God has been at work... Now He Comes!

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for Christmas Mass at Dawn

It is a joy and a privilege to be with you on this Holy Day, and to proclaim this beautiful gospel to you! Merry Christmas! Christ is born in Bethlehem!

Our celebration this morning has been a long time in coming, and it has involved a lot of preparation: we’ve been in the midst of the Advent Season for almost a whole month, abstaining from the Gloria so it could burst forth this morning! Many of us have made a good Advent confession to prepare for today. Our choir has practiced, our decorations have been hung, and many of us have completed our Christmas shopping! I am proud to say that I have at least begun! Our readings today, though, indicate that the preparation for this feast goes back much farther than the beginning of Advent…Our first reading from the Prophet Isaiah foretold the joy of this dawn many long centuries before Jesus was born, words much needed by a people weighed down by failure and sin and exile:

See, the LORD proclaims to the ends of the earth: say to daughter Zion, your savior comes! Here is his reward with him, his recompense before him. They shall be called the holy people, the redeemed of the LORD, and you shall be called “Frequented,” a city that is not forsaken!

God promises His people that He will bring them unity and peace, mercy and justice, and He brought this about through Jesus Christ. God was preparing His people all through those long centuries for this most precious and unexpected gift. In our 2nd reading St. Paul speaks of this fulfillment and grace bursting into the world:

When the kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared, not because of any righteous deeds we had done but because of his mercy, He saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life.

This, then, is what is happening in all the time of waiting: God has been persistently calling us even though we so often turn away. That was true for the Tribe of Israel, in their sin and in their exile, it was true during Jesus’ life on earth, and it has been true of us, the Church, down through ages. God calls, persistently calls, and sometimes we respond!

Having prepared His people, having sent John the Baptist as the last of the prophets and the forerunner of Christ, in the fullness of time, some 2000 years ago, God came Himself. He invited a young and obscure woman from a backwards hilltown to be His Vessel, and Mary said yes. Her fiancé, who must have felt all his plans crash down around him when he discovered his bride to be was pregnant, Joseph also decides to cooperate. And the Lord took on flesh and dwelt among us, God came among us as a tiny baby child.

During this Christmas season, so many of us gather with family, or we think of them if they are far away… and our families are like the families in Scripture, like our ancestors in the faith… it’s messy! Some of our ancestors we’d rather not remember at times! But God has been at work in our families, too. God has been preparing us for His coming, during this Advent, and during our whole lives. He has brought us to this Mass, to this moment, to this Christmas Eve, desiring to fill us with joy and peace, desiring to fill us with Himself. Perhaps we have wandered, perhaps we have been far away, whether visibly and publicly or in the silence of our hearts… in all those times and in all those places, God has been at work.

God was at work when he sent the glad tidings of Jesus’ birth not to Caesar Augustus, nor to any of the rich and powerful, but first to the shepherds. These lonely smelly men were out by themselves in the fields trying to make a living the only way they knew how, and God’s joy and truth burst in amongst them. They were first afraid, both because of the angels’ glory, but also probably because of their own brokenness, but the angels told them not to be afraid, and told them of their joyful and glorious news! And the shepherds responded, made an act of faith, and said, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” Then they went in haste! And those same glad tidings given to the shepherds come to us this morning!

And so, we come to this Christmas Morning, and we proclaim Christ born once again! We come to this manger scene and gaze upon it with awe and wonder and nostalgia and memory. Some of those memories are joy-filled, and perhaps many of them are difficult… but God has been at work, and He continues to work among us, in our midst, in and through us.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem… perhaps you’ve heard it said before, but Bethlehem was not only the city of David, but it’s name means something special in Hebrew… “House of Bread.” And in that town, in that stable, Jesus was laid in a manger, where the food of animals was typically stored. God came in humility, and God still comes to us in humility, to feed us, to nurture us, to draw us to Himself. God comes to us now on this altar, just as surely as He lay before Mary and Joseph, and before the shepherds! May we receive Him with faith and joy, confident that He has been at work in our past, that He is at work in our present, and that He will lead us to eternal life. May we receive the Lord Jesus today with great joy and go forth from here like the shepherds, glorifying and praising God!

+ A. M. D. G. +