Mass readings for the Feast of the Nativity (at night):
Isaiah 9.2-4 Psalm 96.1-4, 11-13 Titus 2.11-14 Luke 2.1-16++
At a recent reception I was sitting with a very nice couple who, to start a conversation, asked me a question I’ve heard many times before: “Gee, Father where do you get your ideas for homilies?” This was them being kind. I’m sure they knew the answer though. “Well,” I said trying to give the impression that I needed to ponder the question, “… the Bible… personal experiences, current events, a book I’ve been reading…”
Follow up was, “I guess it’s hard to come up with something new for Christmas every year…” I agreed, but then said, “It’s not so much that I come up with something new, but that I just don’t mess it up.”
To which I got a slightly puzzled face in response.
Well, the concern to not make a hash of it arises from what I would call the Catholic sensibility when it comes to worship: on some level, we know that when we come to church, on Christmas Eve, or the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, we haven’t come to hear what the preacher has to say; we’ve come to encounter God.
So, my job now is to not get in the way of that. And to be honest, I don’t remember the many Christmas homilies I’ve heard over the course of my life; they are more than I’ve given, and I don’t remember many of those either! But I do remember the homilies that were bad; that shattered the mood, that dispelled the holiness. There were just these two: the first that comes to mind was the one given by the grumpy priest. I remember thinking, “if this guy has any pull with Santa, we’re all getting coal in our stockings.” The second awful sermon was kind of amazing because while it went on for something close to twenty minutes, there wasn’t a single mention of Mary, Joseph, angel choirs, frightened shepherds, or little baby Jesus! I was gob-smacked, and quite distracted as I tried to understand how that could happen.
Right now, I get to put my two cents worth in; and I’ll count myself blessed if this contributes two percent of what we do together here.
I was taught at seminary to remember that, but I think it was outside seminary that I really learned to take that to heart. Years ago, I had a meeting with an audio technician, guy who installs sound systems in churches. We were discussing the challenge of fixing the bad acoustics in modern church buildings. At one point he says to me that because his work involves going to worship services to diagnose problems with church sound systems, he probably put in more time than any priest or minister in the whole city. And he said, he’d sat through so many awful homilies and sermons that he’d paid for his sins many times over. But then he said, for all that he might complain about homilies that were too long, too short, too dry, too frivolous, etc. a catholic mass was always redeemed by the celebration of the Eucharist. Because in it we meet our Lord, and so, we can never be disappointed in that.
We come here for Jesus. To remember him as “little baby Jesus, all tucked up in his manger bed” to be sure, but more so as the Jesus Christ who came to be with us, to teach and guide us toward heaven, to suffer and die for us, so that sin would not keep us from making it there; who rose from the dead to show us that through him we can overcome all things that stand in our way to God, even death itself.
My task is to humbly assist us enter into the mystery of God’s love, as it was born into this world in the flesh; and be mindful that what we’re going to take away from this time isn’t so much what I have to say, but rather an experience of God had through our worship together.
I think about my childhood Christmases; they were very late at night – my first Christmas at church was when I was seven years old at a midnight liturgy. My parents had started to go to church again after a long time away; and they had me in the junior choir. I don’t so much remember the fine details, certainly not what the priest said in his homily, but I remember the impression it made, the strange atmosphere that was so different from my public school’s Christmas concerts, from the shopping malls that, back then, was actually where you had to shop – no online stores then. There was the dim light, the smell of incense, the glow of candles, the tingles I got when the adult choir did its anthem, when the soprano’s voice soared, when the basses boomed. I could look out at the congregation, all crowded together, cheek by jowl in the pews, people standing at the back of the church – there was something there that we might call a “critical mass” having all those people in that space, the heat of their bodies, the incredible vibration that went through me when they all began to sing the carols. I remember my fatigue as the service wore on, yawning and trying to stay awake, fighting to pay attention to the choir director as end of the service approached and our great final hymn, that we had practiced and practiced, was then to be sung.
We processed out of the church, and down to the basement choir room to change, I got my coat and boots on and made my way back up the church, where we had just been, to look for my parents and sister. There were still a lot people there, admiring the decorations, looking at the nativity scene. And I would have a look at it as well. And there it is – that’s what it’s all about – the beginning of the Good News, the birth of the Saviour, the moment in time in which the timeless Son of God arrived, and everything was changed. And I was a little changed.
Christmases from that time onward were different. The family would get home late, and unlike those pre-church Christmases, I remember being okay with no presents til the morning, til the morning after we’d been to church (the stocking was allowed though). I’m sure some of that had to do with being so tired, but I like to think that I got the sense that we’d “done” Christmas already.
I remember as a kid watching Christmas specials on tv; and a favourite was How the Grinch stole Christmas. There’s that penultimate scene of the Grinch left puzzling atop the mountain after he’d looted the whole town of every present, and bauble and morsel of food; he’s listening to the Who’s down in Whoville singing. “He stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”
And I in my pre-adolescent smugness would think, silly Grinch, I know it’s a whole lot more, because I’ve been there and seen it myself.
It was there in that church, among the perspiring congregation, the sometime off-key singing, in the praying, in all the sights and sounds and smells, and in the sense that somehow that had brought us all for time a little closer to heaven; and we left that place going out in the cold winter’s night changed, and praying to God that change would continue in us, to be more like the shepherds who overcame their fear, like heroic Joseph who protected his family, like selfless Mary who cared for Jesus so completely, and finally to be as much like Jesus as we possibly could, and so, able to get to heaven, to be with him there.
Amen.