Homily:
The Nativity of the Lord (Mass During the Day) – Cycle A
I’ve been a priest for over
seven years now and if there’s one thing that I’ve learned it’s that only the
most sophisticated folks show up for Christmas Mass. Looking out over the congregation, it appears
that my observations hold true.
Therefore, I feel like it would be pretty safe to bring up the Greek
philosopher Aristotle without getting too far above anybody’s head, and so here
we go.
One of the core things that Aristotle taught was that all living things
have an end for which they are striving—a telos in Greek. For example, by his observation, a plant is
striving for the sun. He could see this
by the way that a plant will stretch out its leaves way beyond its roots in an
effort to reach the rays of the sun. We,
of course, know that the plant needs the rays of the sun to hit its leaves for
photosynthesis to happen, in which it converts the energy from the sun’s rays
into nutrients to help it grow, but it doesn’t change the fact that the living
spirit in the plant—the anima, if you will—is striving always towards the sun
as if reaching it was its ultimate purpose.
Now, I think that we can all agree that we human beings are little more
complex than a plant. Nonetheless,
Aristotle still thought that we have a telos: an end to which we are
striving. When Aristotle observed human
beings in order to determine for what it is that we are striving, he concluded
that the end we are all trying to reach is happiness. In other words, when he looked at the reasons
why human beings do anything, he could see that all of them boiled down to one
thing: happiness. Simply stated:
everything that we choose to do, we choose because we think that it will make
us happy. We, of course, could be wrong
about whether or not it will make us happy, but the fact remains that we choose
it because we think that it will make us happy.
Saint Thomas Aquinas lived a little more than 1500 years after
Aristotle, but he was one of the first to truly synthesize Aristotle’s
philosophy into Christian theology.
Saint Thomas agreed that human beings have a telos, and that this
telos is happiness. Because
Thomas was a Christian, however, he could tell us that the truest and fullest
happiness for which we can strive—the happiness for which we were made—is what
Christian theologians call the Beatific Vision: that is, standing face to face
with God, in perfect communion with him.
Therefore, because of Saint Thomas, we now have a criterion from which
to decide whether or not what we choose is what will truly make us happy:
because if what we choose moves us closer to the Beatific Vision, then it truly
will make us happy; and if it doesn’t, well then it won’t.
And so, why do I bring this up
here today? It’s because of this. For the last month, we’ve covered our lives
with the sheen of “Christmas Spirit”.
Lights, trees, shopping, parties, lots of food, lots of drinks... in
other words, we’ve covered our lives with a spirit of celebration. Yet, in spite of what all of the songs on the
radio, your spotify playlist, or in stores and restaurants say (…It’s the
most wonderful time of the year...) … in spite of what all of these songs
say, underneath it all we realize that we really aren’t happy. Sure, for a few days (maybe even a few weeks)
we’ll feel good: connecting with family, reminiscing about old times, enjoying
the exchange of presents (especially watching the joy and excitement of
children opening gifts), and a day or two (or more) off work can truly give us
a sense of comfort amidst the toils and labors of our lives. By the time January 1st rolls
around, however, all of those good feelings have mostly vanished, and we’re
left with the toils and labors, perhaps with few “fleeting flashes of perfect”
mixed in. When this reality settles back
in, once again we’ll have to confront the fact that we really aren’t happy.
My friends, this is really
important to say on this Christmas Day, because the truth of the matter is
that, since the fall of man (the first sin of Adam and Eve), NOBODY HAS BEEN
TRULY HAPPY! Ever since the fall,
mankind has sought his happiness in the world and has always come up
short. While we can be temporarily
successful, none of us is capable of achieving true and lasting happiness by
our own efforts. Why? Well, because (as Saint Thomas taught us) our
only lasting happiness is the Beatific Vision—seeing God face to face. This means a return to the Garden of Eden,
where Adam and Eve walked in communion with God. Sin caused them to be expelled from the
garden, and a great chasm between us and our happiness appeared: a chasm that
mankind can never bridge himself.
Therefore, if, underneath all
of this “holiday sheen”, there’s a gnawing in you that says, “Is this all there
is?” or “It’s too bad that this is all going to end soon”, well then I’ve got
good news for you: You’re normal! You’re
a human being, searching for your telos, your true and lasting
happiness, and no amount of tinsel and lights and cookies and egg nog and corny
songs and tacky sweater parties can satisfy the longing for happiness in
you! Only perfect communion with God can
provide that. To this, I have still more
good news: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone
who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” This is what we celebrate tonight: not that
we made it back to God, but that God came to us to bring us back to himself—to
save us from our unhappiness so that we could return to life with him.
This, my brothers and sisters,
is why we are bold to speak the words of Isaiah in the Mass: “How beautiful
upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings glad tidings, announcing
peace, bearing good news, announcing salvation, and saying to Zion, ‘Your God
is King!’ … Break out together in song, O ruins of Jerusalem! For the LORD
comforts his people, he redeems Jerusalem … all the ends of the earth will
behold the salvation of our God.” My
friends, God our Lord has come to comfort us, his people, by redeeming us from our
sin which separated us from him! Why,
then, do we keep looking for happiness in the ethereal... in the aesthetic...
in the “sheen” of Christmas?
My friends, the prologue to
John’s Gospel, which we heard today, reminds us of this wonderful truth that
God, who existed before all time, made all created things through his Son, the
Divine Word; and, when his creation went astray and in the fullness of time
(meaning, when the time was right), his Son came into the world to be our redemption
and, thus, to restore us to our true and lasting happiness. In the generations since his birth, however,
we have often allowed ourselves to forget that it is through him, Jesus Christ,
that we find our true and lasting happiness and thus begin to seek our happiness
by our own frustrated efforts again. The
season of Advent reminds us to turn back to the Lord and say, “Come, Lord
Jesus! Save us from this unhappiness!” And today we gather to say to him, “Praise to
you, Lord Jesus, for you have come and you have saved us!”
Friends, I am going to say
something to you here and I want you all to look at me and listen. (Are you looking?) Nothing—absolutely nothing—that you do this
Christmas matters more than what we are doing right now in this church: giving
praise to God that he has sent his Son to save us from our unhappiness so that
we can find our telos, our true happiness in him. Let us, therefore, let the wonder and awe of
this great mystery—the Son of God appearing in our humanity—envelop us today,
so that the happiness of this time might remain with us, even after we return
to the labors and toils of our lives, and thus preserve us in faith until
Christ, our Mighty King, returns to take us home.
Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – December 25th,
2019
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