Midnight Mass – Christmas 2020

It might seem strange to be celebrating tonight, with everything that is currently happening in the world. We keep our yearly memorial of the Birth of Jesus Christ with a variety of emotions this year: fear, anxiety, but also joy and hope. It is important for us to recognise, and to realise that it is perfectly normal and natural to feel this way. This is a Christmas like no other, when we cannot visit loved ones, or hold our normal celebrations such as the Village Nativity, which would normal have preceded this service. All due to a global pandemic which has claimed many lives, and sadly, will claim many more before it is over.

But, despite rising rates of infection, we can still be filled with joy and hope: not just because we have developed vaccines, but because Christ is born! No matter what difficulties we have to face together, what fears and privations may assail us, the birth of Our Saviour in Bethlehem is a cause for hope and joy in this world, and the next. God comes among us, as a baby, into a world of pain, fear, and misery, just as He did two thousand years ago. The God who made all that exists enters our world weak and helpless, dependent on others for food, warmth, shelter, and security. God takes a huge risk to save humanity and to give us hope for the future.

Tonight we see God’s healing and reconciling love made manifest: to save us from ourselves, from sin, selfishness, and greed, by this act of generosity and weakness, which does not appear to make everything better, and yet does. God doesn’t do magic, but He does do transformation, sometimes quickly, and sometimes slowly. Humanity isn’t always good at listening or paying attention. It is easy to become so wrapped up in our own anxieties and yearnings that we close ourselves off from God’s transformative power.

Perhaps surprisingly, there is fear in the Christmas story. When the shepherds saw the angels, the angel said to them ‘Paid ag ofni’ ‘’Fear not, for behold I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people’ (Lk 2:10). That good news is as true today as it was two thousand years ago. The love and peace which Christ comes to bring can still be made real and visible in our hearts and lives, and it still has the power to change the world, God’s kingdom can be even more of a reality, here and now. Jesus taught us to pray for God’s kingdom to come on earth as in heaven, ‘deled dy deyrnas, gwneler dy ewyllys; megis yn y nef, felly ar y ddaear hefyd’.  

The true gift of Christmas is the Good News that Christ is born, that God becomes one of us. Our humanity is reconciled to God in and through Jesus. God saves us, and sets us free to worship Him, to love Him, and to serve Him. A fourth-century bishop, Theodotus of Ancyra, said in a Christmas homily: ‘He whose godhead made him rich became poor for our sake, so as to put salvation within the reach of everyone’ [Theodotus of Ancyra (Homily 1 on Christmas: PG 77: 1360-1361) ]. Such is the mystery of God’s love for us. It is a love made perfect in weakness, yet with the strength to transform lives. 

The most important event in human history happens tonight, and for two thousand years Christians have proclaimed its truth: God is with us, Jesus is born for us, to set us free from sin, to give us eternal life, and to pour out God’s love and reconciliation upon a world longing for healing and wholeness. Tonight, as the mystery of God’s love is made manifest, may we be filled with that love, and may our voices echo the song of the angels to the shepherds in giving praise to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed, as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever. Amen.

Some prophetic words for the Church …

‘We tend to manage life more than just live it. We are all overstimulated and drowning in options. We are trained to be managers, to organize life, to make things happen. This is what built our culture. It is not all bad, but if you transfer that to the spiritual life, it is pure heresy. It is wrong it doesn’t work. It is not gospel.’

 

from Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas – Daily Meditations for Advent, Cincinatti, 2008, p. 31

Some prophetic words for the Church …

‘We tend to manage life more than just live it. We are all overstimulated and drowning in options. We are trained to be managers, to organize life, to make things happen. This is what built our culture. It is not all bad, but if you transfer that to the spiritual life, it is pure heresy. It is wrong it doesn’t work. It is not gospel.’

 

from Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas – Daily Meditations for Advent, Cincinatti, 2008, p. 31

Christmas 2018

Αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐνηνθρώπησεν, ἵνα ἡμεῖς θεοποιηθῶμεν·

Athanasius De Incarnatione Dei Verbi 54.3

‘He became human so that we might become divine’

Few of us here today have much experience of living under despotic regimes. We are fortunate indeed. A large part of humanity has not been so lucky, and even today there are plenty of people who are not able to come together as we do, to celebrate the wonderful news given by the angels to the shepherds outside Bethlehem. Peace on earth, and good will amongst men seem in fairly short supply. What can we do? We can pray, and we can worship Almighty God, who comes among us.

We have come here tonight to celebrate something which defies our understanding and expectations. The simple fact that the God who created all that is took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary and was born for us in Bethlehem as the Messiah, the Anointed of God, who would save us from our sins, should still feel strange and odd. It simply doesn’t make sense, nor indeed should it. In human terms, Mary should have been stoned to death for extra-marital infidelity, and some thirty three years later her son is executed as a blasphemer, a rabble-rouser, a trouble maker, in an awkward backwater of the Roman Empire, having gathered round himself a small group of misfits and undesirables appealing to the baser elements of society. There is nothing respectable here. And yet here we are, some two thousand years later, celebrating the birth of a child who changed human history and human nature, because we do not judge things solely by human standards. We come together so that we may ponder the mystery of God’s love for us, a God who heals our wounds, who restores broken humanity, who offers us a fresh start, who can see beyond our failures and shortcomings, and who becomes a human being so that humanity might become divine, so that we may share in the divine life of love, both here on earth and in heaven. The Word became flesh, and lived among us. These few words express what the Christian faith is all about, and how it can change the world.

If that isn’t a cause for celebration, I don’t know what is. We are so familiar with the story of Christmas that I wonder whether we, myself included, really take the time to ponder, and to marvel at the mystery which unfolded two thousand years ago in Bethlehem. God, who made all that is, comes among us, taking flesh in the womb of a young girl through the power of His Holy Spirit, so that in His Son we might see and experience God and His love for us. 

God comes among us not in power or splendour but as a weak, vulnerable child, depending on others for love, and food, and warmth. He is laid in an animal’s feeding trough, insulated from the cold hard stone by straw  — hardly a royal birth, and not what we would expect of God, and that’s the point. It is supposed to be surprising, and to shock us. So now God would be with his pilgrim people on earth – sharing all of human life, from birth to death, so that we might, through him, share the Divine Life of Love, that of God the Holy Trinity: a relational God who invites humanity to share that relationship, who offers it freely, and to all. The sheer exuberance of such an offer, is almost profligate: it is generous in a way which defies our human expectation and our human understanding. 

Throughout his life all that Christ says and does shows us how much God loves us. The Word becomes flesh, and enters the world, he dwells among us, a wondrous mystery which provokes us to worship, to kneel with the shepherds and to adore the God who comes among us, who shares our human life so that we might share His divine life, not because we asked for it, not because we deserve it, we haven’t worked for it, or earned it, rather it is the free gift of a loving and merciful God, this then is the glory of God – being born in simple poverty, surrounded by outcasts, on the margins of society, to call humanity to a new way of being together, where the old order is cast aside, turning the world upside down and offering us the possibility of living in a radically different way, a way of peace and love and joy, not one of power. Heaven comes to earth, born in the womb of a Virgin, so that we might behold the glory of God in a new-born child. So that we might experience the love and truth of God.

The word is made flesh so that prophesy might be fulfilled, so that the hope of salvation might be dawn, so that a people who have languished long in darkness might behold the glory of God where heaven and earth meet, in a stable in Bethlehem, where men and angels may sing together ‘Alleluia, Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace to people of goodwill’ The worship of heaven is joined with earth on this most holy night, that in the quiet and stillness all the earth might be filled with the praises of Almighty God, who stoops to save humanity in the birth of His Son. 

The Son who lives and dies and rises again for us will be here tonight under the outward forms of bread and wine so that the heavenly banquet may nourish our souls. He gives Himself so that we might share His Divinity, so that God’s love can transform our human nature, having redeemed it in His Nativity. So let us come to sing his praises, and be nourished with His Body and Blood and experience here on earth the joy of Heaven and the closeness and the love of God, let it fill our souls with joy, and let us live lives which recognise the wondrous thing which happens tonight, that it may be a reality in our lives, that we may may proclaim in word and deed the reality of the Word made flesh, so that others may be drawn to kneel and worship like the shepherds, like the Holy Family of Mary and Joseph, and come to believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed all might, majesty, glory, dominion and power, now and forever.

A thought for the day from Fulton Sheen

The Way to Peace

What Christ did in his own human nature in Galilee, he is doing today … in every city and hamlet of the world where souls are vivified by his Spirit. He is still being born in other Bethlehems of the world, still coming into his own and his won receiving him not, still instructing the learned doctors of the law and answering their questions, still labouring at a carpenter’s bench, still “[going] about doing good” (cf. Acts 10:34-43), still preaching, governing, sanctifying, climbing other Calvaries, and entering into the glory of his Father.

In the Fullness of Time

Maranatha – Come Lord Jesus