Merry Christmas to you! Many blessings this Holy Day.
I’m told that good things come in threes. Below are the recordings of homilies for the Vigil Mass of Christmas, the Mass at Midnight (Mass at Night) and the Mass During the Day.
Vigil Mass Homily – God Is With Us, (With Apologies to Edward Schillebeeckx)
Midnight Mass Homily – What’s It Mean to Be Redeemed?
Mass During the Day – The Word Became Flesh
One of the interesting things about being in Alaska is that the sun does not come up until around 10:30. So the Mass at Dawn and Mass During the Day can happen at the same time, if you want. To avoid confusion, we just choose one of them. The text below is my column from the parish bulletin. There are elements of all three homilies in it. The homilies are rather Spirit-driven and so there is no text. Merry Christmas!
Here’s the Bulletin Text:
Things have changed a lot in a generation or two. In the “good ol’ days” folks might go to four Masses on Christmas, the Vigil, Midnight Mass, Mass at Dawn, and Mass During the Day. Each has their own proper readings and prayers. Folks enjoyed it because one can actually go to communion at each one. Nowadays, most people tend to go to only one Mass for Christmas. Given the momentum of the culture, it’s understandable, I guess. Still, I wish that most folks could experience the progression of the narrative as we move through each of the Christmas liturgies. Should you take the opportunity to do so, one of the first things you notice is how God’s plan unfolds very deliberately as God moves intentionally through human history.
To be Catholic is to be a sacramental people. Simply put, this means that we believe that God is truly present and active in our human reality. We are not deists, who believe that God set up the world, wound it up like a toy, flipped the switch, set it in motion and then walked away to another project. No, God is very interested in what we are doing. He is truly present. He is “Emmanuel”, which means, “God is with us.”
In one sense, this is what Christmas is all about. Jesus is not just a nice guy who taught us about God. Jesus is truly divine, God incarnate. In celebrating the birth of Jesus, we celebrate God’s true presence to humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. In Christ, God was truly present. But wait a minute. Jesus suffered, died, rose and ascended. How is Christ truly present to the world today?
There was a Dutch Theologian named Edward Schillebeeckx who wrote a book not too long ago called Christ, the Sacrament of the Encounter with God. He had a nice way of putting it. Greatly simplified, his thought ran like this—Sacraments are all about true presence. So, in a very real sense, Jesus Christ, as the true presence of God in the world, was the sacrament of God, the Father. But as I pointed out, Christ has ascended to the Father. So how is Christ truly present to the world today? The answer is pretty simple: through His Church. The Church is the true presence of Christ in the world today. Thus, the Church is the ‘sacrament of Christ.’ And within in the life of the Church there are those seven sacramental moments which manifest His presence truly and substantially, especially, for example, in the Eucharist.
What does that mean for you and me today? Well, we are the Church, you and I. Thus, as the true presence of Christ, we have a special mission to this little part of the world where we find ourselves. By our presence will those we meet know that God is with them? St. Teresa of Avila said it very well.
“Christ has no body on earth now but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on the world; yours are the feet with which he walks to do good; yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.”
Christmas is about God’s true presence in the world through Christ and through us. May we each manifest the true presence of Christ through lives of faithful witness that Christ is born and lives on through each of us. Merry Christmas!