A Homily for the Feast of Christmas

As we celebrate this second Christmas in our new (but very old) home we wish to express our profound thanks to all our oblates, associates, friends and benefactors throughout the world for their constant kindness and generosity that has enabled us to be here, and which permits us to continue our work of building up this monastic foundation and restoring the buildings now entrusted to our care.

You and your intentions are included in a particular way in our Christmas Masses and Offices. May this beautiful season bring you and yours many blessings!

+ Amidst the inevitable busyness associated with the feast of Christmas, by God’s grace we find ourselves here, in this ancient church, to worship the new-born Christ-child and to ask His blessing, His grace, for ourselves and for all those whom we love and for whom we pray.
 
Pondering the mystery of the Incarnation which we celebrate at Christmas, a sermon attributed to St John Chrysostom (†407) and containing some thoughts of St Cyril of Alexandria (†444), speaks thus:
 
“What shall I say! And how shall I describe this Birth to you? For this wonder fills me with astonishment. The Ancient of Days has become an infant. He Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger. And He Who cannot be touched, Who is simple, without complexity, and incorporeal, now lies subject to the hands of men. He Who has broken the bonds of sinners, is now bound by an infant’s bands. But He has decreed that ignominy shall become honour, infamy be clothed with glory, and total humiliation the measure of His Goodness.

For this he assumed my body, that I may become capable of his Word; taking my flesh, he gives me his spirit; and so he bestowing and I receiving, He prepares for me the treasure of Life. He takes my flesh, to sanctify me; he gives me his Spirit that he may save me.”
 
Truly the mystery we celebrate at Christmas is one of wonder and astonishment: God made man that we might be saved from sin and death!
 
My brothers and sisters, it may be that we have celebrated too many Christmases, as it were; that we have sung too many Christmas carols and indulged too often in the festivities associated with this feast—in that we may have become so familiar with the mysteries it celebrates as to take them for granted, forgetting their content and import. If we do this, Christmas can rapidly become a secular cultural myth that takes its place alongside, and even after, others.
 
Christmas, however, is no cultural myth. It is the celebration of the unique and direct intervention of the One True God in human history to make possible the salvation of all men and women whom He created in his own image and likeness. No other faith or form of religion makes this claim. Christmas is at once the extraordinary manifestation of God’s love for us (consummated on Calvary) and God’s invitation to us to live from and in His love now and for eternity, an invitation offered to us continually by the Sacred Liturgy and Sacraments of the Church.
 
Our response to this invitation is crucial. It is a matter of eternal life, or death, for each of us.
 
That we have heard and understood this invitation is itself a reason to rejoice, without pride and in great humility – for whom amongst us does not have much more to do so as more worthily to live according to all that the Christ-child demands of us, each in our particular vocation?
 
That others have not heard and understood this invitation, that they celebrate Christmas without worshipping Christ in the Church He founded, or do not celebrate Christ or Christmas at all, is a matter of the most grave concern – one which must renew our evangelical witness in the world, in our families and amongst our friends and acquaintances so that, as the Communion antiphon of the Mass of Christmas day sings, “all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.”
 
With profound gratitude and joy, in humility and with renewed zeal, in the words of St John Chrysostom:
 
“Come, then, let us celebrate the Feast. [For] truly wondrous is the whole chronicle of the Nativity. [On] this day the ancient slavery is ended, the devil confounded, the demons take to flight, the power of death is broken, paradise is unlocked, the curse is taken away, sin is removed from us, error driven out, truth has been brought back, the speech of kindliness diffused, and spreads on every side, a heavenly way of life has been implanted on the earth, angels communicate with men without fear, and men now hold speech with angels.” +

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