Merry Christmas!

Jesus Christ is born! Alleluia! I just finished the celebration (and cleanup) of our Christmas "Mass during the Night" at 10 p.m. here at Saint Anne's. It was a beautiful liturgy. I don't write that as a boast of my liturgical or chant (ha!) skills, but because I found it to be a very prayerful Mass for me. Thank you, Jesus Christ, for calling me to serve at your altar!

Below is the text of my homily, which is based on Is 9:1-6; Ps 64; Ti 2:11-14; Lk 2:1-14.

Awake, mankind! For your sake God has become man. Awake, you who sleep, rise up from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you. I tell you again: for your sake, God became man.

–Saint Augustine

Take a look around. Think of how blessed we are. For many of us, family and friends have gathered together. For most of us, there is abundant food. We have shelter, and security. We have this place, where we can worship and encounter our Lord…. Think more broadly. We have life. We have dignity. We have freedom, in the deepest sense of the word. We have faith, hope, and love. We know God, have been redeemed by him, and have become his adopted children. All of this comes to us through Jesus Christ, God who became man.

Often, I think, we fail to contemplate how incredible that is. Human history contains a whole litany of attempts by man to reach up and encounter God by human effort. It contains a whole list of gods (golden calves, as it were) which were but dim reflections and distortions of the One True God—our human attempts to make God present among ourselves. The All-Knowing Creator was beyond human reach—inaccessible and distant. But then God went to work and formed a Chosen People—the Jewish men and women of the Old Testament, and in them he began to unfold the plan by which he slowly revealed himself—a plan we only understood once it finally came to completion in Jesus Christ.

We walked in darkness but now have, by His effort and by His grace, “seen a great light.” As the Prophet Isaiah foretold, “a child is born to us, a son is given us” and “upon his shoulder dominion rests.” Finally, the ultimate and all-sovereign King has arrived. He was revealed to us not as the wealthy earthly king we had been expecting, but as a tiny infant born of the most saintly and humble woman, Mary, in the most humble nursery, a manger, and surrounded not by a court of wealthy royalty but by lowly shepherds.

How important the birth of Christ is for us! In the words of Saint Augustine:

You would have suffered eternal death, had he not been born in time. Never would you have been freed from sinful flesh, had he not taken on himself the likeness of sinful flesh. You would have suffered everlasting unhappiness, had it not been for this mercy. You would never have returned to life, had he not shared your death. You would have been lost if he had not hastened to your aid. You would have perished, had he not come.

Yet, he has come, and he is with us still, even here, now. As man walking among us, God made provisions to remain among us until the end of time. His incarnation, his birth, his calling of the Twelve Apostles, his establishment of the Church on the rock of Saint Peter, his sending of the Holy Spirit, and his gift of the seven sacraments, particularly the gift of this, the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass—all perpetuate the presence of Jesus on earth so that all generations can enjoy that presence and receive his grace.

The gift of Christmas is that we, because God became man, can know him and be in his presence. Consider these words of Pope Benedict:

God is not the great unknown, whom we can but dimly conceive. We need not fear, as heathens do, that he might be capricious and bloodthirsty or too far away and too great to hear men. He is there, and we always know where we can find him, where he allows himself to be found and is waiting for us. Today this should once more sink into our hearts: God is near. God knows us. God is waiting for us in Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Let us not leave him waiting in vain! Let us not, through distraction and lethargy, pass by the greatest and most important thing life offers us… This sacred proximity to us is always alive in the churches. It is always calling us and inviting us in. This is what is lovely about Catholic churches, that within them there is, as it were, always worship, because the Eucharistic presence of the Lord dwells always within them.

The eternal God has become Man, and dwells among us. This feast, then, calls us, first of all, to realize how blessed we are that that God has became man. Secondly, the feast calls us to understand that the presence of God born into the world at that first Christmas is with us still, in a very real way, within the Church and its Sacraments. Third and finally this feast calls us to regularly worship him in the holy places where He resides among us.

Tonight and tomorrow we feast with family, we exchange our gifts, we celebrate this good news: that Jesus Christ is Emmanuel, “God with us.” In the words of one ancient hymn (Kontakion of Romanos the Melodist, cited in CCC §525):

The Virgin today brings into the world the Eternal
And the earth offers a cave to the Inaccessible.
The angels and shepherds praise him
And the magi advance with the star,
For you are born for us,
Little Child, God eternal!

Amen.