A Christmas Homily

Did you see the manger back there. It’s just beyond the forest, in the clearing between the trees.

It really does look beautiful.  Almost as beautiful as that night in Bethlehem.

That night when a young virgin on the back of a donkey was led by her aged husband to Bethlehem, so he could sign up for the Roman census. And, as you just heard, they could not find a place to stay, so they ended up in a stable, gathered around a manger.

Manger is a funny kind of word, for it exists only in the Gospel. It literally means a feed box (mangé), as a contemporary translation of Saint Luke reminds us: “she had her first baby and laid him in a feed box because there was no room for them in the place where travelers stayed.”

Being born in a manger was probably dirty and smelly and far from as comfortable as a bed. Plus it was on the outskirts of one of the most out of the way towns in Galilee, at a time when mothers and their children frequently died during childbirth, even in the most hygienic of settings (which this stable was not).

Galilee in the time of Jesus was a place of sickness and disease, trying desperately to recover from an epidemic of tuberculosis.

So why of all the times and all the places in the long history of the world, did God choose a stinking animal stable in a disease infested backwater as the birthplace of his Son?

And therein lies the mystery of this night. For he came because he loves us, in all our stinkiness and disease infested littleness. He came because he loves us not in our brilliance or our sanctity, our accomplishments or our power, but in our brokenness and in our littleness. He loves us.

For on this night that weak little child in the crib takes up our littleness, our brokenness and our fears and carries them to the Cross, where he joins them to his own flesh and offers them up in a pure sacrifice of love

As the prayer says tonight: “he humbled himself to share in our humanity, that we may share in his divinity.”

He came to feel in his own heart the same betrayals which have so many times broken yours,

He came to tremble in the face of death, the way you have by the grave or the hospital bed of one you loved,

He came to know the humiliation of falling down just like you,

He came to weep the same tears that streamed down your cheeks,

He came to bleed with the same blood that flows through your veins,

As he touched with human hands, thought with a human mind, acted with a human will and loved with a human heart, just like yours.

In the words of a great mystic:

“He who was invulnerable asked to…feel cold and heat, hunger and thirst, weakness and pain.

He who…made all things asked to be poor…

He who was entirely sufficient to himself, asked…for a heart that might be broken.”

And therein lies the definition of love and the definition of this night: that it is not in our greatness or our power or our successes that we find the meaning of life. But in being little, obedient and loving…

Like the baby in the crib and the man on the Cross.

O come, let us adore him!

Patience and Waiting in Hope

Billy was only five years old and the hardest thing about life for him was patience. He had none. Especially when it came to Christmas and that great big box under the tree that had his name on it. 

He tried shaking it when his mother was making the brownies, and even kicked it a few times to see if he could hear a puppy inside. He knew it was something incredible, because his father had told him that Santa Claus had dropped it off early…you know how busy he gets on Christmas Eve.

But it was driving him crazy to find out what was on the inside of the big red and green box with the outsized bow and his name written in even bigger letters: B-I-L-L-Y.

it was all he could think about as he fell asleep, because he knew there was something wonderful inside there, and he even thought of running downstairs in the middle of the night and then telling his mom and dad that a burglar must have broken in and opened his gift from Santa Claus…but even at five years old he knew they would never believe him.

So he waited and waited and waited for Christmas to come.

Julie-Ann was a little older. She was eighty-seven, and the hardest thing about life for her was patience. Her life, it seemed has become, as of late, a never ending series of doctors’ appointments, procedures (she found that word amusing), referrals, more doctors, bedrest, new brightly colored medicines and all the other things that come with getting old.

She just wanted to get better, or at least not to feel the aches and pains that seemed to fill her days…a new one coming along every week or so. She was amused by the fact that she now had things hurt that sge never knew she had before.

And it was so hard to be patient. Especially since it had been almost ten years since John died, and on most days she just longed to be with him again and with Jesus and his Blessed Mother and Saint Therese, her favorite Saint.

The waiting was hardest when she went to bed. That’s when she felt most alone, her heart aching for that day when she could just go home to heaven.

It’s hard to be patient. For patience is only possible for one who hopes…in the wonder of the gift that’s still all wrapped up, and the promise of that day when we will see it all face to face, when this veil of tears and this agony of waiting will pass, and the Lord will take us hone.

And we wait with patience and with hope because we know it to be true:

That every desert will bloom, 

And the steppes will rejoice.

That he will strengthen the hands of the feeble,

and make firm the knees that are weak.

That he will bring peace to the hearts that are frightened

and open the eyes of the blind.

That the deaf will hear and the lame will leap like the stag,

That the tongue of the mute will sing with everlasting joy;

and sorrow or mourning will never be again.

And so we wait, with patience and hope.

Like the little boy and the old lady, 

we wait in joyful hope,

for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ!