Homily: Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord – Mass at Night
My
dear Sisters and friends, what a joy it is to celebrate this great feast with
all of you as we declare with new joy and fervor that Christ our King has been
born and, thus, that salvation from the everlasting darkness of sin and death
has come to us. Truly, something new and
big has happened, in spite of the familiar form our celebration may take: for our
King is born! and the world would never (could never) be the same again. We have been preparing for this day for the
last three-plus weeks, and rightfully so: for when a big celebration, like this,
is to take place, there is much to do to prepare.
Therefore,
before I go any further, I feel like I should make a confession. When it comes to all the hype and buildup of
Christmas, I’m a curmudgeon. Advent is a
season to which I look forward and I look forward to it because it is an
invitation to slow down, to be a little more quiet, to reflect, and to begin
again. Every year, however, the season
is drowned in lights, winter holiday music, and the pressure to do more
things. Every year, I hope that this
year will be different and every year I am disappointed that, once again, the
world hasn’t decided to conform to my idea of Advent (I mean, “How rude!” am I
right?).
I
am disappointed, also, because I always have big hopes of being more ready and
more prepared for Christmas: hopes that, although sometimes unrealistic, almost
never pan out the way I imagined. That
extra time in prayer that I hoped to spend was difficult to take and was often
found unfruitful. That creative idea for
gifts for my family proved to be too time-consuming to be realized. Christmas cards? Yeah, I thought about them… a lot… for like
three weeks… and I still didn’t send them.
Thus, after three-plus weeks of disappointment, I often find myself
approaching Christmas feeling a little… let’s say… crabby. (Anyone else out there with me?)
The
thing that tops it all off for me is that I always want to be well-prepared
spiritually to celebrate this great feast day, and being crabby doesn’t make
that easy. Like most of you, I suppose,
I take time to examine my conscience well so as to make a good confession
during Advent. Try as I may, however, to
bring my soul in a pristine state of grace to the celebration of Christmas—so
as to make of my heart a beautiful gift to Jesus on his birthday—I often find
that I fail; and thus my heart, ever desiring to be lifted up in joy in this
celebration, is weighed down by the weight of my sins. I’m embarrassed that, on top of all of the
other things that didn’t go my way in Advent, I couldn’t do even that much for
Jesus.
With
this on my heart, I reflected again on this passage from the Gospel that we
just heard and a glimmer of hope caught my eye.
It says there, “Now there were shepherds in that region living in the
fields and keeping the night watch over their flock.” These shepherds received the shocking and
disorienting visit from the angel of God who brought the good news that the
long-awaited one, the Messiah, had been born.
They—the shepherds “living in the fields and keeping night watch over
the flock”—were given instruction for how they could identify this child, the
Christ King, who had been born, and they then went to find him to pay him their
homage.
“Why
is this a glimmer of hope?” you might ask.
“Why is it that these shepherds, living in the fields—these seemingly
random folks to whom the angel of God appeared—are a source of hope for you?” It’s exactly this: these shepherds were living in the fields, watching over the flock when they
received this good news—this disorienting, yet exciting news—and then went to
find this newborn King. My guess is that
they didn’t stop at home to shower and put on clean clothes before they found
him. Rather, they came to him as they
were: dirty from their work in the fields and with the smell of the sheep
clinging to them. They came to offer him
their homage and the Holy Family received them without fuss or condemnation
(they were in a stable, after all!). After
their visit, they returned to their fields rejoicing that this royal family had
received them, in all their uncleanliness and imperfection. The hope that I felt—and still feel—is that
Jesus our King is just as ready tonight to receive me and my homage, in all my
uncleanliness and imperfection, in a similar way: without fuss or condemnation,
just joy that, in my devotion, I have come.
Sisters
and friends, too often, I believe, we think that we can only come to Jesus if
we are perfectly clean and put together.
Certainly, this is an ideal for which we should strive! More important for us to remember tonight,
however, is that Jesus wants us to come to him, regardless: even in our
uncleanliness and imperfection. This is
hard, because so often we’re embarrassed by our failures. Don’t worry, he sees us. He wasn’t embarrassed to be born in a cave
among livestock. Therefore, he’s not
going to be offended if we come to him with sin on our consciences, yet love in
our hearts and a humble desire to give him homage.
(I
imagine that this very idea was a motivating factor for Saint Francis to create
the first Christmas Crèche: to show to all that they didn’t have to be rich and
well put-together to come and worship the Newborn King; but rather, that they
could come as they are to do him homage with the confidence that they would be received
with love and joy. What an enduring gift
Saint Francis has given to us!)
My
dear Sisters and friends, let us come to him, then, in all that is good in us and
in all our imperfections and let us offer them to him as our gift, for in doing
so we are offering him our most true selves.
I assure you, Jesus delights in this gift. In return for this sign of humble devotion, he
will give us his true self, which is life, and light, and the peace of knowing
that we are loved by the God who created us and who is close to us even
now. Therefore, come, all of you,
faithful, unfaithful, and everyone in between; come, and let us adore him.
Given at the Monastery of the Poor Clares: Kokomo, IN –
December 25th, 2024
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