Christmas Homilies 2005
Christ wants to be close to us all.
Christmas is a very sentimental time. In the best sense, our hearts are open to each other, to love, I think also to God. I want to tell you two stories. One is true. The other is made up, but could have happened:
A few years ago, two missionaries went to work in a Russian orphanage. About 100 boys & girls who had been abandoned & abused were there. Christmas came and the two missionaries wanted to tell them about Christmas. They were amazed that the children had never been taught ANYTHING about Jesus. So they told them about Mary & Joseph arriving in Bethlehem, finding no room at the inn, going to a stable and Jesus being born there and placed in a manger.
Throughout the story, the children and orphanage staff sat in amazement as they listened. Some sat on the edges of their stools, trying to grasp every word. They then gave them bits of cardboard and bits of cloth for them to make there own crib: nothing like our crib here: the straw was just strips of cardboard and the baby Jesus was just cut out from a piece of felt.
The missionaries were walking around to see if the children needed any help. And then one of them came to little Misha. He looked to be about 6 years old and had finished his crib. But as the missionary looked at the little boy's manger, he was startled to see not one, but two babies in the manger. Quickly, one of the missionaries called for the translator to ask the lad why there were two babies in the manger. The child began to repeat the story very seriously.
For such a young boy, who had only heard the Christmas story once, he related the happenings accurately - until he came to the part where Mary put the baby Jesus in the manger. Then Misha started to make things up. He said, "And when Mary laid the baby in the manger, Jesus looked at me and asked me if I had a place to stay. I told him I have no mummy and I have no daddy, so I don't have any place to stay. Then Jesus told me I could stay with him. But I told him I couldn't, because I didn't have a gift to give him like everybody else did. But I wanted to stay with Jesus so much, so I thought about what I had that maybe I could use for a gift. I thought maybe if I kept him warm, that would be a good gift.
So I asked Jesus, "If I keep you warm, will that be a good enough gift?" And Jesus told me, "If you keep me warm, that will be the best gift anybody ever gave me. So I got into the manger, and then Jesus looked at me and he told me I could stay with him---for always." As little Misha finished his story, his eyes brimmed full of tears that splashed down his little cheeks. Putting his hand over his face, his head dropped to the table and his shoulders shook as he sobbed and sobbed.
Its is a bit sad isn’t it? But the beautiful thing is that that little boy had found someone who would never abandon nor abuse him, someone who would stay with him-FOR ALWAYS. And he’d reminded the missionaries that it's not what you have in your life, but who you have in your life that counts.
But doesn’t that apply to all of us? It's not what you have in your life, but who you have in your life that counts. That means our family, our loved ones, BUT ABOVE ALL IT MEANS JESUS! You may be young and enjoying life you think to the full. But Jesus will bring you something more. You may be a student at university… working away from home… in a relationship… middleaged and with family, middleaged and childless… an older person with too much free time and not such good health. Whoever we are, Jesus looks at each of us and says: “I want to stay with you always”.
And finally, my second story: perhaps some of the adults here think that the first one was just a bit too sentimental: we’re not 6 year olds. Our lives are more complicated, would Jesus really want to come close to us? I’m not that good… what could I possibly offer him? This story makes us want to arrive at Christmas, with a heart that is poor and empty of everything.
Among the shepherds who presented themselves on Christmas night to adore Jesus, there was one so poor that he didn't have anything to offer and he was very much ashamed. When they reached the cave, the shepherds fought among themselves to offer their gifts. Mary didn't know how to receive all of them, for she had the Child in her arms. So, seeing the poor shepherd with his hands free, she gave him Jesus to hold. Having empty hands was his good luck for he was given Jesus himself.
Not a true story. But perhaps it is, for doesn’t Mary place Jesus into our hands every time we go to Holy Communion?
Today a saviour has been born for us:
come let us adore Him
As we leave Mass this evening, we should all have ringing in our ears the words and tune of a famous Christmas hymn: it is one of the few hymns that is known certainly by the English and Polish here, I hope too by some of the Indians and Philippinos: Adeste fideles, O Come, all ye faithful. And the last words we shall sing will of course be: Venite adoremus, Dominum: O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord.
We have come here through the cold, damp streets of Hull to adore God. What is adoration? It means to worship. It’s something we do with our minds but above all with our hearts. It’s a love-thing. Back in the summer, our new Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, spoke to about 800 000 young people about their Catholic faith. He wanted to teach them, as we want to teach all our young people, what are the most essential things of our faith. What did he choose to talk to them about? About adoring the Lord. The theme of the World Youth Day in Cologne was simply: ‘We have come to worship Him’.
He spoke about the Magi, the wise men, who came to worship Jesus shortly after his birth. They were wise men, searchers for wisdom and truth. They were probably Zoroastrian astrologers from modern day Northern Iran. Marco Polo claimed to have seen their tombs on his travels in the 15th century. To their amazement, their search for wisdom, for truth led them to Christ, King of the universe, lying in a cow’s feeding trough in a smelly stable. What they discovered there was someone who was greater than anything to be found in the pages of the ancient philosophies, of Aristotle, Plato, Averroes…St Augustine of North Africa wrote about the year 400 said that there is much in the Bible that can also be found in the ancient philosophies. He would know, he was a professional in philosopher. Everything but that which was born in the Bethlehem stable: The Word made flesh. For Jesus as a newborn child, Jesus as a grown adult male, Jesus dead, Jesus risen, Jesus in heaven, Jesus in the Mass, Jesus in the Tabernacle, is truly God in the world, God among us. The Organising Intelligence behind the entire universe was made flesh and came among us, and is among us still.
We today are still like the Magi. To be human is to search for truth. Not many search for it in the stars, nowadays, but in science, in literature; when we read magazines, newspapers, watch the telly, surf the Internet, we’re really searching for a wisdom, a truth that will enhance our lives, make us look better, be better. That’s all well and good. But he who came among us in Bethlehem, who has stayed with us through his body the Church, who comes down upon the altar at every Mass, who dwells silently in every tabernacle… He exceeds all we could ever discover or download.
What a joy it is to be a Christian, to be a Catholic. We can adore the very Lord himself. We do it with our hearts. We also do it in another way, a more physical one, when we go down on one knee every time we come into a Catholic church. What a beautiful thing it is to genuflect! We’re following in the footsteps of the shepherds, the Magi and of every Catholic saint. A few weeks ago I was with a number of my fellow priests in York for a Day of Recollection for Advent. I arrived late and was at the back of church. And I watched each of my brother priests as they got up, one-by-one, genuflected to the Lord on the altar and went off to confession. I was watching them adoring the Lord. It moved me.
Can I encourage you all to take to heart the message of Pope Benedict to those young people. Let us adore the Lord in the Eucharist: its would be great if you would remember tomorrow what I am saying tonight: genuflect to the Lord as you come and go with love, with adoration. Adeste fideles…Venite adoremus, Dominum! O come all ye faithful… come let us adore Him!
St John’s explanation of the meaning of Christmas: ‘And the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.’
The Catholics liturgy is very beautiful during these days of Christmas. There are four Masses for Christmas Day and each has its own prayers and readings: the Vigil prepares us for the event of the incarnation; at Midnight we are at the stable with Mary and Joseph as the child is born; at the Dawn Mass we accompany the shepherds as they are the first to adore Jesus. The fourth Mass has a different character. We listen to the opening lines of St John’s Gospel. He offers us an ‘eagle eye’ vision of the event of the Incarnation. I suppose that with the arrival of a baby it would always be possible to over-sentimentalise the Christmas mystery. A child who was only ever taken to Mass at Christmas was supposed to have said to his mother on being taken to the crib, “Doesn’t Jesus ever grow up – he was a baby last year too?” Well, St John at this Mass offers us an ‘adult Christ’ at Christmas. What does he say?
Firstly St John begins not with Jesus’ arrival on earth but with his eternal co-existence with the Father. Jesus is Son of God not like I am the son of my father: there was a time when my father was and I wasn’t – about thirty years. Jesus is the eternal Son of God who took flesh 2000 years ago but pre-existed. I suppose everyone here realises this? St John says: ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God…’
Another thing about these opening lines, Jesus isn’t called ‘Son’ but ‘Word’. This always puzzled me as a child and I can’t remember anyone offering me an explanation. It’s a strange title which would actually have been instantly intelligible to the Greek minds St John was encountering in Ephesus. The ancient pagan philosophers understood that the world was created and said that a Logos, an ‘organising intelligence’ was responsible for the creation of the material world at least (the nous or mind was responsible for all things spiritual). John picks up on their understanding and says that it is the Creator of the world, the organising Intelligence, who has come into the world in Jesus Christ. ‘He was in the world that had its being through him’. Now this has enormous relevance for today. Atheist scientists have to tell us that our highly rational universe comes from chance, the rational from the irrational. Faith proposes the opposite: at the beginning of all is not the irrational but rational, Creative Reason, Organising Intelligence. In fact, a leading atheist philosopher, Anthony Flew, has recently become a theist on the basis of the rationality of the universe. He insists he still rejects the “despotic divinity” of Judeo-Christianity and Islam but settles for an “Organising Intelligence”. In this he has St John for company.
But this mention of the eternal Son, supreme creative Reason, could leave us feeling very small in a vast universe. We are indeed in the centre of immensities. And it’s not just the size of the universe that makes us feel small but the world we are making for ourselves. Films, tv, and the internet all place before our eyes what we could be and aren’t, what others do and we don’t do. It could make us frustrated and ambitious for wanting to be noticed. Perhaps this is behind programmes like Pop Idol, Stars in your Eyes, Big Brother. But for those who don’t make it there could be a sense of despair, a sense of being ‘nothing’. Faith in Christ frees us from this. The coming of the infinite, eternal God to us, in Christ, in the Incarnation and in its continuity in the Eucharist, makes every place the first place. With Christ in ones heart, one feels oneself in the centre of the world even if one is in the world’s most remote village. God has taken flesh, pitched his tent among us here! God wants to make each of us a ‘celebrity’ by asking to celebrate his love for us, with us, within us. How awesome our importance to God! If we don’t yet realise this, then it’s we that need to grow up, not Jesus.