Homily for Christmas Morning

Homily for Christmas Morning

Dec. 25, 2022
Titus 2: 11-14
Is 9: 1-6
Texts of Mass during the Nite
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx

“Beloved:  The grace of God has appeared” (Titus 2: 11).

(by Govert Flinck)

For most of society, today’s the culmination of Christmas.  What Christians know as Advent has passed in a spree of spending money—the newscasts often leading with reports of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and other sales, to be followed by reports of consumer debt; a spree of office parties and other celebrations; and reports of holiday travel, gas prices, and problems at airports; this year, add a major winter storm.

But we call the season Advent, which means “coming,” because we’re waiting—not for Santa but for the “Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace” (Is 9:5).  We are people who have been walking in darkness, longing for “a great light” (cf. 9:1)—literally true this year of our Ukrainian brothers and sisters who lack both electricity and heat, thanks to the barbaric assaults on their country.  We hope that soon cloaks and uniforms “rolled in blood” will become “fuel for flames” (9:4), that the “judgment and justice” of God’s kingdom will be confirmed and sustained (9:6).

The grace of God did in fact appear in our midst, in “the city of David that is called Bethlehem” (Luke 2:4).  Mary’s child, greeted by lofty angels and lowly shepherds, “our great God and savior” (Tit 2:13), came to us, walked among us, and taught us how “to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age” (2:12).

If boots tramping in battle and bloodshed are all around us—not only in Ukraine but also in Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, Congo, Syria, and Palestine; on our streets, in our schools and shopping malls, in our abortion clinics, even in our homes—it’s because men and women have refused the grace offered to us, rejected the “good news of great joy” (2:10).  And we continue a long Advent of waiting for “the grace of God that has appeared” to be realized in human hearts.

The God who appeared in a manger at Bethlehem appears among us at every Christian liturgy.  He comes to us in the sacred Scriptures, wherein his Word effectively touches our hearts and changes them if we are receptive.  The Word that took on human flesh and made his dwelling among us (John 1:14) comes to us in the Eucharist—appearing under the forms of bread and wine that mask the hidden reality of his Divinity, even as his infant flesh in the manger masked his Divinity.  How better can we celebrate the historical birth of “our great God and Savior” than by doing again what he told us to, taking bread and wine in his memory, praying his Holy Spirit to transform them into his body and blood, and consuming them, so that we might be transformed by grace into better disciples, better images of Christ, the perfect image of God the Father.

Paul writing to Titus speaks of yet another coming:  “We await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ” (2:13).  The infant laid in the manger, as I said, masked the glory of God.  No glory there, just an ordinary infant, and I don’t have to tell you parents what ordinary infants are like.

No, the glorious coming we await with “blessed hope” (Communion Rite) which we speak of at every Mass after the Lord’s Prayer, is Christ’s return.  When he comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead, then he will make real what Isaiah prophesied, bringing light into our gloomy land, bringing “abundant joy and great rejoicing” (9:2), lifting the oppressive yokes of tyrants and warmakers, establishing a forever peaceful dominion (9:6).  He will deliver “from all lawlessness and cleanse for himself a people as his own” (Tit 2:14); he will bring “peace to those on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14).  This is our “blessed hope”, our confidence that God’s grace will appear in majesty, in the person of Jesus on the Last Day, to complete the salvation foreseen by Isaiah and announced by angels at Bethlehem.