Christmas
December 25, 2008

Hans Gottfried von Stockhausen, 1998

     We will remember this Christmas of 2008, won�t we?  For a long time! Children will remember it for the wonder of the snow; parents will remember it for too much snow and maybe for too many snow days! Retailers will remember it for the lackluster sales; commuters will remember it for the treacherous driving conditions, travelers for long airport delays. Pastors will remember it for pews far from full and, dare I say it, collection baskets far from full!  All of us will probably remember it as the Christmas we were taken by surprise.

     Some years ago, the late, great American novelist, Walker Percy, got surprised by Christmas.  His surprise came during Christmas Mass. He later wrote about it to a professor-friend at Harvard University.  �The Mass,� he wrote, �was going on, the homily standard.  The choir of young musicians got going on Joy to the World. Then it hit me: what if it should really be the case that the Creator of the entire cosmos decided for reasons of his own to show up as a little baby, conceived and born under suspicious circumstances?  Well,� he concluded, �you can lay it to senility or a hangover or whatever you wish, but it hit me!  It just hit me.  I had to pretend I was having an allergy attack so I could take out my handkerchief�.�

     Now Walker Percy was no stranger to the Catholic faith.  He was an adult convert who practiced his faith.  But his faith was maybe a little on the academic side, more in his head than his heart.  And Christmas?  Christmas had never really �hit� him.  Not until that Christmas when, for no good reason he could think of, God got through to him, and he had to reach for his handkerchief.
 
     Walker Percy was surprised by Christmas.  And Christmas does have power to surprise.  It really shouldn�t have happened, you know.  Christmas shouldn�t.  Certainly not in the way it did.  It defies all common sense.  It�s a story that only God could have dreamt up: a virgin with child, a birth in a stable, a visit by shepherds, the rude sounds of animals mixed with the heavenly voices of angels.  That�s Luke�s version.  Matthew adds the mysterious Magi, star-gazers who took one star very seriously and followed it until they found the child and presented their lavish gifts: kings on their knees, royal robes dusting a stable floor.  And as if that weren�t enough, John the Evangelist takes surprise beyond the line of sight and into the land of symbol where light shines in the darkness, and the Word becomes flesh.

     My friends, this is pretty surprising stuff. It really shouldn�t have happened.  The wonder is that it did.  The wonder is also that we don�t wonder!

     Andrew Greeley, the priest-novelist and sociologist, is fond of saying that Christmas is the favorite Catholic feast.  No matter that Easter is certifiably a greater feast than Christmas � Christmas is still our favorite.  Easter challenges the mind; Christmas touches the heart.  We identify with Christmas.  The child in us identifies with the baby in the manger; the romantic in us identifies with Mary and Joseph whose young love overcame all obstacles: fear, misunderstanding, rash judgment, the demands of a distant, unfeeling bureaucracy, a no-vacancy sign hung out all over town.

     We identify with Christmas. We identify with the shepherds because we like stories where the underdog comes out on top; we identify with the Magi because we, too, know what searching, wondering and wandering are all about.

     We do identify with Christmas, but in this year of surprises, the year of the Great Christmas Snow, we need to be surprised by Christmas.  Even though we�ve heard the story over and over, seen the stable year after year, listened to the carols, trimmed the trees, wrapped and opened the presents so many times that we�re no longer surprised by any of it, we still need to be because, my friends Christmas is surprising.  Wonderfully surprising.  And the surprise is not just something of the past, not just what happened on a winter�s night so long ago in Bethlehem.  No, the surprise goes on.  The surprise is not only that God become one of us and shivered one night in a manger � the surprise is also that from that moment on God has never stopped shivering in our human flesh.  God has never stopped being human.  One of us.

     That is not only the surprise of Christmas, it is also the challenge of Christmas.  We need not journey to ancient Bethlehem to find the Christ.  He waits for us in our cities, our neighborhoods, our homes, our streets, our shadows.  Wherever there is human need there is the helpless Christ lying in a manger.  Christ is within reach at all times and places and seasons.  All we need is eyes to see the divine in the ordinary; all we need is the open-eyed wonder of children so we can still be surprised.

            My friends in Christ, it is my fervent prayer that we will be surprised by Christmas this year.  Really surprised.  I say �we� and I mean it. This is for me as much as for you.  As a priest and a pastor, it falls to me to try to throw light on the Christmas story as best I can but, you know, I would much rather find myself surprised out of my mind by Christmas.  Like Walker Percy was. Surprised, and feeling an �allergy� coming on, and reaching for my handkerchief�!

Father Michael G. Ryan
Cathedral Pastor

Visit an archive of homilies and other writings by Father Ryan