Homily
Christmas Mass at Night IC
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
25 December 2018
O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!
Have we come to adore tonight? What does it mean to adore? I hope you will agree it means the deepest form of love and affection. It means a ridiculous and uncontrollable falling for another person. When we are invited at Christmas to adore the Lord, we are invited to an experience that is strong enough to break through any fear, doubt and indifference that is in our hearts. Is this what you came for at Christmas? If so, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!
For the scene we celebrate and contemplate at Christmas is much too absurd to do anything less. The author of the universe, the one whose almighty power is beyond comprehension, and the one who does need any one of us for anything whatsoever - that one - shows his ultimate power in making himself small. Irresistibly small. Helplessly small. Ridiculously small.
So well does Jesus know our capacity to resist love and fall out of love, to resist God and fall out of love with God, that tonight he does everything he can to break through our indifference and defenses. I know he needs to break through my pride and selfishness and stubbornness. How about yours? Will this be a night when God breaks through your fear of loving?
Do not be afraid, the angel says first to Mary. Do not be afraid, the angel says next to Joseph. Do not be afraid, the angels say next to the shepherds. Do not be afraid, they say finally to you and to me. Do not be afraid of this baby.
Jesus cannot make himself any smaller or irresistible than in the ridiculous scene of Bethlehem. Born in perfect vulnerability and humility and poverty at the darkest hour of the darkest night, recognized at first only by the mangiest of beasts and shepherds, Jesus shows how ridiculously he is in love with everything that makes up a human life, beginning with weakness.
Yet it is precisely where loneliness, fear, doubt, complacency, addiction, poverty, insignificance, selfishness, rejection and humiliation have touched our story that we have fallen out of love. But why? All these things that destroy our love are in play at Bethlehem. It is into these real human circumstances that Jesus came, and where He so desperately wants to come again. Jesus wants to visit me where I have fallen out of love. That's what makes this Christmas the most dramatic and exciting Christmas ever, in all of history. Jesus wants to be born precisely there, in the Bethlehem that is my story and my heart.
So let's put the Mass in Christ-Mass this year, and admit that Christmas takes it's name not from the scene of Bethlehem that sets the stage for tonight, but from the stage that is this altar. It is on this stage that Jesus will be born even more humbly and beautifully than He was 2000 years ago. It is from this stage that Jesus will fall ridiculously and hopelessly in love with you again, and ask you not to be afraid of your place in the greatest love story ever told.
Is that what you want for Christmas this year? It's what I want.
If so, let's come, each one of us, and together. Come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.
Christmas Mass at Night IC
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
25 December 2018
O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!
Have we come to adore tonight? What does it mean to adore? I hope you will agree it means the deepest form of love and affection. It means a ridiculous and uncontrollable falling for another person. When we are invited at Christmas to adore the Lord, we are invited to an experience that is strong enough to break through any fear, doubt and indifference that is in our hearts. Is this what you came for at Christmas? If so, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!
For the scene we celebrate and contemplate at Christmas is much too absurd to do anything less. The author of the universe, the one whose almighty power is beyond comprehension, and the one who does need any one of us for anything whatsoever - that one - shows his ultimate power in making himself small. Irresistibly small. Helplessly small. Ridiculously small.
So well does Jesus know our capacity to resist love and fall out of love, to resist God and fall out of love with God, that tonight he does everything he can to break through our indifference and defenses. I know he needs to break through my pride and selfishness and stubbornness. How about yours? Will this be a night when God breaks through your fear of loving?
Do not be afraid, the angel says first to Mary. Do not be afraid, the angel says next to Joseph. Do not be afraid, the angels say next to the shepherds. Do not be afraid, they say finally to you and to me. Do not be afraid of this baby.
Jesus cannot make himself any smaller or irresistible than in the ridiculous scene of Bethlehem. Born in perfect vulnerability and humility and poverty at the darkest hour of the darkest night, recognized at first only by the mangiest of beasts and shepherds, Jesus shows how ridiculously he is in love with everything that makes up a human life, beginning with weakness.
Yet it is precisely where loneliness, fear, doubt, complacency, addiction, poverty, insignificance, selfishness, rejection and humiliation have touched our story that we have fallen out of love. But why? All these things that destroy our love are in play at Bethlehem. It is into these real human circumstances that Jesus came, and where He so desperately wants to come again. Jesus wants to visit me where I have fallen out of love. That's what makes this Christmas the most dramatic and exciting Christmas ever, in all of history. Jesus wants to be born precisely there, in the Bethlehem that is my story and my heart.
So let's put the Mass in Christ-Mass this year, and admit that Christmas takes it's name not from the scene of Bethlehem that sets the stage for tonight, but from the stage that is this altar. It is on this stage that Jesus will be born even more humbly and beautifully than He was 2000 years ago. It is from this stage that Jesus will fall ridiculously and hopelessly in love with you again, and ask you not to be afraid of your place in the greatest love story ever told.
Is that what you want for Christmas this year? It's what I want.
If so, let's come, each one of us, and together. Come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.
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