Christmas is Now

Homily for Christmas Mass at Night

As human beings, we are fairly adept at celebrating anniversaries. We know how to throw a birthday or wedding anniversary party. Here at St. Francis we also know how to celebrate the feast day or name day of the individual sisters. However, when we come to days like today, the Solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we would be making a terrible mistake if we tried to celebrate this day as if it were an echo, a remembering, of a long-past holy night. Christmas is now.

Each Christmas we recall the message of the angels to the shepherds: “Good news of great joy . . . today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.” As difficult as it may be to comprehend, that message is as real for us today, this night, as it was for the shepherds on the hillsides of Bethlehem more than 2,000 years ago. To celebrate Christmas, we must do more than simply remember that it happened. We must come to the realization that it is still happening. The mystery of the Incarnation is not some historical event; it is, rather, a mystery that happens each and every day. For what we celebrate tonight is not an anniversary but the reality that God lives among us just as really as the person who is sitting next to you. The name of our God is Emmanuel which literally means “God with us.”

We read from the prophet Isaiah “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelled in the land of gloom, a light has shone.” Light is one of the great symbols of the divine; and, oh, how we and our world need it! This light is meant to shine into the mystery of the darkness of our lives. The past twenty-two months have been a particularly gloomy time as we have struggled with the pandemic, with the political fracas of January 6, 2021, the bitterness of racial prejudice, and the escalation of violence on our city streets. I am sure that all of us have asked ourselves that ubiquitous question more than once this past year – Why? Why all the loneliness, the pain, the sorrow, the depression?

The child born of Mary tonight will not give any verbal answers to our questioning, our pain. He simply joins our human life, takes on our flesh and all the sorrow and pain connected with our lives. The absolutely astonishing thing about the Incarnation is that God did this freely. God chose to be one of us. God loves us so much that God was actually eager to become one of us. Christmas is essentially the story of God’s being with us in every moment of our lives, right here, right now.

The second reading from St. Paul’s letter to Titus tells us that Christmas is just a beginning. Every Christmas is a beginning – the first one in Bethlehem and this one tonight. “The grace of God has appeared, offering salvation to all people.” That grace teaches us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly and devoutly in this present age with hope. In other words, the Incarnation is not yet complete. The physical incarnation was completed and finished that night in Bethlehem. But the mystical incarnation, that is, Christ’s coming into each one of us, into our lives, our world, is not nearly complete. This is the task that each of us has been given as people who celebrate this holy birth. We are sent forth to make it a reality in every corner of our lives, in every corner of our world. We are sent to carry the light into the darkness of our world by living temperately, justly, and devoutly. We do that by becoming more like Jesus. However, becoming more like Him takes time – our time, our lives, whether they be long or short.

On that first Christmas, Jesus became like us, taking on our human nature. Now he asks us to become like Him, taking on his divine nature, loving our neighbor, assisting those who are still living in the darkness of poverty and loneliness. When Jesus took on our flesh, his divinity was transformed by our humanity. Now he asks us to transform our humanity by taking on his divinity, the divinity that is a continuing act of love for each and every one of us. Since his birth in Bethlehem, human history is nothing else than God’s enduring declaration of love for us spoken into the depths of our hearts and our beings.