The Prior's Homily at Prime of the Vigil of Christmas

+ “Jesus Christ, Eternal God and Son of the Eternal Father, wishing to hallow the world by His most gracious coming, having been conceived of the Holy Spirit, nine months having passed after His conception, at Bethlehem of Juda is born of the Virgin Mary, having become Man.”
 
My brothers, this reality, which has been announced to us anew in all its traditional solemnity and beauty, has, just now, brought us to our knees. Whilst most of our contemporaries rest in their beds or busy themselves preparing tomorrow’s festivities, or hasten to reach family and friends or search in shops for goods with which to please themselves and others, we have stood attentively to hear the proclamation of the Incarnation—the apex, as it were, of the world’s progress since its creation; the event to which the history of all of God’s saving action in the world since the Fall points—and this morning we have fallen to our knees in adoration before its tremendous reality.
 
The Sacred Liturgy of the feast of the Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh, the celebration of which we now commence, is rich and it is beautiful, and rightly, before everything else, do we exhaust ourselves in its worthy performance.
 
But as we give of our best in so doing throughout this day and into the night, and again on the morrow, let this poignant rite with which we commence the feast instruct us. Let it anchor us. Let it ensure that our contemplation of the mystery of the Incarnation today, tomorrow, throughout the Octave of Christmas and beyond, is indeed an act of adoration of He who has become man so that we may be saved.
 
Let the Incarnation of God the Son, who took human flesh in order that we might find salvation through the forgiveness of our sins, and thereby come to enjoy that eternal life lost to us by our first parents, continue to bring us to our knees: in the confessional, at the altar rail, in penance and in praise and in fervent personal prayer and private devotion.
 
May the reality of which this feast of Christmas resounds console us in our brokenness and uplift us in the grace it brings, that we might ourselves become partakers in the divinity of Christ, of He who has humbled himself to share in our humanity. +
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