will you hold me?

Homily

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord

25 December 2021

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

Will you hold me?

Two years ago I confessed that all I wanted for Christmas was for someone to hold me.  I feel like it's what everyone wants for Christmas, even if we're afraid to ask for it.  Well, the homily failed. Everyone just felt sorry for me.  I got a lot of pity hugs after Mass.  

What I meant is that I want to be touched in that place where I feel nobody knows or cares, and nothing changes.  I want to feel God there, for only He can do something about that smallest, darkest and weakest part of me.  I want the touch of a Savior there.  It's what I will always want for Christmas.  I want to feel God.  I dare say it's what you want as well.

Last year to avoid the pity I asked a better question.  What does Jesus want for Christmas?  Remarkably, when I asked Him He shared that He feels that same way I do.  Jesus longs for human touch, my touch and yours.  He wants you to hold Him.  That's all He will ever want for Christmas.  Surprising?  Yes!  Yet maybe not unexpected.  Tonight's mystery of the Incarnation is about God's desire to be like us in every way.  This includes our longing for human touch.  This includes my most embarrassing desire, that I want someone to hold me.  Well guess what? Jesus does too.

On a retreat this summer I learned the God is so desperate for your touch that He disguises His desire as need.  On this very night that we celebrate Jesus as perfect gift, and the sole hope of the world, we see Him in abject need.  It's a clue of what's to come.  Jesus disguises desire in need.  He helps by being helpless.  He loves by begging for yours.

We could go on and on, and perhaps on this ridiculous night we should and we must.  Jesus feeds the world by lying in a feeding trough.  He restores life by getting Himself killed.  He finds us by hiding from us.  He crushes the enemy by becoming as weak as possible - by being poor and naked and homeless and cold and forsaken, et cetera ad nauseum unto infinity.  Jesus makes sense of our world by being an absolute joke, by being absurdly ridiculous.

He appears at Christmas now to reveal His desire disguised as need.  Jesus is born to reveal the ultimate Christmas question.  He comes tonight to ask you as desperately as he can - will you hold me?  He bets the success of Christmas on your answer, and your answer alone.

Try to talk Him out of this strategy if you can.  Let me know how that goes!  I know I can't figure it out, how my holding Jesus would make any difference.  How does His begging for my touch save the world?  Heck if I know!  Don't ask me!  Ask him, He is right here!  Dare to ask Him what difference your answer is about to make.

When I ask Him, His answers baffle me.  They bother me!  Jesus says that He can't save the world without me.  I mean, He could, but He chooses not to.  You see, for Him saving the world starts and ends with His saving you.  He can't imagine His life without you in it.  He could I guess, but He chooses not to go there.  He chooses never to go there.  He wants the future of the world to run through your faith, and your touch.  I'm sorry if you don't like that.  That's just the way it is.

So to save the world, Jesus chooses to start with me.  And to save me, He has to come up with the best disguise, and the greatest trick.  For my defenses against Him helping me are elite!  I bet yours are too.  When He offers to help, I'm quick to say I got this and I'm fine!  I defend well what I know, that place where I am alone, and I am afraid to give it up.  The only way past this fear is the trick of Christmas, a baby begging for my touch.  If I say yes, then in the great paradox of Christmas I discover that I am the one being held.  If I hold him, then both of our Christmas dreams come true.

The only thing left then is for my imagination to be consummated.  Tonight as I imagine touching Jesus in the circumstances of Bethlehem, that imagination passes deeper into reality as I put the Mass in Christmas.  In Christ's Mass, Bethlehem is transformed into the intimate details of my life.  The cave becomes this little chapel and then the sacred space of my body.  The manger gives way to this altar, and then to the space I have prepared for Him in my heart.

Bethlehem becomes more real tonight than ever in history, right here, right now as the baby becomes bread, when Jesus asks me even more desperately from the Eucharist - will you hold me?

Jesus will not change the world without you. Try to talk Him out of it, but that's just the way it is.  It's his desire, His Christmas wish, that the hope of the world passes through your touch.  He trusts your answer now to the ultimate  Christmas question.

Will you hold me?