“Light, Darkness and Our Gift Exchange with God”
Homily for Christmas Mass During the Night
December 25, 2023; St. Mary’s Cathedral
Introduction
For nearly four weeks of Advent now, we have been preparing for this celebration of the great mystery of our faith of the coming of the Son of God into our world, the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity in our human flesh. We have been singing special Advent carols to mark the way (only now is the time, properly speaking, for Christmas carols!). Among the many that we love to sing, we sang the words: “People, look east, the time is near of the crowning of the year. Make your house fair as you are able, trim the hearth and set the table. People, look east and sing today: Love, the Guest, is on the way.”
Looking East
While the melody of the carol comes from a traditional French carol, the words in English were written more recently, in the 1920’s, by the English hymnist and author Eleanor Farjeon. In these lyrics, Farjeon uses a different image in each stanza to address the themes of the Advent and Christmas seasons. Here in this first verse the image of looking east orients us toward the direction of the rising sun, that is, the source of light, the direction of the coming of the Messiah: he is the light of God coming into the world to dispel the darkness in this world.
Christians from the very beginning have had this sensitivity of praying facing east, so much so that it endured for quite some time even within Protestant denominations. Farjeon was a Methodist. We can also think, for example, of the classic Negro spiritual Let Us Break Bread Together on Our Knees: “When I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun, O Lord have mercy on me.” So deep in the Christian soul was this sensitivity of praying facing east in ancient times that, as Pope Benedict explained to us, Christians used to put a cross on the wall on the east side of their home in order to know toward which direction they should pray.
The east also reminds us of paradise: God put the garden in the east when He created the man and the woman to be in perfect harmony with Him, with each other, and with all creation. Facing toward the direction of the light orients us toward the life of heaven and helps us prepare to welcome the light of the world when he comes into our lives, “Love, the guest,” who is on his way. It also explains why it has been the ancient and consistent practice of Churches that trace their origins to the apostles to worship with priest and people together facing east (that is, in the same direction). While it has become much more common very recently in our own Church to worship with the priest facing the people, the Church has never repudiated the ancient principle of priest and people together looking toward the encounter with Christ the Light.
The Kinds of Darkness that Threaten
All of this is to remind us of where the source of our light comes from, or better yet, who that light is. There is much darkness in the world, and only he can cast it out. Such has it always been: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone.” This prophecy from the prophet Isaiah we just heard proclaimed in the first reading for our Mass tonight came at a particular period of the history the ancient people of Israel, when they were suffering oppression from the kingdom of Assyria, their powerful neighbor to the east. It was understood at that time as a prophecy of liberation from this oppression: the destruction of the symbols of oppression – the yoke, the pole and the rod – meant liberation, being brought into the light of freedom.
This prophecy speaks of one form of darkness: political oppression. Sadly, it is a darkness common in every generation, and most especially our own, as everyone around the globe at this time senses a worrisome and urgent concern over wars that have broken out in Eastern Europe and the Near East and that are threatening in other parts of the world as well. Then there is the persecution of people because of their religious beliefs, and especially of Christians, all over the world: China, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, just to name a few. There is darkness that also takes the form of social oppression, the marginalization of people because of certain traits they have or ways of thinking that do not conform to the accepted social norm of those in power.
Closer to home for each of us, there is the darkness that can envelope each one of us. We can sometimes feel very immersed in darkness, either because of things that happen to us beyond our control or even because of things that we do to ourselves. This is when the idea of darkness is no longer an idea but a lived reality; it is not an abstract concept in the mind, but an angst we feel deep in our gut. We can begin to panic and despair. What is the way out?
Christian Audacity
People look east: whatever form darkness takes, it is always a manifestation of the great cosmic struggle between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light. This world is a combination of both darkness and light: to Satan belongs the kingdom of darkness; he is the one who has the arrogant and foolish audacity to try to defeat God, the King of the kingdom of light. That, of course is impossible! This is the Good News we celebrate tonight. So let us not allow ourselves to be enveloped by that darkness. How do we do that? “Make your house fair as you are able, trim the hearth and set the table.” We might say in more contemporary American English: “clean up your act.” That is, live righteously. Or, as St. Paul puts it in his Letter to Titus: “live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age, as [you] await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ.”
And this, really, is the meaning of Christmas. We even unconsciously acknowledge it in our secular celebrations when we hold gift exchanges. It is common for people, when exchanging gifts with another, to try to match or exceed the value of the gift they receive. God has given us the greatest gift imaginable, one that is impossible to match let alone exceed: the gift of His very own Son, come into our world in a human body to offer his life on the cross to free us from the kingdom of darkness and bring us into his kingdom of light. That is God’s gift to us, a gift that cannot be outdone. But what is our gift back to God?
This is the audacity of the Christian, not to foolishly try to defeat God, but to engage in a gift exchange with Him, even though it is impossible to come close to matching the value of the gift that He has given to us. But this is the mystery: it is in striving to please Him in every way, in striving to give back to Him the greatest gift that we possibly can, as paltry as that is in comparison, that will bring us and keep us in His kingdom of light. This is the way of love, the way he has taught us by his humiliation in dwelling among us in a human body, by subjecting himself in obedience to earthly parents in a poor working-class family, by living as an itinerant preacher with no place to lay his head, and by allowing himself to be condemned as a subversive criminal though innocent. The story of his birth we heard narrated in the Gospel tonight sets the pattern for all that will happen in the earthly life of the God-made-man.
Conclusion
People look east: let us keep our eyes fixed on Christ. Do not divert your vision. Nothing else is worth it. It will only lead to mediocrity, loneliness, darkness. Live in his light, pleasing him in all things, and you will know what it is to be loved by him and to be loved in return. It is the one and only gift exchange that really matters!