Christmas Sermon
Midnight Mass
December 25, 2004

CHRISTMAS SERMON MIDNIGHT MASS 2004

We have three role models as we keep vigil through the night of Christmas: Mary giving birth under the poorest and most miserable conditions, Joseph, a giant of faith sticking it out, hoping against hope, and the shepherds keeping watch over their flock during the winter night. Each experienced a miracle. If we join their faith, we may also participate in that experience.

Mary had strong and direct evidence that her child was God’s purest and most direct gift to mankind. But she was told nothing about the way the birth was to take place. She knew that God caused the origin of her child’s life, but she had no evidence why this life announced by an angel and conceived by the Holy Spirit had to be born in utter privation and misery. Or maybe she did have an inkling. Her humility, a realistic assessment of her lowly condition, made it clear to her that also at his birth God would have a preference for the lowly and the poor, not the high-ranking. And so, perhaps for the first time in human history, Mary understood God’s passionate love for those who experience themselves as weak and inadequate. She was filled with awe as she realized through the immense contrast of God’s infinite greatness and her own powerless, fragile and negligible nothingness, the generosity with which God approached fallen humanity. It seemed that when wanting to join the human race, God was asking, even begging for himself – yes, he did not intrude, but humbly asked for himself – a place in the human community.

By the circumstances of his poverty and the precarious conditions of his wife, Joseph could have come to the brink of despair. Because law and society attributed to him the paternity of the Jesus, Joseph must have realized that because he belonged to David’s clan Mary with her child had to obey the Emperor’s census and move to the town of Bethlehem. And so it was there, while complying with the imperial census, that Jesus’ birth had to take place. So, on account of Joseph, Mary and her child found themselves in desperate conditions, ending up in a shelter of animals, for there was no room for them in the inn. Did Joseph realize that God chose these circumstances not only as a challenge, as a trial and tribulation for the poor parents he had chosen for himself, but in order to preach the first beatitude silently at first, thirty years before he was to preach it aloud in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God”?

Regardless how unspeakable and unfathomable this mystery was, Mary and Joseph had enough insight to make their Christmas experience unique, as if composed of two opposite poles. On the one hand, there was that miraculous birth by which the child exited from Mary’s womb without birth pangs, without agony, without the customary foreshadowing of the experience of death. On the other hand, Mary and Joseph encountered in the child God’s perfect gift, a kingdom of heaven in miniature proportions, God reigning over the forces of nature, bonding two human beings for life in an utter focusing on God’s will and the gift of faith, the blessed fruit of the blessed womb making this birth utterly joyful, a new human being whose whole existence was from the first moment of his birth a perfect praise of the father, a pure sacrifice of self-giving and, at the same time, an utter submerging of himself into the mortal human condition.

Our third vigil keepers, the shepherds of Bethlehem, knew the least about the mystery of this night. They only did their duty and their routine. Waiting and watching and protecting their sheep against thieves and marauders, they did not realize that that they were those of whom Isaiah said: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” And in fact, Jesus’ coming took place in the same way in which he later described his second coming: he came as a thief in the night, unannounced and unsuspected, quietly slipping into the world as if through the backdoor. The sudden and surprising divine intervention announcing the birth of Jesus to these poor and simple people in the outskirts of Bethlehem might be tonight our greatest consolation. If you faithfully tend your chores, wait for the coming of the Lord, entrust the care of your problems to God and keep vigil in the night, God may respond to you in the same way He visited the simple shepherds of Bethlehem.

“I announce to you great joy which will bring joy to the whole of Israel. For today a Savior is born.” These words remind us again of the prophecy of Isaiah: “for unto us a child is born, a little boy is born to us.” A small beginning in the immensity of the night, assuring us that God is with us. He is with us on the level where we need him the most: he joins us in our weakness and our smallness.” The joyful message is not about the birth of a great king, the message is not about the fact that a great prophet is raised up in Israel. The angel does not speak about a genius who will unify all religions, a social reformer who will correct all injustice imposed by politicians and army generals -- just a little child, but he is born to us, as a human being in whom God gave himself to us and committed himself to our well-being, to the destiny of the human race, visiting those who wait for him amidst the darkness of their sins and the seemingly unsolvable problems of their inner lives.

In this Midnight Mass there must be an exchange between each one of us and this child born to us and for us. We should bring to him our hearts with homage, with readiness to obey, to listen and to believe. And he will give to us himself. Each shepherd who visited him in Bethlehem brought him some gift, as we can imagine. They brought to the Holy Family food and drink, milk, honey, cheese, warm clothes and blankets. And what did they receive in exchange. Not only good words and thankful smiles: they were given hope as well. This child was born for the redemption of Israel, he was born to be the fulfillment of the promises, and this child was a sign that God is ready to reach out to sinful man, lost in his own darkness and desperate about the conditions of his life. We have only one task, as we receive his body and blood from this altar. Each human heart that visits this newborn child should become a dwelling place, a home, a permanent abode. Do not be afraid that your heart is not much better than a stable for ox and ass. He is used to such dwelling places, He wants to be at home in you, He wants to grow in you, He wants to transform you from within, He wants to be born to you as your great joy, as your savior, as the answer to your needs, the light in your personal night, the presence in your abandoned and derelict personal abode.

According to an old etymology, the name of the town Bethlehem means BETH – LECHEM, or house of bread. Tonight, every heart that approaches this newborn child must become beth-lechem, a source of nourishment for the human race, a piece of tasty, freshly baked, energizing bread, bread that gives you strength to pick up the pieces of your life, get up and walk, or continue to walk and make your way to the house of God, to the life everlasting for which God has created you. Amen

 [