Watch this homily!
Not so many years ago,
there lived among the poor people in the squalid barrios of Recife,
Brazil, a humble servant bishop who was a lot like Pope Francis. His
name was Helder Camara. “Dom Helder,” people called him
because he didn’t like fancy titles any more than he liked the
trappings of his high office. Dom Helder had a prophet’s voice
and a poet’s heart. Here’s a prayer of his that gives a little
window onto Christmas.
In the middle of the night,
When stark night was darkest,
You chose to come.
At midnight upon the earth, Lord,
Moonless night, starved of stars.
Can we forget that You,
The Son of God,
Chose to be born at midnight?
If you had been afraid of shadows
You would have been born at noon.
But you preferred the shadows
You preferred the night.
The
Christmas story is the story of a God who tends to reveal himself in
the shadows: in the dark of midnight, not always in the light of
day; in a humble stable rather than a royal palace; in obscure
Bethlehem, rather than proud Jerusalem; in a helpless infant,
instead of a powerful warrior; in a carpenter’s shop instead of a
finishing school; in unlettered fishermen, not sophisticated
academics; in tax collectors and sinners instead of the comfortably
self-righteous.
The Christmas story
loses its punch if we eliminate the shadows: if we frame it only in
gilded cards full of light and warmth, or freeze it in manger scenes
devoid of manger smells. It loses its punch. It no longer shocks or
surprises and make no mistake: Christmas should both shock and
surprise.
Some years ago, the late and celebrated
American novelist, Walker Percy, got surprised by Christmas 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 had 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 rather academic, something of an abstraction. 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 reason, 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, a
long journey, a vicious despot of a king, lavish gifts, kings on
their knees, royal robes dusting a stable floor. And as if
that weren’t enough, John the Evangelist, in the beginning of his
gospel, 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 that we don’t wonder!
There are many feasts on the Church’s
calendar but Christmas is the one we like best. No matter that
Easter is certifiably a greater feast than Christmas – Christmas is
still the favorite. Easter challenges the mind but 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 in far off Rome, a no-vacancy sign hung out all over
town.
We identify with Christmas. We identify
with the shepherds because we like stories in which the underdog
comes out on top; and we identify with the Magi because we, too,
know what searching, wondering and wandering are all about.
We do identify with Christmas. But are we
surprised by Christmas? I think we’ve heard the story so very often,
seen the stable, 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.
But, my friends, it 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 far
off 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 of any kind, there is the helpless Christ lying in a
manger, the poor Christ with nowhere to lay his head. Christ waits
to be found by those who have eyes to see God in the ordinary and
the unexpected, those who, like children, 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
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