I wrote three homilies for this Mass. The first two didn’t mention the coronavirus or anything else to do with the difficult circumstances of Christmas this year.
We needed a break from the pandemic, I thought. And Christmas is a time for cheerful thoughts, not heavy ones.
My idea was completely wrong. It took only a few days for the Word of God to set me straight and I tossed out the other two tries.
Our first reading says, “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Isaiah tells us that light has shone on those “who lived in a land of deep darkness.”
Who are those people in 2020? Aren’t they those living in this gloomy time in history, especially those suffering most from the isolation of the lockdowns and those most vulnerable to the virus?
And I was going to give a homily without mentioning that?
At first glance, the Gospel seemed perfect for the cheery homily I had planned. It’s the best known and best loved story of the birth of Jesus. The full cast of characters are there, including the angels and the shepherds.
The first Christmas night didn’t feel much like a Christmas card. The shepherds weren’t just afraid: St. Luke says they were terrified. There was terror alongside the shining star, the angelic choir, and the child lying in the manger – just as there is fear in our world today, probably as much as there’s been in recent history outside of wartime.
Once I took all this in, it didn’t take long to realize that a Christmas homily in 2020 must not – cannot – ignore our present situation.
Jesus came to earth in the very real circumstances of the world in which He was born. We should celebrate His birth in the very real circumstances of our world today.
And those include a worldwide epidemic. A few people have asked me why God permits such things. I don’t have an easy answer, but history tells us that the Church is no stranger to plagues and pandemics.
An American sociologist has even argued that the courage and compassion of Christians during plagues in the first centuries of the Church helped the faith to spread. Some of those who were helped personally or who witnessed Christians in action decided to convert (Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity, quoted in Stephen Bullivant, Catholicism in the Time of Coronavirus.)
During these historic plagues, charity certainly motivated Christians to care for the sick. But it wasn’t just charity: faith gave them strength to overcome their fears. Today, we usually don’t need volunteers to look after the sick, but I can’t help but think about the Filipino and Filipina caregivers, many of them Catholics, who have stayed on the job in nursing homes despite the presence of COVID outbreaks.
People of faith are not people without fear. But they have a kind of vaccination against it. By consistently placing their trust in God, seeking his peace, and accepting his will, we develop antibodies against the attacks of excessive anxiety and paralyzing fear.
In a preface to Catholicism
in the Time of Coronavirus, Professor Stephen Bullivant’s helpful new book,
which you can find in the Faith Resources page of our website, Bishop Robert
Barron wrote that the coronavirus has reminded us of something we don’t usually
think about: namely, that everything in life is unstable. Nothing about our human
experience is certain, not health or wealth or life itself.
When we are shaken up, “this truth manages to break through our defenses.” And then we start to look for what is ultimately stable – for something that doesn’t depend on circumstances.
Where can we find that stability but in God himself, God with us, whose coming we celebrate tonight?
I’m not trying to make a pun here, but someone did in the caption to a cartoon I saw the other day. The cartoon shows Mary, Joseph, and Jesus in Bethlehem under the words “the world needs a stable influence.”
The word stable turns my thoughts to the manger immediately behind me. I wasn’t that keen when our talented decorating team proposed moving the Christmas crib to the front of the altar so it could be seen on the livestream. I thought it might be distracting during the liturgy.
Thank heavens I came around to their idea. I knew it was the right call the minute I walked into the church. But I didn’t know what a truly brilliant idea it was until I found out St. Augustine had made a connection between the altar and the manger some 1600 years ago.
If that isn’t authority enough for placing our Christmas crib against the altar, I should tell you that I discovered what Augustine said thanks to a little book by Pope Benedict.
The former Pope says that Augustine’s idea “at first seems almost shocking.” But he points out that it contains a profound truth: “The manger is the place where animals find their food. But now, lying in the manger, is He who called Himself the true bread come down from heaven, the true nourishment that we need in order to be fully ourselves. This is the food that gives us true life, eternal life.”
And so, the manger turns our thoughts to the altar, at which we are fed, from which we receive the bread of God. (Pope Benedict XIV, Jesus of Nazareth:The Infancy Narratives p. 68-69)
Many people who are not Catholic love to come to Mass at Christmas. It may be that they intuitively make this connection even if they are not themselves ready to partake of the Eucharist, the heavenly food.
For those of us who are Catholic, it is especially painful that we cannot be nourished this Christmas from the table of the Lord. But let’s not forget that we’re invited to receive other spiritual food, and to concrete actions that can bring us as close to him as the shepherds were.
The second reading says that the coming of Christ brought salvation to all – therefore, to saints and sinners, the devout and the doubters, the strong and the weak. But it’s a gift to which we must respond.
The grace of God, St. Paul tells us, changes how we live, trains us, redeems us, and purifies us from our sins. In other words, we need to let God work with us and in us.
This once in a lifetime Christmas offers opportunities that many of us did not have the time or inclination to pursue in the past.
The next few quiet days might give time to read the first chapter of all four Gospels and to reflect on what we’re celebrating. Evenings without parties may be a chance to watch the remarkable life of Jesus and his disciples presented in The Chosen films, described in this week’s bulletin. “Watching parties” begin on Saturday.
From time to time, I’ve met Catholics who wanted to know more about the faith, and non-Catholics who were sincerely interested, but just couldn’t find the time.
The slower pace of life in January and February might be exactly what you need to explore the answers that Catholic faith gives to life’s big questions. The Search is a series designed to be watched in small groups and to help viewers grow deeper in their relationships with each other and with God.
The Search begins in our parish January 14, as described on our website and in this week’s bulletin.
Over the years, we’ve had a few folks who were seriously interested in becoming Catholics themselves, but who had serious difficulties attending our weekly RCIA gathering for those looking at joining the Church. Some had regular business travel while others had family obligations.
No one’s travelling for the next few months and I think many kids’ sports have been cancelled! On top of that, our RCIA program is online so you don’t even need to have the car Tuesday nights.
We know that Christ has brought salvation to all. But we are all at different stages on our journey. At Christmas, God finds us where we are: watching and waiting like the shepherds, singing hymns to his glory, like the angels, kneeling before the stable, or still on the road.
Wherever we are, in the gloomy shadows or beneath the shining star, we are invited to “see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”
So, “let us go now to Bethlehem.”
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