Homily
Solemnity of Christmas
Mass at Midnight
St. Frances Cabrini Church
Hoxie, Kansas
24 December 2011
Daily Readings
We might be more afraid of babies today than Herod was at the birth of Jesus. Granted, Herod had some reason to be alarmed. There were signs in the heavens that this new child had armies of angels in his corner that could make even the most fearsome armies of Caesar panic. Still, Herod was afraid of a baby. He felt threatened by a helpless little baby! But what about us? Are we afraid to be changed by the baby Jesus tonight? Have we truly come here tonight not out of fear or indifference, but out of love? We have to admit that sometimes we are changed more by the society that we live in than we are by the newborn Jesus.
We live in a society that seems to spend more energy manufacturing or aborting babies than in seeing children as the miraculous gifts that they are. We spend more time arguing about the redefinition of marriage and the family than in forming young people capable of the sacrifice of marriage that will make the babies that will secure our future more secure themselves. The same societies that are smart enough to build ever more impressive smart-phones are not smart enough to stop contracepting and sterilizing their economies and themselves out of eventual existence. Herod might have been afraid of a single child. We are in a society afraid to admit that babies are our future, and to welcome them accordingly.
Perhaps this battle first fought by Mary and Joseph, to find a place to have a baby, will be the defining struggle of our generation. Being born in 1974, one year after Roe v. Wade, abortion in the civil-rights struggle of my generation, the struggle for the the right to be born,a battle that has yet to be won in favor of the baby. Yet this struggle goes hand in hand with finding a real definition of what a human person is, and this is a question that our society gets more and more confused about. We know a lot more stuff than we used to, but we are getting dumber at being able to say what a human person is. That is why the celebration of Christmas, the welcoming of the baby Jesus into the world, is the best chance the world has to remember what it is in danger of forgetting - who we really are.
We have a saying that to forget where you came from is to forget who you are. How a societytreats its most vulnerable like her babies is a sure sign of whether that society still knows and serves the dignity of human persons or whether human persons are becoming less and less valuable. For us personally, to be able to see ourselves, and to remember where we came from, when we hold a newborn child, is the key to remembering that a human being becomes a person precisely when he is recognized, remembered and loved. And this simple but profound and irreducible definition of a human person is more evident when we are vulnerable, dependent and poor; in short, when we are like a baby. To remain a human person, to remember who we are by remembering where we came from, is to always be able to see ourselves as poor, vulnerable, and dependent, like a baby. To remain focused on the one thing that matters - that we are created in love, that love is our constant calling, and that love is our perfection in heaven, is to remember that as we go through life, that to stop being a child - poor, vulnerable and dependent, is to forget who we really are. This my friends, is what the Christmas mystery has to continually re-teach the world. It is how the Christmas mystery gives the world hope, by teaching us that babies are the key to everything.
Tonight in this sacred liturgy we welcome no ordinary child, but the Christ child, into our lives. We simply go through the motions, and pretend that God is close to us, unless we truly adore this Christ child, which means to literally and really 'fall in love' with this new baby. Christmas takes its name, of course, from Christ's Mass, and it is at Mass only when we receive this beautiful person of Jesus into our lives in the most perfect way imaginable. It would be absurd then to base my definition of a good Christmas by any other standard other than what happens to my heart, when I receive the Holy Eucharist on this holy night, for to take the Lord Jesus under my roof, into my body and soul, is a more intimate experience than holding the this baby in our arms. Which of us, even the most crusty of us, could hold the baby Jesus in our arms, to have the privilege given to Mary, his mother,and fail to fall in love with him. The Eucharist is nothing less than this privilege, and is perhaps even more, as the baby Jesus first born poor and in the cold humbles himself even more beautifully in the Eucharist so he can truly be here tonight. We simply go through the motions, then, if we think that our experience here tonight is any less dramatic than what happened on that first holy night. .
Jesus' perfect closeness to us at Mass is the reason that we can never give up on trying to be close to each other, and the perfect gift we receive here tonight is our reason to keep giving. We gather at the darkest hour of the darkest night of the year to welcome with incomparable faith and joy Jesus who is the light strong enough to scatter every darkness. The birth of Jesus from a virgin mother is the sign that the first creation of everything out of nothing by the virgin Father has reached its completion in Jesus, the new Adam. Because he takes on our nature in the incarnation, our nature is capable of elevation to real participation in eternal, uncreated reality. We rejoice on Christmas because we live in the fullness of time, when nothing is impossible for a God who never stops wanting to fall in love with us and be married to us, when the re-creation of the world is really taking place whenever a human person is not afraid to be visited by Jesus. The angels tell the shepherds - do not be afraid! We know deep down that we cannot afford to let this Christ's Mass pass with fear or indifference. If I resist Christ at this moment when he makes himself perfectly irresistible, when will I ever receive him? If not now, when? Living in a world that is oftentimes afraid of babies, may I not be afraid to fall in love again, and to be visited and changed, by this most irresistible of babies, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laying in a manger. Amen.
Solemnity of Christmas
Mass at Midnight
St. Frances Cabrini Church
Hoxie, Kansas
24 December 2011
Daily Readings
We might be more afraid of babies today than Herod was at the birth of Jesus. Granted, Herod had some reason to be alarmed. There were signs in the heavens that this new child had armies of angels in his corner that could make even the most fearsome armies of Caesar panic. Still, Herod was afraid of a baby. He felt threatened by a helpless little baby! But what about us? Are we afraid to be changed by the baby Jesus tonight? Have we truly come here tonight not out of fear or indifference, but out of love? We have to admit that sometimes we are changed more by the society that we live in than we are by the newborn Jesus.
We live in a society that seems to spend more energy manufacturing or aborting babies than in seeing children as the miraculous gifts that they are. We spend more time arguing about the redefinition of marriage and the family than in forming young people capable of the sacrifice of marriage that will make the babies that will secure our future more secure themselves. The same societies that are smart enough to build ever more impressive smart-phones are not smart enough to stop contracepting and sterilizing their economies and themselves out of eventual existence. Herod might have been afraid of a single child. We are in a society afraid to admit that babies are our future, and to welcome them accordingly.
Perhaps this battle first fought by Mary and Joseph, to find a place to have a baby, will be the defining struggle of our generation. Being born in 1974, one year after Roe v. Wade, abortion in the civil-rights struggle of my generation, the struggle for the the right to be born,a battle that has yet to be won in favor of the baby. Yet this struggle goes hand in hand with finding a real definition of what a human person is, and this is a question that our society gets more and more confused about. We know a lot more stuff than we used to, but we are getting dumber at being able to say what a human person is. That is why the celebration of Christmas, the welcoming of the baby Jesus into the world, is the best chance the world has to remember what it is in danger of forgetting - who we really are.
We have a saying that to forget where you came from is to forget who you are. How a societytreats its most vulnerable like her babies is a sure sign of whether that society still knows and serves the dignity of human persons or whether human persons are becoming less and less valuable. For us personally, to be able to see ourselves, and to remember where we came from, when we hold a newborn child, is the key to remembering that a human being becomes a person precisely when he is recognized, remembered and loved. And this simple but profound and irreducible definition of a human person is more evident when we are vulnerable, dependent and poor; in short, when we are like a baby. To remain a human person, to remember who we are by remembering where we came from, is to always be able to see ourselves as poor, vulnerable, and dependent, like a baby. To remain focused on the one thing that matters - that we are created in love, that love is our constant calling, and that love is our perfection in heaven, is to remember that as we go through life, that to stop being a child - poor, vulnerable and dependent, is to forget who we really are. This my friends, is what the Christmas mystery has to continually re-teach the world. It is how the Christmas mystery gives the world hope, by teaching us that babies are the key to everything.
Tonight in this sacred liturgy we welcome no ordinary child, but the Christ child, into our lives. We simply go through the motions, and pretend that God is close to us, unless we truly adore this Christ child, which means to literally and really 'fall in love' with this new baby. Christmas takes its name, of course, from Christ's Mass, and it is at Mass only when we receive this beautiful person of Jesus into our lives in the most perfect way imaginable. It would be absurd then to base my definition of a good Christmas by any other standard other than what happens to my heart, when I receive the Holy Eucharist on this holy night, for to take the Lord Jesus under my roof, into my body and soul, is a more intimate experience than holding the this baby in our arms. Which of us, even the most crusty of us, could hold the baby Jesus in our arms, to have the privilege given to Mary, his mother,and fail to fall in love with him. The Eucharist is nothing less than this privilege, and is perhaps even more, as the baby Jesus first born poor and in the cold humbles himself even more beautifully in the Eucharist so he can truly be here tonight. We simply go through the motions, then, if we think that our experience here tonight is any less dramatic than what happened on that first holy night. .
Jesus' perfect closeness to us at Mass is the reason that we can never give up on trying to be close to each other, and the perfect gift we receive here tonight is our reason to keep giving. We gather at the darkest hour of the darkest night of the year to welcome with incomparable faith and joy Jesus who is the light strong enough to scatter every darkness. The birth of Jesus from a virgin mother is the sign that the first creation of everything out of nothing by the virgin Father has reached its completion in Jesus, the new Adam. Because he takes on our nature in the incarnation, our nature is capable of elevation to real participation in eternal, uncreated reality. We rejoice on Christmas because we live in the fullness of time, when nothing is impossible for a God who never stops wanting to fall in love with us and be married to us, when the re-creation of the world is really taking place whenever a human person is not afraid to be visited by Jesus. The angels tell the shepherds - do not be afraid! We know deep down that we cannot afford to let this Christ's Mass pass with fear or indifference. If I resist Christ at this moment when he makes himself perfectly irresistible, when will I ever receive him? If not now, when? Living in a world that is oftentimes afraid of babies, may I not be afraid to fall in love again, and to be visited and changed, by this most irresistible of babies, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laying in a manger. Amen.
2 comments:
Thank you.
A message that can not be repeated too often!
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