely a response to sin. Saint Irenaeus, one of the early Church Fathers, suggested that, even if Man had never sinned, the Incarnation would have occurred so that God might crown His Creation with divinization.

 

The elevation and the perfection of humanity in Christ was God’s intention from all eternity. This, then is the message of Christmas which brings, as the Angels sang at Bethlehem, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace to men of good will.”