Homily for Christmas Mass during Day

Christmas Mass during Day

Dec. 25, 2024
Heb 1: 1-6
John 1: 1-5, 9-14
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

Glory of Christ the King (Gersam Turri)

“He leads the firstborn into the world, [who] took his seat at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb 1: 6, 3).

We celebrate the firstborn Son’s coming into our world.  That matters to us because this firstborn Son is not only the only-begotten Son of God but also “the firstborn among many brothers,” as St. Paul says to the Romans (8:29).  When this firstborn takes his proper “seat at the right hand of [God’s] Majesty,” he brings with him all his brothers and sisters, all persons who belong to Jesus Christ, who has purified us from our sins (Heb 1:3).  Jesus Christ is, therefore, “the light of the human race, the light that shines in the darkness” of our sins and overwhelms the darkness (John 1:4-5).  Those who come to him in faith “become children of God … born of God’s grace and truth” (1:12,14).

In this divine grace and truth, “the Lord comforts his people” (Is 52:9)—and not only his people in Zion, but “all the nations” as well; “all the ends of the earth will behold the salvation of our God” (52:10) when God’s people carry these “glad tidings, announcing peace, bearing good news, announcing salvation” everywhere (52:7).  How blessed we are, brothers, that God’s good news has come to us, that we’ve “seen his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son” (John 1:14), and how blessed are our religious families who are privileged to “bring glad tidings” of “the Father’s only Son” thruout the world, to bring “the light of the human race,” Jesus our Savior, to the ends of the earth and—by the power of God, not our own wisdom or holiness—to add to the numbers of Christ’s brothers and sisters at his side with “the Majesty on high.”