Homily for Christmas During the Day
Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption
Introduction
“And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” This crescendo in the prologue to the Gospel of St. John which we hear proclaimed at this Christmas Mass During the Day is a verse of the Bible to which the Church has given great reverence all throughout her history, for it encapsulates the unique claim of the Christian faith: that God did not remain in heaven distant from His human creation, but descended from heaven to assume a human body, in order to make us one with Him and bring us to heaven with Him.
Good News: the Incarnation
Before the reordering of the Mass after the second Vatican Council, in fact, this Gospel was read at the end of every Mass, “the Last Gospel” as it was called. And everyone would genuflect at that verse when the priest read the Gospel. It was also the practice then to genuflect at the words of the Creed which refer to the Incarnation, those words where we now make a profound bow: “by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.” And the Church still preserves that practice of genuflecting on two days of the year, on the two great feast days that celebrate specifically this great gift of the Incarnation, God taking on human flesh and becoming a man: the Solemnity of the Annunciation and today, the Mass of Christmas.
We will, then, genuflect instead of bow at those words of the Creed at today’s Mass, as a way of driving the point home to us. And you may also be familiar with the custom, still sometimes observed, when praying the Angeles – the prayer which recalls the Annunciation to our Blessed Mother from the Angel Gabriel that she is to become the mother of God’s Son – of genuflecting at this verse in that prayer: “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
This is the good news about which Isaiah prophesied in our first reading, and why he calls beautiful the feed of the one who announces this good news. It is the good news of salvation, with the announcement, “your God is King!” This is truly good news: God, the King of the universe, lowers Himself to enter into the littleness of our world, so that He can rescue us from death and we can live forever with Him in heaven. What could be better news than this?
Resistance
And yet, there is so much resistance to believing that this is truly good news. The constant pull is for us to reject that God is King and make ourselves the kings
of our own lives. We may be inclined to believe that this is something unique to our own age, but we can see it constantly from the very beginning.
Remember God’s chosen people of old, when they were wandering in the Sinai desert, and made a molten calf and bowed down to it as their god and king, not believing that their true King, the one, true God, was still with them to save them? Certainly today we have more sophisticated ways and more advanced technology to fool ourselves into thinking that we can do this, but it is the fallen part of our human nature common to every human being of every generation.
Why should this be so? If God came to help us, why would we reject the help? Well, there’s another side to it: God asks us to love one another as He has loved us. In other words, God’s love places demands on us. It is not as if God coming to our rescue us means that God will give us whatever we want whenever we ask for it. If that were all there was to it, we would actually end up being miserable.
Demands and the Way to Happiness
Yes, it is true that God’s love is unconditional; God will always love us, even when His love is unrequited. But God’s love is also a demanding love, precisely so that we will not be miserable. God places demands on us for our own good because what God really wants for us is that we be happy – happy with one another and, ultimately, happy with Him, here in this life and forever in the life of heaven. We cannot get there, though, if we don’t put first things first: the first step is to take God at His word and keep holy the Sabbath, the Lord’s Day.
It all starts with the right worship of God. We imitate God’s love by putting God first, lowering ourselves before Him in worship, simply because it is His due and it is “right and just” for our salvation. This is the conditioning we need to love others in the way God loves us, the safeguard that keeps us on the right track. Anyone who strives to live the way of true love understands this. The one who truly loves knows that love is not a passing feeling or indulging in a pleasurable experience. If we think about how God loves us, then it becomes clear that love is only possible with the virtue of humility, lowering oneself for the good of the other. Nor does it mean doing grand and glorious things for all to see, but rather is shown in little thoughtful ways.
As St. Mother Theresa of Calcutta was fond of saying, pleasing God is not a matter of doing great things for all to see but small things with great love. The one who loves is the one who can give to others the gifts of patience, kindness, generosity with their time and attention, putting others before themselves, suffering for what is true and just, sacrificing for the good of others. This is what it means to love, and those who live this way are those who are rich in God’s Kingdom because they have amassed for themselves, not material treasures which everyone must necessarily leave behind in this world after they die, but the spiritual treasures of love which are the only ones we can take with us beyond the grave all the way into heaven.
Conclusion
God sent His Son into the world to speak to us His Word in human flesh. This is God’s definitive Word to us, and it is a word of salvation: mercy, forgiveness and new life. And it is a Word that is also a command, to go forth and love others likewise. This is truly good news and the source of all of our hope. Let us, then, give God His due, and love one another in the way He loves us. Then we will be fit for the life of heaven, and begin to experience a pre-taste of it already here and now. Amassing a wealth of acts of great love that we can then take with us beyond the grave is itself a participation in the mystery of the Incarnation, for it makes visible God’s love for us in this world of space and time. Let us please Him in all things, so that His life may be ours. May God grant us this grace. Amen.
