Christmas Day

Readings: Is 52:7-10; Heb 1:1-6; Jn 1:1-18

VIDEO

The four Gospel-writers are traditionally associated 
with the four creatures seen in a vision 
by the prophet Ezekiel:
a man, associated with Matthew,
a lion, associated with Mark,
an ox, associated with Luke, 
and an eagle, associated with John.
In folklore, eagles were reputed to have
not only exceptionally keen vision 
for seeking out prey,
but also the ability to stare 
directly into the sun.
St. Augustine observes that John,
in comparison with the other evangelists, 
“flies like an eagle above the clouds of human weakness, 
and looks at the light of unchangeable truth 
with the sharpest and firmest eyes of the heart” (Cons. ev. 1.6.9).
John gazes upon the stories of Jesus’ human life
and sees the dazzling mystery of God shining through.

This is perhaps nowhere more striking
than in the prologue to John’s Gospel,
which is our Gospel reading this morning.
Luke’s familiar nativity story,
which we read on Christmas Eve,
offers us Mary, Joseph, and the newborn Jesus,
the crowded inn and the manger,
the shepherds and the angels,
the “good news of great joy 
that will be for all the people” (Lk 2:10).
And all of this strikes us as quite beautiful
and even miraculous.

But John looks upon these events with his eagle eye
and sees even greater beauty, an even greater miracle.
He stares into the blinding sun of infinite love 
and sees that the story of the birth of Jesus
is a story rooted in eternity,
a story that stretches back 
before any creature ever was,
before Mary or Joseph,
before the shepherds or even the angels.

St. Augustine writes that John is one
“who has passed beyond the cloud
in which the whole earth is wrapped, 
and who has reached the liquid heaven 
from which, with clearest and steadiest mental eye, 
he is able to look upon God the Word, 
who was in the beginning with God, 
and by whom all things were made” (Cons. ev. 1.4.7).
In the beginning, before anything came to be, 
was the Word by which everything came to be,
the Word that spoke into the void,
saying, “Let there be light,”
and the world miraculously came to be.
This Word is God the Son
who is, as the letter to the Hebrews puts it,
“the refulgence of [God’s] glory,
the very imprint of his being…
who sustains all things 
by his mighty word.”

But the eagle eye of John,
that stares undazzled into the light of God,
sees also the darkness of the void
that resists the light,
the nothingness of evil
that refuses God’s gift of being.
Still, “the light shines in the darkness, 
the darkness has not overcome it.”
God speaks his creating Word 
into the world again and again, 
through various prophets and sages 
who announce peace and bear good news,
who tell God’s people 
that God reigns over the darkness.
And now, in these last days,
God speaks into the darkness again—
not in the varied and partial ways 
of the prophetic past,
but in the Word who is made flesh
to dwell among us 
in the fullness of grace and truth.

The eagle eye of John sees God speaking
in the speechless infant born of Mary.
John sees the power of the Word
that called light from darkness
and existence from the void
in the powerless child of Bethlehem,
the child who will give to us who believe 
“power to become children of God,”
so that each of us might become 
by the miracle of grace
what the Word is by nature:
the “heir of all things” 
and God’s own offspring.
John sees that the eternal Word, 
born “from the womb of the Father…
born from the father’s own being” 

(Council of Toledo AD 675),
has become what we are 
so that we might become children 
“born not by natural generation 
nor by human choice…but of God,”
drawn forth from the womb
of the waters of baptism,
freed from sin to live a new life,
given the eyes of eagles 
so that we too might see 
infinite light.

To stare with the eagle’s eye 
into God’s eternal Word
is beautiful and miraculous,
but it is also somewhat terrifying,
for we also see the night 
that still haunts the world, 
hating the light and seeking to overcome it.
The calm poetic beauty with which John recounts
the coming of the Word in human flesh
is the prelude to that same flesh being killed
by the forces of darkness that would reject it;
and we who have been brought to life in him
may well face similar rejection.
For each week we take into ourselves
his flesh and blood, his soul and divinity,
so that we might have his life in us.
But in doing so we take in as well
the call to be light in the darkness,
like fragments of mirror 
that reflect infinite light.
And it is only our faith that shows us
that we shall not be overcome
by uncomprehending darkness.

Yet on this Christmas we rejoice,
for we do see with the eyes of eagles.
Like John and the prophets of old,
we shout for joy, for in the Word made flesh
we see directly, before our eyes,
the Lord restoring Zion,
the world created anew,
eternity invading time,
light dispelling darkness,
life conquering death.
We pray even while it is still night,
for that day when “all the ends of the earth 
will behold the salvation of our God.”
And we pray that God, in his mercy,
might have mercy on us all.

Advent 4

Readings: Is 7:10-14; Rom 1:1-7; Mt 1:18-24

VIDEO

King Ahaz had a problem,
but he also had a plan to solve it.
Ahaz was the young ruler of Judea,
the nation that was the southern fragment
of the kingdom that King David had established
but his descendants had failed to keep intact.
Ahaz’s problem was that Israel, 
the northern fragment of David’s former kingdom,
was under threat from the Assyrian empire
and Israel’s king was pressuring Ahaz 
to join in an alliance to repel the Assyrians.
This was a problem because Ahaz saw the obvious:
Assyria was going eventually to crush the Israelites
and, if he allied with Israel,
the Assyrians would crush the Judeans as well.
But the Israelites were threatening war 
against Ahaz and the Judeans
to get them to join the fight 
against the Assyrians,
so some sort of war seemed inevitable.

If you can’t follow all these ancient 
near eastern political intrigues, 
which make the intrigues of Game of Thrones
seem like kid stuff,
don’t worry and just trust me 
when I say Ahaz had a problem.
But he also thought that he 

had a solution to his problem: 
offer appeasement to the Assyrians
and make his nation subject to their empire
in exchange for protection from the Israelites
and letting him remain in power.

In today’s first reading we hear Isaiah
counseling a different path for Ahaz: 
neither alliance with the Israelites
nor subjection of his people to the Assyrians,
but rather trust in the Lord—
the Lord who had rescued his people in the past
and promised them rescue in the future.
Isaiah tells him to ask 
for a sign from the Lord,
any sign he wants,
to assure him of God’s protection.
But Ahaz replies with fake piety:
Oh no, I would never be so presumptuous!
But what he really means is that 
he trusts the Assyrians 
more than he trusts the Lord,
particularly since they will turn 
a blind eye to his transgressions, 
which God has denounced earlier in Isaiah,
saying that Ahaz was “crushing my people,
and grinding down the faces of the poor” (3:15).
Even more than trusting the Assyrians,
Ahaz trusted his own cleverness,
his own ability to work the angles of geopolitical intrigue.

So Ahaz submitted to the Assyrians rather than to the Lord,
even taking silver and gold from the Temple treasury
to offer tribute to the Assyrian King, Tiglath-pil’eser,
and adopting Assyrian religious practices.
According to the second book of Chronicles,
Ahaz’s cleverness and intrigues did not pay off:
“Tilgath-pil’eser, king of Assyria, did indeed come to him, 
but to oppress him rather than to lend strength” (28:20).
But Isaiah says that though Ahaz had rejected God’s offer
and was wearisome both to God and to God’s people,
God would still send a sign of his love to comfort his people:
“the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,
and shall name him Emmanuel.”

Joseph also had a problem,
a seemingly smaller problem than Ahaz,
but a problem nonetheless,
not a Game of Thrones-sized problem
of international political intrigue
but a domestic problem:
Mary, to whom he was betrothed,
was pregnant, and he was not the father.
Joseph had a problem,
but he also had a plan to solve it.
Now Joseph’s plan, unlike that of Ahaz,
did not involve deception or betrayal of God,
for, unlike the wicked Ahaz,
Joseph was “a righteous man”;
more than that, he was a merciful man.
So rather than publicly accuse Mary of adultery
and subject her to shame and possibly death,
as the Law entitled him to do,
he decided to discreetly end the betrothal.
It was a righteous plan, 
indeed a merciful plan.
But it was his plan, 
and God had a different plan.
For the child to be born to Mary
was the sign promised long ago through Isaiah:
“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,
which means ‘God is with us.’”

An angel tells Joseph in a dream
not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife,
for God knew that it is fear that leads us
to cling to our own plans,
whether wicked or righteous,
rather than embracing God’s plan,
it is fear that leads us
to try to control the people and things
that are the circumstances of our lives,
rather than trust the sign
that God truly is with us.
And Joseph does as the angel bids him,
not simply because he was a righteous man
or a merciful man,
but because he was a faithful man
who trusted that God’s plan
was greater than any plan 
that a human being could devise,
he was a man who truly believed
that God is with us,
and being a faithful man 
made him a courageous man,
and he opened his heart and home
to the Virgin and her child.

And what about us?
We too have our problems and our plans.
Chances are, most of us don’t have 
geopolitical problems like Ahaz
or wicked plans to solve them.
We are probably more like Joseph,
with family-related problems,
or work-related problems,
or school-related problems,
and our planned solutions 
are probably more-or-less righteous.
But the key question is not
whether they are wicked or righteous, 
but whether they are our plans or God’s.

Ahaz had a problem and a plan,
but it was not God’s plan.
Joseph had a problem and a plan,
but it was not God’s plan.
We have problems and plans,
but are they God’s plans?
The challenge posed 
by the Good News that God is with us
is to set aside our plans and enter the new world
that the birth of Christ opens to us,
to set aside our desire to control our problems
by controlling people and things around us,
to set aside fear and let God work in us
deeds that surpass mere human righteousness,
deeds that surpass mere human mercy.

As the mystery of God becoming flesh
bears down upon us 

in these final days of Advent,
let us pray that we, like Joseph, 
might be set free from our own plans
so that we can see, as he saw, 
the sign of God’s love 
in the child of the Virgin,
and take him, as he did, 
into our homes and our hearts,
so that God, in his mercy,
might have mercy on us all.

Advent 2

Readings: Is 11:1-10; Rm 15:4-9; Mt 3:1-12

VIDEO

I heard two different things this past week.
I heard, “We’re going to go the wrong way 
if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”
I also heard, and you heard a few minutes ago,
“Welcome one another, then, 
as Christ welcomed you,
for the glory of God.”
The first was said our President at a cabinet meeting,
speaking of people from Somalia living in the U.S.
The second was said St. Paul in his letter to the Romans,
speaking of how Jewish Christians
ought to welcome Gentiles who turned to Christ.

I’m tempted simply to say that for Christians
the choice between the mindsets embodied
in these two statements—
one rooted in fear and the other in faith—
is so clear that no commentary is needed,
and then sit down and treat you all 
to an extremely short homily.
But lest I be misunderstood as offering 
political commentary rather than a homily,
and because the choice does not 
seem to be so clear to some people,
let me take a few more minutes of your time
to explain why this is about theology
and not about politics.

While we think of Advent as the time 
when we prepare to welcome Christ—
and indeed today’s Gospel quotes Isaiah:
“prepare the way of the Lord!”—
it is really these words from Paul 
that capture what the coming of Christ 
into the world is all about:
“Welcome one another, then, 
as Christ welcomed you,
for the glory of God.”

When Paul speaks of being welcomed by Christ,
he knew firsthand that being a Christian 
is not about anything we can do for Christ,
if only we prepare carefully enough;
it is about what Christ does for us,
often when we are least prepared.
For Paul had been unexpectedly welcomed by Christ,
when he was a persecutor of Christians.
Even as he was breathing out
murderous threats against Christians, 
the risen Christ appeared to him in his glory,
welcoming him into a new life.

But Paul was not simply welcomed;
he was also given a mission.
He was given the mission of welcoming others
even as he himself had been welcomed.
He was given the mission of preaching to the Gentiles—
the non-Jewish pagans who were outside 
of the covenant God had made with Abraham,
who were considered idolaters and demon worshippers,
who were, as he describes them in his letter to the Ephesians,
“without hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12).
He was called to welcome those whom he says 
were separated from God’s chosen people 
by a “dividing wall of enmity” (Eph 2:14).
He was called, in short, to welcome those
whom he had up to that time thought of as garbage,
who could only pollute the purity of God’s people.
Now, just as Paul had been welcomed in mercy
while he was still the enemy of Christ,
he in turn was to welcome the Gentiles.

Many, who also feared the defilement
that the Gentiles might bring into God’s people, 
thought that Paul was taking the Church 
in the wrong direction.
But Paul knew with the blinding clarity of faith
that the coming of Christ into the world
was, as Isaiah prophesied long before,
meant to draw in all people,
Jew and Gentile alike,
so that the earth might be filled 
with knowledge of the Lord,
as water covers the sea.
Jew and Gentile living together was, for Paul,
the dawning light of God’s peaceable kingdom 
in which “the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the young lion shall browse together.”
Those who had been enemies now dwelled together—
the wild welcomed fearlessly by the tame,
who know themselves to have been welcomed
by the God who does not judge by appearance
but judges “the poor with justice,
and decide[s] aright for the land’s afflicted.”

The contrast between a fearful mindset 
that declares the land’s afflicted to be rejected garbage
and a faith-filled mindset that seeks to welcome others
is not a matter of partisan politics.
Alas, the range of those afflicted ones
who are seen as garbage to be cast out 
rather than brothers and sisters to be welcomed
is large enough to indict both of our major parties:
the unborn, the disabled, the mentally ill, 
the incarcerated, the poor, the unemployed,
the migrant, the elderly, the dying.
The call to welcome 
even as we have been welcomed
is a call that cannot be answered simply
by voting for the correct political party,
as important as voting might be.
It is a call that confronts us every day.

A few weeks ago, at this Mass,
we were honored by the presence of 
not one but two of God’s children
who were experiencing evident mental distress.
Though the situation was uncomfortable,
and perhaps distracted us from our prayers,
I didn’t notice anyone fleeing the church
or trying forcibly to expel our visitors.
In other words, I didn’t see anyone 
treating them like garbage.
What I did see was a couple of people 
stepping up to sit with them,
to calm them,
to welcome them.
What I did see was Christians acting
as those who knew themselves
to have been welcomed by Christ.
What I did see was just a glimmer 
of the dawning of that peaceable kingdom
foreseen by Isaiah.

Perhaps the best way to prepare ourselves 
to welcome Christ this Advent
it to reflect on how we 
have been welcomed by Christ
and to ask ourselves how we 
can extend that welcome to others.
Do we, in our fear of those different from us,
those whose presence might distress us,
dismiss people as “garbage,”
or do we see in them the face of Christ?
John the Baptist says that 

the Messiah, when he comes 

will not care about our family lineage 

or our ethnic identity,
for God can raise up children of Abraham 
from the lifeless stones themselves.
He will look rather for the fruit of repentance,
the reorientation of our lives around the kingdom
into which he welcomes all people.
Jesus says that at the final judgment,
when he will clear his threshing floor
and gather his wheat into his barn,
he will say to those on his right,
“Come, you who are blessed by my Father. 
Inherit the kingdom prepared for you 
from the foundation of the world.
For I was… a stranger and your welcomed me…
[for] whatever you did 
for one of these least… 
you did for me” (Mt 24: 34, 35, 40).

So let this Advent be for us 
the end of fear and the birth of faith;
let us welcome Christ 
by welcoming others 
as we ourselves have been welcomed
so that all people together
“might glorify God for his mercy.”
And may God in his mercy
have mercy on us all.