The Nativity of the Lord
December 24, 2007
 
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     I can never hear the wonderful words of the Christmas Gospel without reliving some very fond memories of Christmases past, childhood memories of Christmas Mass at the old St. Anne's Church on top of Queen Anne Hill, where our beloved pastor, Father Quain, read the gospel in his sing-songy Irish brogue, still as thick as flannel many long decades after he had left the sod. 

     Those same memories include the manger scene in front of one of the side altars. It was a bit rickety, the shepherds were a bit the worse for wear, the donkey had a broken ear and could have used some touch-up paint, and propped up against the corner of the stable was the most exotic camel with a face as wise and all-seeing as the faces of the wise men themselves.

     Christmas memories also take me back to the second grade classroom of St. Anne's School trying hard to memorize momentous words from St. Luke's Gospel, perhaps not quite grasping the meaning of them all, but sensing their importance nonetheless, "In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a census of the whole world should be taken...."

     Good and happy memories.  I know you have many of your own that are triggered when you come to Mass on Christmas and hear the Christmas story, a remarkable, almost magic story, a story that casts a spell no matter how often it is told, a story with power to stir the memory, to delight the imagination, to move the heart.

     Part of the charm of the story lies, I think, in the sheer poetry of it all.  St. Luke’s version tells of a birth in a stable, of a bright light in the night sky, of angelic visions and voices, of shepherds in the hills tending their flocks by night.  St. Matthew’s version adds the mysterious Magi, sages from the east who follow a star in search of a child whom they present with priceless gifts.  St. John's version takes the poetry to an even deeper level as he tells of a light shining in the darkness and of the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us.

     But, my friends, there is more than lovely poetry here, much more. There is prose, too: dreary prose telling of human misery and suffering, the sort of thing that the little people of this world are best able to understand -- things like poverty, homelessness, foreign occupation, insensitive government bureaucracy, palace intrigue, narrow escape and flight, exile -- even the shedding of innocent blood.  A story that is romantic on one level deals, on another, with some brutally harsh reality.

     The heart of the story is, of course, very simple:  it is the story of a family and a birth.  Whatever the surrounding wonders, the Incarnation happens in the most ordinary of settings, ordinary to the point of scandal.  But we must not be fooled by the ordinariness of it all because there is something truly extraordinary here, something profound beyond words. This God who quietly steals upon the stage of human history and casts Himself in such a lowly role is the very God who created all things out of nothing, the maker of heaven and earth.

     It is the sheer wonder of all this that has inspired some of the world’s greatest art – glorious paintings, frescoes, mosaics, stained glass, and music we carry deep in our hearts and never tire of hearing or singing.  And it is the sheer wonder of it all that for more than two-thousand years has brought people to their knees, people like you and me.

     And for all who kneel before the manger of Bethlehem, there is a new understanding of the two most basic of all realities: there is a new understanding of God, and a new understanding of humanity.  Of God, because the face of this tiny child wrapped in swaddling clothes is a most wondrous window onto God, a God who loves in ways we really cannot understand, a God who is happy to be one with his own creatures, one of his own creatures!

     And there is also a new understanding of humanity because the tiny face of the Christ child is like a mirror held up to each one of us.  In that mirror we see reflected the meaning of our true human goodness and dignity, our true human worth.  If ever we question our own worth (and who of us doesn’t at times?), the child of Bethlehem has the answer for us, for the birth in the Bethlehem stable reveals not only the glory of God but our glory, too, the glory of each and every human person, bar none.

     One Christmas nearly 45 years ago when I was in Rome studying for the priesthood, I visited a church where, high above the altar was a very splendid mosaic of Christ in glory.  It was in the Byzantine style and quite magnificent: the Lord Jesus was seated on his throne in glory, sustaining the world with his right hand, serene, a little fearsome, altogether timeless.  He seemed far beyond this world of ours, someone for whom history was already over.

     And far below this vision of splendor, right down on the dirty floor of the church, amid hay and straw and some scraggly trees, was the manger scene with the mother and father and the baby, tiny arms outstretched, looking so very vulnerable -- especially when you compared it with the brilliant mosaic towering over it.  There at the manger scene, history was not over and done with.  Not by a long shot.  History was still pretty messy and very much in mid-course, the answers not in “the back of the book” but still to be worked out.

     Somehow, that memory sums up the Christmas story for me.  The outcome, the blessed outcome, is assured.  That we believe.  The story does have a happy ending:  all will turn out well, and we need to know that.  But all will turn out well not because a serene and far-removed Providence is looking down from a lofty height having sorted it all out in advance.  No, all will turn out well because God has gotten down on the floor with us, God has become one of us.

  My friends, because of that, because of Christmas, we can approach the manger just as we are, with all our complicated histories, our sins, our dreary compromises, our false perceptions, our wrong starts.  Because of Christmas, we know that here and here alone we are loved and accepted for who we are, not for who we wish we were. On the messy floor of the manger God embraces each of us, embraces our poor flesh and charges it with divinity!

Father Michael G. Ryan
Cathedral Pastor

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