The Nativity of the Lord
December 25, 2013
I 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 – now long gone -- where our
beloved pastor read the gospel in his sing-songy Irish brogue, still thick as
flannel long decades after he had left the old sod.
Those same memories include the manger scene that
sat in front of a side altar. The stable was kind of rickety, the shepherds,
ragged and a bit worse for wear, the donkey begged for some touchup paint, and
the camel, propped up against the corner of the stable, had a face as wise and
all-seeing as the faces of the wise men themselves.
Christmas memories also take me back to my second
grade classroom at the parish school where I memorized momentous words from St.
Luke's Gospel, not quite grasping their meaning, 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...." The Christmas story casts a
spell no matter how often it is told. It’s a story with power to stir the
memory, to delight the imagination, and to move the heart.
Part of the charm of the story lies 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 that hit me hard this past
fall when I visited Bethlehem and saw the ugly wall that the Israeli government
has constructed for security reasons but which, for Palestinians, is a severe
and unjust encroachment on their freedom and economic viability. History does
repeat itself. The Bethlehem story that Mary and Joseph knew was a story about
homelessness, poverty, rejection, heavy-handed government intervention, terror,
flight, exile, and the shedding of innocent blood. That part of the
Christmas story is being repeated today in more ways than we care to
acknowledge. Small comfort, I’m sure, for today’s suffering people of Bethlehem.
At the heart of the Christmas story, of course, is a
family and a birth, a birth that happened to ordinary people in the most
ordinary of settings. But in the midst of the ordinariness of it all,
something extraordinary, something beyond extraordinary happened as the God who
created all things out of nothing, the maker of heaven and earth, quietly stole
upon the stage of human history as a tiny, helpless child.
The sheer wonder of all this has inspired some of
the world’s greatest art – glorious paintings, frescoes, mosaics, stained glass,
and beloved carols that 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
window onto God, the God who loves in ways we can’t really understand, the God
who actually becomes one of his own creatures!
And there is also a new understanding of humanity
because in the face of the Christ child we see our own face. He is like a mirror
held up to each one of us in which we see reflected the full meaning of our
human goodness and dignity, our human worth. If ever we question our own
worth and goodness (and who of us doesn’t at times?), the child of Bethlehem has
the answer for us, for the child reveals not only the glory of God but our
glory, too, the glory of each and every human person, without exception.
One Christmas nearly 50 years ago when I was
studying for the priesthood in Rome, I visited a church where, high above the
altar was a splendid mosaic of Christ in glory. It was in the Byzantine
style and quite magnificent: Jesus was seated on his throne in glory, sustaining
the world with his right arm, serene, remote, totally timeless, far beyond this
world of ours, far beyond and above human history.
And, then, 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
happening -- messy and very much in mid-course, the answers not neatly in “the
back of the book” but still getting worked out.
That memory sums up the Christmas story for me.
The outcome, the blessed outcome, is assured. The story does have a happy
ending. All will turn out well. 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 starts. Because of Christmas,
we know that we are loved and accepted for who we are, not for who we wish we
were, or for who others wish we were. On the messy floor of the manger God
embraces each of us, embraces our poor flesh and charges it with divinity!
Charges us with divinity. No wonder we never tire of celebrating all this.
Merry Christmas!
Father Michael G. Ryan
