madly in love

Homily
Christmas Mass at Midnight (Readings)
24 December 2013
Christ the King Topeka
Readings


O come let us adore him!  Christ the Lord!


To adore the Christ child, to truly adore Him, means that we have come tonight together to fall in love again. We have come to adore.  To adore is to fall madly in love, completely in love, hopelessly in love, with the one who shows himself in the circumstances of Bethlehem to be desperately in love with us.  For the scene of Bethlehem is too absurd for a lukewarm response . . God is ridiculously in love with us, and would do anything to reach our cold hearts.  How can we truly visit Bethlehem and not walk away with a new heart? The biggest and most invincible person imaginable, the Word through whom all things were made, the one to whom the entire universe is but dust, shows his ultimate power in allowing himself to be made small.  Irresistibly small.  Helplessly small.  Poor, vulnerable, cold, naked, hungry.  Our Lord desperately wants to break through our fear and indifference, and to show us how desperately he is in love with us.  We recognize and celebrate this at Christmas in a more beautiful and intense way than at any other time of year.  Christ in the circumstances of Bethlehem shows he loves everything of what it means to be a human person, in taking on all of our nature, even the weakest parts.  He shows what it means for him to fall in love with us.  Desperately in love.  so if we have come to do anything less that to adore him, to fall madly and hopelessly in love with him, so much so that we can never return to who we were before, then we are still living in fear.  Do not be afraid, the angel tells Mary!  Do not be afraid, the angel tells Joseph.  Do not be afraid, the angels tell the shepherds!  Do not be afraid of this baby!  Do not be afraid to let him touch your heart in ways you never have before!  God loves you!  He loves every circumstances of your life.  He loves you desperately and completely and exactly right where you are at this moment!  Do not be afraid to receive Christ into your heart tonight, and to fall in love with him too!  O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord!

Christmas perhaps more than any other night of the year is the night we rediscover what it means to be a human person.  It is a night to keep things simple.  It is a night to remember that to forget where you came from is to forget who you are!  It is true that living through our smart phones, we become capable of so much more.  Yet our culture is at constant risk for forgetting what a human person is in his very nature and simplicity.  A human person is sacred, and exists not as a means to an end but for his own sake.  A human being becomes a person precisely and only when he is known and loved and desired and protected, and this definition is more evident whenever persons are poor, and vulnerable and dependent upon others.  We know deep down that to become a human person is not to grow up and to get the freedom of intelligence and will to create our own reality, as good as these are for many people.  No, to be human is to enter into the adventure of discovering reality, and this happens whenever we turn and become again like children.  To be human is to never run away from remaining poor, and dependent and vulnerable, so that we never run away from love as our origin, love as our constant calling, and love as our perfection in heaven.  The Christ child shows us that human persons are at their best, and the power of love in us the strongest, when we find a way to make ourselves small, when we give ourselves away in love, when we sacrifice so that at every moment of our lives we are able to fall in love, to be in love, and to stay in love.

The sign that appears in Bethlehem tonight is the true and perfect face of divine love.  The ultimate source of love, God himself, takes on a human face, so that we might no longer fear to fall in love with God. For to seek the face of God, the source of love and life, is to begin to truly live.  The sign of a baby born of a virgin mother means a new creation has dawned on the earth, a creation stronger and meant to last longer than the first creation of the universe by a virgin Father.  The sign of Bethlehem means that the original creation of everything out of nothing is giving way to a creation that starts at nothing and grows to everything.  Jesus appears in Bethlehem as small as possible to show that this world will be remade beginning with the weakest and most vulnerable.  To belong to his kingdom is to participate with him in healing the world from the inside out, by making ourselves small.  Tonight it is essential that we turn and become children again.  For the kingdom to which we most want to belong begins with children.  It starts small but ends big.  It is born in poverty but ends with riches. It begins in vulnerability but ends in strength. It allows itself to be touched by death but ends in everlasting life.  The sign begun in Bethlehem is still gaining strength 2000 years later.  The Roman kingdom that feared the coming of the Christ child has long since returned to dust.  Yet Christ's kingdom begun as a helpless baby born to poor parents in a  barn in the middle of nowhere, is still gaining strength, and celebrates Christmas with exceeding joy throughout the whole world!

It would be enough, wouldn't it, to come tonight to adore Christ in the manger, to fall in love with him in this way, and to judge my Christmas by what happens to my heart as I contemplate Bethlehem.  Yet God did not stop at Bethlehem, and neither can we tonight.  We celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation with special intensity tonight, with the most intensity we can muster, and yet ultimately we are here to celebrate more.  We are here to celebrate Christ's Mass.  Christmas takes its name not from the scene at Bethlehem, but by what happens on this altar.  For as small as Jesus made himself in being born of the virgin, he makes himself even smaller, and more vulnerable,a and more beautiful to fall in love with, as he allows himself to be born on this altar for us.  It is only at Mass that we receive Jesus in the most perfect way imaginable, only at Mass that we truly go to Bethlehem, and with Joseph allow Jesus to come under our roofs, and with Mary to allow him to be conceived in the deepest recesses of our heart.  If we can imagine what would happen to our hearts and minds if we had the intimate experience of our Lady of seeing the face of Jesus for the first time, and holding him in her arms, and how we would fall in love with the most important baby ever born into the world, so much moreso should we fall in love with Christ in the Eucharist, for Jesus humbles himself even more beautifully, and travels again an incomprehensible distance, to be born on this altar tonight.  The meaning of Christmas, then, the true meaning of Christmas, the precise and original meaning of Christmas, then, is what happens to our hears and minds and lives when we receive Jesus at Christ's Mass!  For what happens right here, right now, is no less dramatic, is no less a falling love, than what happened on that most holy night.  Jesus' perfect closeness to us at Mass is the reason we must never give up on being close to each other.  His perfect gift at Christ's Mass, is the reason we must never stop giving ourselves away completely every Christmas.

Do not be afraid now, my dearest friends, of Christ who comes to you in his Mass, in this Eucharist.  If we resist him now, when will we ever receive him?  Do not be afraid!  We know that we cannot let this Christmas, this moment, this gift of a time, pass with fear or indifference.  If not now, when?  Let God fall in love with you in the prayers we are about to say together.  Let yourself fall in love with him again.  Do not be afraid to fall in love, to be visited and changed, by this most irresistible of babies, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger!

O come let us adore him!  Christ the Lord!