My dear brothers and sisters,
We come together many times during the year to celebrate special Masses here at Saint Dominic’s Priory, however year after year it is this Christmas Mass that draws us here in such great numbers. There is no other celebration during the year that is like tonight. However, unfortunately with the passing of time the original Christmas message portrayed in the way Christmas is celebrated now has little to do with what tonight celebration is about.
The first Christmas was neither beautiful nor perfect. The story of the Christmas we celebrate today was filled with mess and confusion. Mary was expecting and Joseph did not understand this at all. They stuck in a non-familiar place and Mary was in labor. The shepherds were terrified at the apparition of the angel and could not understand the message delivered to them, the three kings or wise men got lost. As you can see the First Christmas has nothing to do with what is portrayed in our Christmas Cards. The First Christmas was not a perfect setting. It was a complete mess.
Nowadays everything about Christmas is beauty, peacefulness and tranquillity. I would like to invite you to look at the way most of our cribs are set up. Mary is shown down on her knees, a distance from the Child, with a blooming face contemplating her son. But you think: how many mothers having just given birth would be able to kneel, even if they wanted to? Would not Mary be portrayed as holding the baby? And would Joseph be portrayed? Would not he be pictured as the most worried man about the safety of Mary and the child like any normal father would do? The beauty of the first Christmas is, that everything which took place 2000 years ago is about our humanity, our redeemed humanity, our vulnerable humanity
We have divinized so much everything about Christmas that we have forgotten the most important part of what we should be celebrating tonight, and that is that God in that messy first Christmas came among us as a vulnerable baby, we should celebrate God divinity taking our human flesh, we should celebrate the vulnerability of God, the humanity of God.
We must celebrate that the first Christmas took place not because God needed it but because we needed it.
So, in our cribs Mary should be portrayed as any ordinary new mother, pale and exhausted, but with her face transformed by joy as she cuddles the child tightly against her. We have to see Joseph deep worried and buried in deep thoughts and we have to picture Jesus not like a glow-in-the-dark statue but as a real live baby who cried and slept, who needed to be fed and to be changed. Only by understanding the humanity of Christmas we will be able to understand those words of Jesus “I have come that you might have live and have it abundantlyâ€.
In his book “Through Seasons of the Heart,†John Powell writes, “God sends each person into this world with a special message to deliver, with a special song to sing …with a special act of love to bestow.â€
Mary and Joseph are given special missions, and we as witnesses of the first Christmas are also entrusted with responsibility of delivering God’s special message or sing God’s special song, or perform God’s special acts of love. Today it is a time for us to reflect on Mary’s role as the Mother of the Messiah and on her answer to God’s call in her life. Likewise, it is also a time to reflect on Joseph’s trust and obedience in God’s divine plan.
We have not been called to play the role as the parents of the Christ, however each one of us is being invited by God to be part of His plan of redemption; some to religious life and priesthood, some to single life, most to marriage and having a family. It is in there that we have to humanize the divinity of the First Christmas. It is in there were we have to meet not the glow-in-the-dark Jesus but the God who is one with us, the God that glorify our humanity.
Tonight, with all the noise around us, let us ponder the words from today’s Gospel, “the birth of Jesus the Christ took place in this way.†Let us examine how the birth of Jesus has made a difference in our life. Let us examine even if we really need Christmas at all.
On behalf of the community here at Saint Dominic’s Priory and on my own behalf wish you all and your families and friends back at home happy, holy and safe Christmas.
