Homily for Friday, 25 December 2020– Nativity of the Lord

Readings of the day (for Christmas Mass at Night): Isaiah 9:1-6; Psalm 96:1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14

This homily was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada.

Merry Christmas, sisters and brothers! How many of us can remember an event or several events, dates and places of local, even personal significance to us, but also of more worldwide significance? These are the events when we might say, “We know where we were when”…

Some of us, if we go back some time ago, may remember where we were when various wars began or ended: For example, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, or more recent conflicts in the former Yugoslavia or Iraq or Afghanistan. Some of us, or people we know and love, may have fought in or lost loved ones in these wars.

Within the Church, some of us might remember where we were when a so-called “caretaker pope,” St. John XXIII, shocked both the Church and the world by calling the Second Vatican Council, not because the Church or the world were in a particular crisis, but to open the Church and the world to discern the voice of the Holy Spirit in light of world events, “the signs of the times.” Vatican II, with a number of bishops in attendance never before seen at a Council in our Church’s history, as well as many Catholic expert theologians and non-Catholic observers, discussed topics ranging from the nature and mission of the Church itself, to its liturgy and sacraments, to the meaning of religious freedom and other human rights, to themes of peace and justice, to the role of social communications.

Many of us may remember where we were at the end of the Cold War, as the Berlin Wall was dismantled and the Soviet Union collapsed. From the first landing on the moon to the long-awaited approval and distribution of vaccines against COVID-19 (and many more events in between): We know where we were when these local events with worldwide, even universal significance, happened.

It may seem that 2020 has not given us much to be cheerful about. The news has been dominated by COVID-19, a disease with virulence not experienced since the flu pandemic after World War I. My experience has been that even conversations with friends, family, and my brother Basilian priests are often dominated by the latest COVID news: How many new cases today? How many deaths? Is the government about to put in place new restrictions? Terms like “physical distancing” have become part of our vocabulary. Mental and spiritual health concerns amid the distancing and aloneness have compounded with the physical health crisis of the pandemic itself. Our churches and businesses, if not shuttered completely, are allowed a small fraction of their capacity of people.

With that, I want to make a point of acknowledging with gratitude everybody who is joining us from afar, via livestream, to worship, and especially to celebrate this Christmas, the Nativity of our Lord. I thank you. I thank everybody who is here in person. I thank volunteers, cleaners, parish staff, priests and other liturgical ministers, people who serve the disadvantaged and vulnerable—everybody who has made it possible for us to celebrate here at all. Again, a Merry Christmas to everybody!

Back in March, the evening before COVID-19 forced many countries, including France where I was living then, into lockdown, I remember where I was: Hearing confessions in a small parish in Paris. That evening, the church was full of people trying anxiously to receive the sacrament of reconciliation before Easter. The next day, and for two months after that, the churches were closed, and all of France went into lockdown.

In the midst of this pandemic, on May 25, George Floyd, a Black man, was killed on a street in Minneapolis. This and other similar incidents ignited protests and a nationwide, even worldwide reckoning with socially systemic racism and abuses of power. I remember where I was, in the days after George Floyd’s death, on the phone with an African American friend from my first years as a priest in Rochester, New York; my friend who was distraught at the violence, the racism, the slurs to which she personally had been subjected; my friend who gave me that graced opportunity simply to listen, to pray with and for her as she spoke.

The COVID-19 pandemic, the reckoning with and protests against systemic racism and brutality in law enforcement: These are recent events with local, but also very universal dimensions. We know where we have been, but these events have affected the whole world. This relationship between the local and the universal brings to my mind a prayer our Basilian communities in Colombia often pray (and prayed while I served in several stints in those communities), based on part of Chapter 12 of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “Let us rejoice with those who rejoice; let us weep with those who are weeping”… How, then, do we accomplish what we pray for in that prayer?

How do we rejoice with those who rejoice, especially in this celebration of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus? How do we weep with those who weep; with those who are ill in mind, body, or spirit; with those who have been subject to racism, other forms of unjust discrimination or abuses of power; with those who have lost loved ones, or lost their livelihoods; who have lost the ability to worship in person and receive communion during this pandemic?

Perhaps our rejoicing with those who rejoice, and weeping with those who weep—in a word, solidarity—depends on our remembrance of where we are in the midst of world events and events that affect us personally. And, better yet, our solidarity with one another depends on our remembrance of who we are: A People of God, the Church, called together to celebrate this night and forevermore the birth of a child, Jesus Christ, Emmanuel (God-with-us; God in solidarity with us!) into a manger in Bethlehem; called together to celebrate this local event that has universal significance; that is essential to our salvation, not as disconnected individuals but together.

From the moment of Jesus’ birth, Luke’s Gospel says to us tonight, everybody who experienced this event was acutely aware of both its local and universal significance. Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and the angel who first spoke to the shepherds the “good news of great joy” of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem: Everybody knew where they were in those moments, but that this event held significance far beyond them.

Luke, the Gospel writer, the historian par excellence among the four Biblical Gospel writers down to the finest details, emphasizes the very local dimensions of Jesus’ birth. Caesar Augustus ruled the vast and powerful Roman Empire, which included Israel, land of Jesus’ birth, as the Roman province of Palestine. Quirinius, who is only mentioned this once in the entire New Testament, governed Syria, a rather insignificant part of the Roman Empire at the time. Mary and Joseph, a humble, we can imagine fairly ordinary Jewish couple, travel from “Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the City of David called Bethlehem,” Joseph’s hometown, to register in the Roman census. Mary, in a detail Luke gives us that is at least bizarre if not scandalous for the time, is engaged to Joseph but finds herself “with child.” She gives birth “to her firstborn son and [wraps] him in swaddling clothes, and [lays] him in a manger, because there [is] no place for them in the inn.”

Angels appear very specifically to “shepherds living in the fields.” These shepherds, and the place where the angels announce our Saviour’s birth to them, are what Pope Francis might call at “the peripheries”: Poor, dirty, smelling like their sheep, and probably feared or at least ignored by most people who lived in the cities and villages.

This, sisters and brothers, is how God chose to enter into solidarity as one like us, human, in all things but sin: To rejoice with us as we rejoice; to weep with us when we weep; to open to us the gates of salvation; to call us to remember where and who we are. The Nativity of our Lord was a very local event: Augustus ruled from Rome; Quirinius governed Roman Syria; a typical first-century Jewish couple, Mary and Joseph (typical except for Mary’s pregnancy) brought a baby into the world from its peripheries—into a manger!

The first announcement of this birth was equally “peripheral,” humble, local: From angels to shepherds. Yet, like so many of our world events but more decisively, this peripheral, humble, local event holds universal significance. Into a manger in Bethlehem, in first century Roman Palestine, is born for us; for the universe, for all times and places, “a Saviour, who is the Christ, the Lord.”

Homily for Sunday, 25 December 2016– Nativity of the Lord

Readings of the day (for Christmas Mass at Night): Isaiah 9:1-6; Psalm 96:1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14

This homily was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada.

A little over two thousand years ago, Caesar Augustus was emperor of Rome. “Quirinius,” we hear today from Luke’s Gospel, “was governor of Syria.” Would this not have been a terrifying world in which to be born; in which to raise a family; in which to live?

I invite us to imagine the world of the time, under the so-called “pax Romana,” the peace of Rome. This peace of Rome was a false peace; a peace gained in large part by suppression and oppression. The peace imposed by those in power, by the likes of Augustus and Quirinius, was a peace dependent on the greater political and military might of Rome over its enemies. And anybody who challenged this rule by might could find their well-being and even their lives in danger.

In this world governed by the “peace of Rome,” in a remote corner of the Roman Empire, the village of Nazareth in Roman Palestine, there lived a faithful, humble, quiet Jewish couple, Mary and Joseph. And do we not know how the story unfolds from there? Mary, “engaged” to Joseph, finds herself “expecting a child.” This child, revealed by “an Angel of the Lord” to “shepherds living in the fields” and now to us as the “Saviour, who is Christ the Lord,” would bring to this world a long-awaited peace, not the “peace of Rome” but peace that can only be from God.

This child of Mary and Joseph, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whose birth we remember and celebrate today, made the prophecy of Isaiah a reality: “For a child has been born to us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” And yet if we go back to the time of Isaiah, his prophecy we hear in our celebration today is all the more remarkable because Isaiah spoke it in a world that was anything but at peace.

The world and nation of Israel in which Isaiah lived and prophesied were a world and a nation obsessed with peace, security, and authority, but only for an elite minority of the people. On the surface, all was well in Israel of Isaiah’s time, a nation at its most prosperous; its most powerful. But Isaiah says to the elites, the kings and rulers of Israel, that all their wealth; that all their prosperity; that the peace of the nation is fickle and superficial so long as it remains concentrated in the hands of a few. Israel will be brought low, its people exiled. Only then will true prosperity, true justice, true authority, and true peace be able to take root and flourish in Israel and in the world. This prosperity; this justice; this authority; this peace will uphold the dignity of the least well-off. Nobody will be in need.

Returning to Jesus’ time, we hear from Luke’s Gospel that, sadly, not much has changed from the time of Isaiah. The names of Israel’s and the world’s rulers have changed, but the fickle and superficial peace of the end of the line of Israel’s kings had become the fickle and superficial peace of Rome, hinging as ever on the worldly might and wealth of a few.

Into this world “is born this day in the city of David [our] Saviour, who is Christ, the Lord.” Into this world of fickle and superficial peace is born, in a manger of all places, our “Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” This reality might raise for us some questions: First, why would God choose to be born into this world as a helpless and vulnerable baby in a manger? If this Jesus were truly the one Isaiah foretold, “Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,” why did he not impose God’s true peace on our world? Instead, Jesus would die broken and shamed, helpless and vulnerable on a cross! Why?

We might answer questions like these (rightly) by saying that God’s way is a way of mercy, not one of imposing but of inviting us and remaining with us on this long journey toward the peace God has willed for our world since its creation. But if this is so, then clearly God is more patient with our world than I am and I anticipate many of us are. God sees, I imagine, a broken world and yet a world never beyond the reach of true peace; of redemption; of salvation. This is why God sent his only Son into this world, and why God promises that Christ will return to this world at the end of time to complete God’s work of redeeming and saving this world. But then what is worth redeeming and saving in this world?

The answer to this question is right here among us. My sisters and brothers in Christ, moments ago we heard from the letter to Titus that “he it is,” our God, “who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.” Are we not, then, “a people of [God’s] own who are zealous for good deeds”? If we were not, I do not think we would be here. If we were not “a people of [God’s] own who are zealous for good deeds,” there would be no Church; no Christian faith; nobody to worship and to celebrate our memory as a community of faith of Christ’s birth and our waiting for his return. And our world would be poorer for it.

And so where does our zeal “for good deeds” leave us? At the end of this Mass, I will send us forth with the Church’s blessing, inviting us to “go in the peace of Christ.” We will “go in the peace of Christ” into a dark winter’s night; into a world with many people who still “walk in darkness”; a world of families; of human relationships; of entire nations deeply immersed in the “land of deep darkness” of which the prophet Isaiah once spoke. And too often “deep darkness” is masked by a fickle and superficial peace: A peace that may be the mere absence of war; peace that is at best the temporary respite of tens of millions in our world displaced from their homelands by war and persecution; so-called peace that denies countless people basic human rights, beginning with the fundamental right to life from conception to natural death; peace that is, not far beneath the surface, gossip, passive aggression, and silence that block paths to truth and reconciliation. This is false peace, not the “peace of Christ” in which God and the Church invite us to “go forth” from this celebration.

No longer is Caesar Augustus emperor. No longer is “Quirinius… governor of Syria.” In their place today are far more murderous leaders, if not a lack of leadership that breeds war, terrorism, and other forms of extremism, much of it happening in regions that are the cradle of our Christian faith, unchecked and even encouraged by more powerful nations. Yet still, through Isaiah, God promises us: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness‒ on them light has shone.” God promises us a redeeming and saving “authority” that “shall grow continually”; the authority of the one we call “Prince of Peace.”

God’s promise; God’s Word; God’s Christ; God’s true peace lives among us here and now. Our God respects our freedom too much to impose peace on us. And so, in freedom, God invites us to “go in the peace of Christ.” God invites us to go out willingly, to be the “great light” amid the sometimes “great darkness” of our world. God invites us to sense, to take “great joy” in the signs of God’s presence already in our world, and to be these signs by our zeal “for good deeds”; for words and deeds of kindness, of generosity, of justice, and of peace.

Today this longing and in places terrifying (and terrified) world celebrates the birth of its true peace. From Bethlehem, “the city of David,” to Sherwood Park to the world may we be a sign of our “Prince of Peace”; active, zealous signs of our “good news of great joy for all the people: To you,” to us, “is born this day… a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.”  

Homily for Friday, 25 December 2015– Nativity of the Lord

Readings of the day (for Christmas Mass at Night): Isaiah 9:1-6; Psalm 96:1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14

This homily was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada.

From the prophet Isaiah we hear tonight [this morning]: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness‒ on them light has shone.” And from Luke’s Gospel we hear of shepherds, about to travel to Bethlehem to meet our newborn Saviour, Jesus Christ. These shepherds are “keeping watch over their flocks by night” when their night watch is interrupted by “an angel of the Lord” who announces Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, “City of David.” Their night watch is interrupted by “the glory of the Lord” that shines “around them.” And we hear from Luke that these shepherds “were terrified” at this light breaking into the darkness surrounding them.

And yet is this not what our celebration of Christmas is all about: light breaking into; interrupting our darkness? Yet, unlike the shepherds outside Bethlehem on the night of Jesus’ birth or the people of Israel of Isaiah’s time, I imagine not many of us are terrified at light taking the place of darkness. In fact we celebrate it; we celebrate him, Jesus Christ, with a joyous song of thanksgiving: “Today is born our Saviour, Christ the Lord”… “A child has been born to us, a son given to us… He is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

We celebrate the Birth of “our Saviour, Christ the Lord,” in many ways. We celebrate by gathering together with family and friends. We celebrate by decorating our homes and often our workplaces and public spaces. We celebrate by exchanging gifts. Very importantly we celebrate by gathering here as a community of faith; a People of God to worship. Most of us here are anything but terrified.

But how many of us have experienced darkness as a reality deeper than physical, literal darkness? I think that here, in the centre of Alberta, we are somewhat privileged. We live far enough north to experience Christmas as near the shortest day of the year. I am now living and studying in Paris, France, and so on my way home to visit family here I have been keeping a close eye on the weather in the Edmonton area over the last few days, maybe like those shepherds near Bethlehem so many years ago, but for more selfish reasons: I wanted to be prepared for any extreme weather on my way here. Now, I expect cold weather in Alberta at this time of year. But in the corner of my computer screen, a reminder of the shortness of late December days here would stare me back in the face: Sunrise 8:50 am; sunset 4:15 pm. I love you, Alberta; even at your darkest and coldest you are my home; our home!

And still, amid not even seven and a half hours of sunlight each day this time of year, at Christmas we celebrate. The sun is unconquered by darkness. The unconquered Son of God, Jesus Christ, also promises to return. Christ promises once again to break into and interrupt our darkness, as he did more than two thousand years ago, to complete God’s work of our salvation at the end of time.

We celebrate, even though Christmas brings many of us face-to-face not with joy and light, but with our world’s darkness and, for some of us, the darkness in our families and among our loved ones and in our own experiences. Our world faces an unprecedented number of refugees and of people displaced within their own countries by violence and persecution: A record sixty million people worldwide who have been forced to flee their homes! More wars begin than end in our world today. The dignity of all human life; of creation is so often disregarded. This has led even the ever-joyful Pope Francis to lament recently that our world’s violence threatens to reduce our celebration of Christmas to a kind of charade!

But this does not need to be. Our celebration of Christmas, of Christ’s Nativity, has meaning if we renew here and now the Biblical call to welcome refugees and migrants; people who experience physical, mental, or spiritual illness; people who have lost family members or loved ones; people living in poverty; the unemployed; people with disabilities; people who are alone, without family or loved ones with whom to celebrate Christmas; people who are estranged from our Church... This parish, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, is a place where all these people are supported and given dignity. OLPH has sponsored refugee families. Through a wide variety of ministries OLPH supports the economically disadvantaged; the bereaved; those who are alone; those who are searching in their lives of faith. Here the heart of the Christmas message is lived out.

And our celebration of Christmas is meaningful as long as we do our best, knowing our imperfections; even our sin; our darkness, but also the light of God’s grace and mercy, “to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly,” in St. Paul’s words to Titus. Our Christmas celebration finds meaning in our response to God’s call to welcome all who are on the same pilgrim’s path that we are all on, back to a manger scene in Bethlehem and forward to Christ’s return in glory.

Luke’s Gospel renews this call to us today by the simple remark that, when Jesus was born into our world, Mary and Joseph “laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” There was no place amid the darkness of our world for our Saviour. In fact our world would reject its Saviour. Life that began in a manger would be nailed to a cross, in the greatest act of darkness and sin ever known. Yet even death would not stop Jesus Christ, the Light of our world. The manger, a place beneath human dignity where animals fed, would be transformed into a place where our God entered our world in human flesh from the Virgin Mary’s womb. The cross, a place beneath human dignity where common criminals were publicly tortured and killed, would be transformed into a place where our God gave his very life to save us. Likewise, are we allowing our lives, our experiences of light, goodness, and peace but also of darkness and sin, any experiences we have that are beneath our human dignity, to be places into which Christ is welcome? Are our hearts the “inns” into which Christ enters to transform; to redeem us?

Sure, our lives; our hearts probably are not, even by some of our own standards, fit to welcome the King of the Universe; our God. Fear not! Jesus is not asking us for a five-star hotel. After all, he first entered our world “wrapped… in swaddling clothes,” lying “in a manger.” Even there, in the darkness and stench of a manger, Jesus brought light. Even there, Jesus brought peace. Even there, Jesus calmed the fears of the shepherds who left their flocks and fields at the invitation of an angel, an invitation that left them “terrified” at first, to welcome Jesus into our world. Even there, from a manger, Jesus brought heaven and earth, angels and all “people of good will” to joyful song, a song we still hear in our world today; a song we still hear from the beginning of today’s celebration of our Eucharist: “Glory to God in the highest”!

Glory to Jesus Christ, Light of our world! Do we dare to join in this song of joy? Is our song too much of an interruption; a breaking into our world’s violence, hostility, and darkness for it to bear? Are we in need from time to time for Jesus to interrupt our own darkness with his light; his mercy? Is Jesus Christ; is his Gospel proclaimed and authentically lived in ways that are “self-controlled, upright, and godly” a danger to the security and comfort of some who would prefer to bar his way into our countries; our public spaces; our hearts; our relationships; our lives?

Yes, but this has yet to stop God in Christ. If Jesus must, he will enter as he has already entered our world in the deepest of darkness to bring us God’s own light. This is why Isaiah proclaims so boldly that  “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”; that “those who lived in a land of deep darkness‒ on them light has shone.”

And this is why today, on this Christmas night [morning], we sing just as boldly as of old to welcome the Light that interrupts and breaks through our world’s darkness: “Today is born our Saviour, Christ the Lord”… “A child has been born to us, a son given to us… He is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”