Homily for December 30

Homily for December 30
Octave of Christmas

2025
1 John 2: 12-17
Collect
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph Residence, N.R.

Christmas Night (Fritz von Uhde)

“May the newness of the Nativity … set us free” (Collect).

Our great feast of Christmas points us toward the paschal mystery, toward our liberation from “the yoke of sin” (Collect).

St. John emphasizes our liberation from our “ancient servitude” (Collect) by repeating to the “young men” of his community that they “have conquered the Evil One” (1 John 2:13-14).  He adds a reminder of the source of their victory:  the strength that comes from the presence of “the word of God [that] remains in you” (2:14).  In John, the Word is the Son of God made flesh (John 1:1,14), he whose “Nativity in the flesh” (Collect) we commemorate.  That word “remains in” us as God’s gift to us.  So long as we embrace the living Word, we’re ready to do God’s will, as Jesus did, and thus we “remain forever” (2:17), i.e., live forever.

We, of course, are no longer “young men” except inasmuch as Christ has rejuvenated us.  We used to pray at the beginning of Mass (I’m old enuf to remember), “Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat iuventutem meam” (Ps 43:4).  Freedom from sin lightens our hearts and puts us into a springtime of life regardless of our physical age.

St. John addresses the elders of the community as “fathers” and credits them with “knowing him who is from the beginning” (2:13-14).  They know the Word who was in the beginning, the same Word that became flesh (John 1:1,14).  They know him differently, more intimately, than the young men:  not in an intellectual sense but familiarly.

Those words are addressed to us; we are “fathers” in God’s household.  Our knowledge, our familiarity, our presence to and intimacy with our Lord Jesus gladdens our hearts and gives us power over the Evil One.  It gives us freedom to love God and one another, as John wrote in yesterday’s 1st reading (1 John 2:3-11).  We can walk freely now in God’s light so as to “remain forever” happy, vigorous, and youthful in his blessed light.