Christmas Homily

All your plans are stripped away. You can't do what you want. You are stuck in a room staring at a wall. You are separated from your friends. You barely get to go outside.

Fr. Alfred Delp: 1944 Munich Germany - Tegel prison
It is going to be a beautiful Christmas, despite everything, or perhaps because of everything. With the state setting on these days, it's real, without obstruction, and a person can stand in face ultimate reality.…I think that from all of this we're going to have a watchful and blessed time with the child. The contradiction of everything we take for granted, the setting aside of all our important matters. Powerlessness on the tight-rope is an education in understanding the child.
… I'd like to light some candles for you. You've been with me in my night, and you still have your own darkness to live through. We are all in this together, for sure. Together will pull through. And in the midst of the night, the light will shine. You'll see. Let's help one another, not we really, but singing and praying the old Carol's and prayers, more earnestly and soberly than before, but in a way that is closer to reality.

But [I am] always trying to transform these whimpers into the only two realities that make this place worthwhile: adoration and love. Everything else is false. Believe me, these weeks have been a kind of bitter and unrelenting judgment on my past life. It's standing right here as a big question demanding its final answer, its seal. … during these weeks I've learned and re-learned enough for years.

Pope Benedict XVI:  On every child shines something of the splendor of that “today,” of that closeness of God which we ought to love and to which we must yield.

With eyes of wonder. The eyes of a newborn child.

Wonder and awe at this great mystery: God in the flesh.

Eternity comes into time.

It’s like a full grown man trying to wear the clothes of a kindergartner. Growing up in my house, our favorite pajamas were to simply wear my dad's T-shirts that were in his closet from 5Ks and other races that he had participated in. Everyone loved dad’s “running shirts” because we could curl our legs up into the shirt and fit our whole self inside. But not once did my dad ever wear one of my T-shirts. If he did I wouldn't have worn it ever again because it would have been destroyed.

Here’s another part of this great mystery: Omnipotence is weak. The all-powerful who created the stars with a “big bang” as easily as saying “let there be light” cannot hold up his head. The one who knit you together in your mother’s womb before you were born nine months (or so) later, He cannot move his arms in His swaddling clothes - he’s stuck, and he can get cold and hungry and sleepy. WHA?!


Pope Benedict XVI: In Jesus Christ, the son of God, God himself, God from God, became man. God's everlasting "today" has come down into the fleeting today of the world and lifted our momentary today into God's eternal today. God is so great that he can become small. God is so powerful that he can make himself vulnerable, and come to us as a defenseless child, so that we can love him. God is so good that he can give up his divine splendor and come down to a stable, so that we might find him, so that his goodness might touch us, give itself to us and continue to work through us. God has become one of us, so that we can be with him and become like him.

This is a great love story. What do lovers do? They talk, a lot. They hold hands. They spend all kinds of time together. They do all this to get close to each other, trying to share everything they can with the one they love.
That’s why God does this. We needed salvation, but God could have done it another way. He chose this way for a greater purpose.
And that is what God wants. He wants you to get close to him, to share everything you can. How can we do this? Here’s a couple ideas for this Christmas.

SING CHRISTMAS CAROLS: Make the home a place of worship. This year has especially taught us how important and how challenging that is for living and passing on the faith. I encourage you to go and sing your favorite Christmas carols at home together, since we cannot do so here. Look up lyrics online for these songs. You may also like to read from the beginning of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Talk to Jesus about your hopes for peace, your dreams for unity, reconciliation, and forgiveness, your longings for truth and justice and holiness.

END OF MASS?? The search of the shepherds. Sometimes it is hard to find God in our lives but that doesn’t mean He isn’t there.