The Light
Propers: The Nativity
of Our Lord (Christmas
III), A.D. 2019 A
Homily:
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from
our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Christmas Day is sacred. It is holy. Words barely seem to do
it justice.
They say, on Christmas Day, no evil spirit dares to go about
abroad. They say at midnight, beasts of the field and farm can speak, as once
they did in Eden. They say that at the moment Christ was born, all the bells on
earth rang out for joy. This is folklore, of course, legends. But they express
a real truth.
On this day we recall with reverence the astonishing story
that the Creator of this and all possible worlds, willing to humble Himself, to
empty Himself, became one of us, in flesh and in blood, in body and in soul,
forever to seal the chasm, torn by sin through the heart of this world, separating
God from His beloved children. Today the barrier between the sacred and the
profane, the eternal and the temporal, the perfect and the broken is incinerated
by the white-hot fires of God’s love for us.
What could be simpler, what could be humbler, what could be
holier than a man and a woman in an unremarkable land, in less than ideal
circumstances, welcoming an unexpected Child into this broken, violent, and beautiful
world? This is how God chooses to meet us; not as a conqueror, a warlord, a
general, not as the second coming of Alexander the Great, but as a baby—a
neighbor, a child, a brother. This is how God breaks into our world, silently,
by night.
And there He makes holy the very things which we take most
for granted, things of hearth and home, things of community and mutual care;
the hard work of living in marriage; the self-sacrifice of forming a family and
raising a Son. In a world of infinite distractions, of crass consumerism and
information overload, God says, “Here! Here I am! Born among you in family and
faith! Here you shall find what is good and true and beautiful. Here you shall
find the real amongst the illusion—here in your neighbor, here in the needy, here
in the now.”
Christmas Day is unlike any other. We let down our guard,
take off all that armor. And we allow ourselves simply to love, to welcome, to
forgive and to give. We allow ourselves to become, like God Himself, a Child
again. And the world is full of wonder and magic and miracles, of feasting,
generosity, and warmth. Here is light amidst the darkness, heat amidst the
cold, abundance amidst the stark and brutal scarcity of winter’s ice.
Here the Light is born in darkness, and the darkness cannot
overcome it.
And so I wish you all the joys of Heaven on this blessed Christmas
Day. For indeed I think this the one time of year when our cynical society
allows itself just the briefest glimpse of the Kingdom of Heaven, which all the
commercialization on earth cannot obscure. Christ is born, no matter what we
say or do. No matter the stresses, no matter the disappointments, no matter the
fears. No matter what old wounds may fester or what old grudges keep us in
their grip. No matter how many times tiresome pundits insist that it’s all just
pagan nonsense anyway. No matter any of that—for Jesus Christ is born.
He is the hope of all mankind, the fulfillment of every
promise, the forgiveness of every sin. And no matter how the earth may shake or
the kingdoms of man vent their impotent rage, all the darkness of the cosmos
cannot extinguish this one holy and everlasting Light. And that Light will only
grow. He will grow in the hearts of all who welcome Him, in the mouths of all
who speak of Him, in the hands of all who serve the Lord by loving all that He
has made.
Someday that Light will become a holy fire to burn down all
that oppresses us, all that enslaves us, all that seeks to keep us dead and
buried in the ground. That Light will fill up all the world and blaze out until
Heaven itself is one with earth. For once the flame is kindled, once the spark
is set, once the Son of God has come among us, to die for us, at our hands and
for our sake, once He has Risen having harrowed hell and hallowed Heaven, then nothing—nothing
in this or any other world—can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus
our Lord.
The die is cast. The wheels turn. And the engine of
salvation proves as inexorable as Christ Himself rising from His tomb with all
the ransomed dead resplendent in His train. The King of Kings is born this day
and will not stop in His conquest of death until God at the last is All in All.
Light is born. Life is born. And in Him, all shall have new
birth. He that arrives today in a cave shall go on to conquer and empty the
grave. And then it shall be Christmas forever, Christmas for always, Christmas
for every lost and wayward child of Adam and of Eve—for as surely as Jesus is
born of Mary, so shall He be born in us anew.
I’m going to leave you, if you’ll indulge me for just a
moment more, with the words of perhaps my favorite Christmas poem—because
prose, to be honest, does little justice to the wonder and the miracle of Christ’s
birth. It’s called “A Child of the Snows,” by the inimitable G.K. Chesterton.
There is heard a hymn
when the panes are dim,
And never before or again,
When the nights are strong with a darkness long,
And the dark is alive with rain.
And never before or again,
When the nights are strong with a darkness long,
And the dark is alive with rain.
Never we know but in
sleet and snow
The place where the great fires are,
That the midst of earth is a raging mirth,
And the heart of the earth a star.
The place where the great fires are,
That the midst of earth is a raging mirth,
And the heart of the earth a star.
And at night we win to
the ancient inn,
Where the Child in the frost is furled,
We follow the feet where all souls meet,
At the inn at the end of the world.
Where the Child in the frost is furled,
We follow the feet where all souls meet,
At the inn at the end of the world.
The gods lie dead
where the leaves lie red,
For the flame of the sun is flown;
The gods lie cold where the leaves are gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.
For the flame of the sun is flown;
The gods lie cold where the leaves are gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.
In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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