A Homily for the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas

+ It is very easy to settle into the warm and flavoursome celebration of the Christmas feast, particularly when we are blessed with the company of family and friends, and this is good and right. But lest such feasting become an end in itself and consume us, on this Sunday within the Christmas Octave the Sacred Liturgy of our Holy Mother the Church recalls us somewhat abruptly as it were to the very heart of exactly what we are celebrating and why.

She does so through the wonder of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of St Joseph after the Child Jesus’ presentation in the Temple—which customarily occurred some forty days after His birth. We are familiar with Simeon’s Nunc dimittis (Lk 2:29-32) which we shall contemplate in the liturgy of Candlemas on February 2nd. It is this that provokes Our Lord’s parents’ wonder. But this morning the Church confronts us with Simeon’s further declaration: “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed.”

This, if you wish, is the very ‘un-nice’ reality of Christmas, of the Incarnation, which is so often buried under the pleasant trappings of this season. But let us beware of the quicksand of ‘niceness’ that swallows up so many of our contemporaries. For God did not become man so that we could feast and celebrate and eat comforting food. He became man so that we could have the possibility of salvation from our sins and everlasting life in heaven—the possibility: not the automatic assurance of, much less the involuntary conscription into, heaven.

And as Simeon makes very clear, the Christ-child is destined for the fall of many, just as he is to be the means of the rise of many. He is to be a sign of contradiction to the world that, as the Prologue of St John’s Gospel laments, despite being “made through him…[the world] knew him not.” Jn 1:10 It is this small child about whom we sing sweet carols who shall in fact judge all of mankind according to their deeds.

Thus, the feast of Christmas is essentially a challenge. It confronts us with God made man, with the appearance of the definitive revelation of God in human history, with the arrival in our midst of the unique saviour of all mankind. Christmas is not a nice story, much less is it simply a pleasant time of year. Indeed, Christmas has nothing at all to do with niceness or pleasantries. Rather, the event we celebrate at Christmas challenges us. Indeed, it presents us with the ultimate challenge—of responding in both words and action, in faith and in works, to the question: “Who is this Jesus, born in a stable?”

If He is a prophet or a philosopher or a misguided dreamer, so be it. We can take or leave his teachings and demands as we wish, a la carte. In this case we may prefer to follow other prophets or systems of meaning, or even to live our lives unencumbered by those who seek meaning and truth beyond what we are able to experience here and now.
But if He is the one “set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed,” if indeed He is whom the Church insists He is—the Truth incarnate for our salvation—then we must take a stance.

We must decide whether we wish to rise with Him or to fall away from Him. And we must decide this with all of our hearts, minds, souls and bodies. That is to say that every aspect of our lives must be changed by this reality. An intellectual consent to the fact of the Incarnation is insufficient: it must be lived out by my daily worship of the Incarnate One and by my perseverance in striving to be faithful to His teaching, the teaching faithfully handed down and made present today by the One True Church He founded. For on this perseverance and fidelity all of mankind shall be judged. Based on this, we shall all rise or fall eternally.

My brothers and sisters, in our world where relativism and syncretism have long-since taken root and where any claim to objective religious truth is regarded as discriminatory or even hateful, and where the snug concept that everyone will go to
heaven in the end anyhow is accepted as a given, the Word of God slaps us in the face with the reality of the objective truth that Jesus of Nazareth is God made man for our salvation.

Yes, rightly do we celebrate this reality with great joy and festivity and with family and friends. Yes, centuries of Christian culture have given rise to beautiful customs and chants and ceremonies that console and comfort us each year. All of this is good. But if we do not accept the fundamental challenge that everything about Christmas implies—of converting our lives to the worship of Him and to fidelity to His teaching—our celebrations are in vain and we risk falling, rather than rising, eternally with Him. May the Christ-child born for our salvation grant to us the grace and strength of the conversion we so urgently need. +