HOMILY FOR CHRISTMAS VIGIL/CHRISTMAS DAY

Fr Billy Swan

Dear friends. I normally write my homilies from my desk in my room. Not this one. I write these words on a plane as I fly home from Rome for Christmas, 35,000 feet in the air. As I look down from my window seat, I notice cities and towns beneath me in Northern Italy, the Alps, France and England as we make our way towards Dublin. Seeing things from this height gives you a panoramic view of the earth beneath and the unity of places, countries and people. Yet, when we land, it will be back to concrete events, times and the specific events that shape our lives.

The Christmas liturgy we celebrate tonight and tomorrow, also gives us both these perspectives – the panoramic and the specific. First the panoramic. On Christmas morning, the Gospel for Mass during the day is always the Prologue of St John’s Gospel. It is the Gospel that gives us that panoramic view of God’s great plan of creation and redemption. It speaks of God creating the world through Christ and then sending Christ into the world to become a human being like us, in order to save us and unite us in a communion of love and truth as God intended from the beginning. He was the light coming into the darkness, the hope in despair, the truth to set us free, the One to unite us and to save us.

Once more this Christmas, Jesus Christ is born as the hope of the world. He is born into a world that needs him; a world that needs his peace, his justice, his mercy and his love. When we look at our broken and fragile world, we know this to be true. On that first Christmas, the infant Saviour drew to himself the rich and the poor, Jews and Gentiles, animals and humans. Even the stars moved towards him in homage. And so, this Christmas, we hold out hope again for peace for all humankind, the peace that Jesus first came to bring and the peace he longs for us to have. Tonight/today, we think of our world’s great need for peace, harmony and fraternity. As we celebrate Christmas, may we re-commit ourselves to care deeply for world peace and for the welfare of every person on the planet who is a brother and sister in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Then there is the specific element to the mystery of Christmas which is particularly important in this Jubilee Year that is celebrated every 25 years to coincide with Christ’s appearance in history. Jesus did not appear mysteriously out of the blue. There were people involved, circumstances that mattered, specific times and places that Luke’s Gospel sees important enough to mention. This is what we see in the Gospel on Christmas night – events that were foretold by Isaiah hundreds of years beforehand. What this specific nature of our faith reveals is that our Christian faith is not an abstraction. It is not a legend or a theory. Jesus Christ really did enter history. He really lived, really suffered, died and rose again. He became ‘incarnate’ which means ‘in the flesh’.

What this means is that through our baptism we recognise through the gift of faith, that through Christ, God has united himself in a mysterious and wonderful way to each and every one of us. Because of the mystery of Christmas, God has become human so that we might become divine.

In specific terms, this means that whoever you are reading this and however you are, God has poured himself out into your soul and life this Christmas. He is born for you, for us. He wants you to know that. He loves you deeply and that every aspect of your life is known to Him. Tonight/today is the time to believe this again and to open ourselves up to the wonder of God’s love that stoops down and lowers itself to become a vulnerable child. This is the humility of God we see also on the cross and every time we celebrate the Eucharist. God descends to us in love so that He might raise us up with Him.

Dear friends, as I conclude these words, we are beginning our descent towards Dublin. This journey in the air has given me a glimpse of the mystery of God’s love revealed at Christmas – a love that descends; a love that is social and unites us all in justice and peace; a love that reaches out and reaches down to every human being, assuring us that we are known, loved and that we matter.

I wish you all a very Happy Christmas, wherever these words reach you. Let us pray for each other tonight and tomorrow, united in the God who became human so that we might become divine.