On eight occasions during his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI delivered reflections on the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord, on 24 December 2005, 24 December
2006, 24 December 2007, 24 December 2008, 24 December 2009, 24 December 2010,
24 December 2011, and 24 December 2012. Here
are the texts of eight homilies that the Pope delivered on these
occasions.
MIDNIGHT
MASS
SOLEMNITY
OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Vatican Basilica, Saturday, 24 December 2005
“The Lord said
to me: You are my son; this day I have begotten you”. With these words of the
second Psalm, the Church begins the Vigil Mass of Christmas, at which we
celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ our Redeemer in a stable in Bethlehem. This Psalm was
once a part of the coronation rite of the kings of Judah. The People of Israel, in
virtue of its election, considered itself in a special way a son of God,
adopted by God. Just as the king was the personification of the people, his
enthronement was experienced as a solemn act of adoption by God, whereby the
King was in some way taken up into the very mystery of God. At Bethlehem night, these
words, which were really more an expression of hope than a present reality,
took on new and unexpected meaning. The Child lying in the manger is truly God’s
Son. God is not eternal solitude but rather a circle of love and mutual
self-giving. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
But there is
more: in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God himself, God from God, became man.
To him the Father says: “You are my son”. God’s everlasting “today” has come
down into the fleeting today of the world and lifted our momentary today into
God’s eternal today. God is so great that he can become small. God is so
powerful that he can make himself vulnerable and come to us as a defenseless
child, so that we can love him. God is so good that he can give up his divine splendor
and come down to a stable, so that we might find him, so that his goodness
might touch us, give itself to us and continue to work through us. This is
Christmas: “You are my son, this day I have begotten you”. God has become one
of us, so that we can be with him and become like him. As a sign, he chose the
Child lying in the manger: this is how God is. This is how we come to know him.
And on every child shines something of the splendor of that “today”, of that
closeness of God which we ought to love and to which we must yield – it shines
on every child, even on those still unborn.
Let us listen to
a second phrase from the liturgy of this holy Night, one taken from the Book of
the Prophet Isaiah: “Upon the people who walked in darkness a great light has
shone” (Is 9:1). The word “light” pervades the entire liturgy of tonight’s
Mass. It is
found again in the passage drawn from Saint
Paul’s letter to Titus: “The grace of God has appeared”
(2:11). The expression “has appeared”, in the original Greek says the same
thing that was expressed in Hebrew by the words “a light has shone”: this “apparition”
– this “epiphany” – is the breaking of God’s light upon a world full of
darkness and unsolved problems. The Gospel then relates that the glory of the
Lord appeared to the shepherds and “shone around them” (Lk 2:9).
Wherever God’s glory appears, light spreads throughout the world. Saint John tells us that “God
is light and in him is no darkness” (1 Jn 1:5). The light is a source of
life.
But first, light
means knowledge; it means truth, as contrasted with the darkness of falsehood
and ignorance. Light gives us life, it shows us the way. But light, as a source
of heat, also means love. Where there is love, light shines forth in the world;
where there is hatred, the world remains in darkness. In the stable of Bethlehem there appeared
the great light which the world awaits. In that Child lying in the stable, God
has shown his glory – the glory of love, which gives itself away, stripping
itself of all grandeur in order to guide us along the way of love. The light of
Bethlehem has
never been extinguished. In every age it has touched men and women, “it has
shone around them”. Wherever people put their faith in that Child, charity also
sprang up – charity towards others, loving concern for the weak and the
suffering, the grace of forgiveness. From Bethlehem
a stream of light, love and truth spreads through the centuries. If we look to
the Saints – from Paul and Augustine to Francis and Dominic, from Francis
Xavier and Teresa of Avila to Mother Teresa of Calcutta
– we see this flood of goodness, this path of light kindled ever anew by the
mystery of Bethlehem,
by that God who became a Child. In that Child, God countered the violence of
this world with his own goodness. He calls us to follow that Child.
Along with the
Christmas tree, our Austrian friends have also brought us a small flame lit in Bethlehem, as if to say
that the true mystery of Christmas is the inner brightness radiating from this
Child. May that inner brightness spread to us, and kindle in our hearts the
flame of God’s goodness; may all of us, by our love, bring light to the world!
Let us keep this light-giving flame, lit in faith, from being extinguished by
the cold winds of our time! Let us guard it faithfully and give it to others!
On this night, when we look towards Bethlehem,
let us pray in a special way for the birthplace of our Redeemer and for the men
and women who live and suffer there. We wish to pray for peace in the Holy Land: Look, O Lord, upon this corner of the earth,
your Homeland, which is so very dear to you! Let your light shine upon it! Let
it know peace!
The word “peace”
brings us to a third key to the liturgy of this holy Night. The Child foretold
by Isaiah is called “Prince of Peace”. His kingdom is said to be one “of
endless peace”. The shepherds in the Gospel hear the glad tidings: “Glory to
God in the highest” and “on earth, peace...”. At one time we used to say: “to
men of good will”. Nowadays we say “to those whom God loves”. What does this
change mean? Is good will no longer important? We would do better to ask: who
are those whom God loves, and why does he love them? Does God have favorites?
Does he love only certain people, while abandoning the others to themselves?
The Gospel answers these questions by pointing to some particular people whom
God loves. There are individuals, like Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, Zechariah,
Simeon and Anna. But there are also two groups of people: the shepherds and the
Wise Men from the East, the “Magi”. Tonight let us look at the shepherds. What
kind of people were they? In the world of their time, shepherds were looked
down upon; they were considered untrustworthy and not admitted as witnesses in
court. But really, who were they? To be sure, they were not great saints, if by
that word we mean people of heroic virtue. They were simple souls. The Gospel
sheds light on one feature which later on, in the words of Jesus, would take on
particular importance: they were people who were watchful. This was chiefly
true in a superficial way: they kept watch over their flocks by night. But it
was also true in a deeper way: they were ready to receive God’s Word through
the Angel’s proclamation. Their life was not closed in on itself; their hearts
were open. In some way, deep down, they were waiting for something; they were
waiting for God. Their watchfulness was a kind of readiness – a readiness to
listen and to set out. They were waiting for a light which would show them the
way. That is what is important for God. He loves everyone, because everyone is
his creature. But some persons have closed their hearts; there is no door by
which his love can enter. They think that they do not need God, nor do they
want him. Other persons, who, from a moral standpoint, are perhaps no less
wretched and sinful, at least experience a certain remorse. They are waiting
for God. They realize that they need his goodness, even if they have no clear
idea of what this means. Into their expectant hearts God’s light can enter, and
with it, his peace. God seeks persons who can be vessels and heralds of his
peace. Let us pray that he will not find our hearts closed. Let us strive to be
active heralds of his peace – in the world of today.
Among
Christians, the word “peace” has taken on a very particular meaning: it has
become a word to designate communion in the Eucharist. There Christ’s peace is
present. In all the places where the Eucharist is celebrated, a great network
of peace spreads through the world. The communities gathered around the
Eucharist make up a kingdom of peace as wide as the world itself. When we
celebrate the Eucharist we find ourselves in Bethlehem, in the “house of bread”. Christ
gives himself to us and, in doing so, gives us his peace. He gives it to us so
that we can carry the light of peace within and give it to others. He gives it
to us so that we can become peacemakers and builders of peace in the world. And
so we pray: Lord, fulfill your promise! Where there is conflict, give birth to
peace! Where there is hatred, make love spring up! Where darkness prevails, let
light shine! Make us heralds of your peace! Amen
MIDNIGHT
MASS
SOLEMNITY
OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Saint
Peter’s Basilica, Sunday, 24 December 2006
Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
We have just
heard in the Gospel the message given by the angels to the shepherds during
that Holy Night, a message which the Church now proclaims to us: “To you is
born this day in the city of David
a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will
find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Lk
2:11-12). Nothing miraculous, nothing extraordinary, nothing magnificent is
given to the shepherds as a sign. All they will see is a child wrapped in
swaddling clothes, one who, like all children, needs a mother’s care; a child
born in a stable, who therefore lies not in a cradle but in a manger. God‘s
sign is the baby in need of help and in poverty. Only in their hearts will the
shepherds be able to see that this baby fulfils the promise of the prophet
Isaiah, which we heard in the first reading: “For to us a child is born, to us
a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder” (Is 9:5).
Exactly the same sign has been given to us. We too are invited by the angel of
God, through the message of the Gospel, to set out in our hearts to see the
child lying in the manger.
God’s sign is simplicity.
God’s sign is the baby. God’s sign is that he makes himself small for us. This
is how he reigns. He does not come with power and outward splendor. He comes as
a baby – defenseless and in need of our help. He does not want to overwhelm us
with his strength. He takes away our fear of his greatness. He asks for our
love: so he makes himself a child. He wants nothing other from us than our
love, through which we spontaneously learn to enter into his feelings, his
thoughts and his will – we learn to live with him and to practice with him that
humility of renunciation that belongs to the very essence of love. God made
himself small so that we could understand him, welcome him, and love him. The
Fathers of the Church, in their Greek translation of the Old Testament, found a
passage from the prophet Isaiah that Paul also quotes in order to show how God’s
new ways had already been foretold in the Old Testament. There we read: “God
made his Word short, he abbreviated it” (Is 10:23; Rom 9:28). The
Fathers interpreted this in two ways. The Son himself is the Word, the Logos;
the eternal Word became small – small enough to fit into a manger. He became a
child, so that the Word could be grasped by us. In this way God teaches us to
love the little ones. In this way he teaches us to love the weak. In this way
he teaches us respect for children. The child of Bethlehem directs our gaze towards all
children who suffer and are abused in the world, the born and the unborn.
Towards children who are placed as soldiers in a violent world; towards
children who have to beg; towards children who suffer deprivation and hunger;
towards children who are unloved. In all of these it is the Child of Bethlehem
who is crying out to us; it is the God who has become small who appeals to us.
Let us pray this night that the brightness of God’s love may enfold all these
children. Let us ask God to help us do our part so that the dignity of children
may be respected. May they all experience the light of love, which mankind
needs so much more than the material necessities of life.
And so we come
to the second meaning that the Fathers saw in the phrase: “God made his Word
short”. The Word which God speaks to us in Sacred Scripture had become long in
the course of the centuries. It became long and complex, not just for the
simple and unlettered, but even more so for those versed in Sacred Scripture,
for the experts who evidently became entangled in details and in particular
problems, almost to the extent of losing an overall perspective. Jesus “abbreviated”
the Word – he showed us once more its deeper simplicity and unity. Everything
taught by the Law and the Prophets is summed up – he says – in the command: “You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and
with all your mind… You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Mt
22:37-40). This is everything – the whole faith is contained in this one act of
love which embraces God and humanity. Yet now further questions arise: how are
we to love God with all our mind, when our intellect can barely reach him? How
are we to love him with all our heart and soul, when our heart can only catch a
glimpse of him from afar, when there are so many contradictions in the world
that would hide his face from us? This is where the two ways in which God has “abbreviated”
his Word come together. He is no longer distant. He is no longer unknown. He is
no longer beyond the reach of our heart. He has become a child for us, and in
so doing he has dispelled all doubt. He has become our neighbour, restoring in
this way the image of man, whom we often find so hard to love. For us, God has
become a gift. He has given himself. He has entered time for us. He who is the
Eternal One, above time, he has assumed our time and raised it to himself on
high. Christmas has become the Feast of gifts in imitation of God who has given
himself to us. Let us allow our heart, our soul and our mind to be touched by
this fact! Among the many gifts that we buy and receive, let us not forget the
true gift: to give each other something of ourselves, to give each other
something of our time, to open our time to God. In this way anxiety disappears,
joy is born, and the feast is created. During the festive meals of these days
let us remember the Lord’s words: “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not
invite those who will invite you in return, but invite those whom no one
invites and who are not able to invite you” (see Lk 14:12-14). This also
means: when you give gifts for Christmas, do not give only to those who will
give to you in return, but give to those who receive from no one and who cannot
give you anything back. This is what God has done: he invites us to his wedding
feast, something which we cannot reciprocate, but can only receive with joy.
Let us imitate him! Let us love God and, starting from him, let us also love
man, so that, starting from man, we can then rediscover God in a new way!
And so, finally,
we find yet a third meaning in the saying that the Word became “brief” and “small”.
The shepherds were told that they would find the child in a manger for animals,
who were the rightful occupants of the stable. Reading Isaiah (1:3), the
Fathers concluded that beside the manger of Bethlehem there stood an ox and an ass. At
the same time they interpreted the text as symbolizing the Jews and the pagans
– and thus all humanity – who each in their own way have need of a Savior: the
God who became a child. Man, in order to live, needs bread, the fruit of the
earth and of his labor. But he does not live by bread alone. He needs
nourishment for his soul: he needs meaning that can fill his life. Thus, for
the Fathers, the manger of the animals became the symbol of the altar, on which
lies the Bread which is Christ himself: the true food for our hearts. Once
again we see how he became small: in the humble appearance of the host, in a
small piece of bread, he gives us himself.
All this is
conveyed by the sign that was given to the shepherds and is given also to us:
the child born for us, the child in whom God became small for us. Let us ask
the Lord to grant us the grace of looking upon the crib this night with the
simplicity of the shepherds, so as to receive the joy with which they returned
home (see Lk 2:20). Let us ask him to give us the humility and the faith
with which Saint Joseph
looked upon the child that Mary had conceived by the Holy Spirit. Let us ask
the Lord to let us look upon him with that same love with which Mary saw him.
And let us pray that in this way the light that the shepherds saw will shine
upon us too, and that what the angels sang that night will be accomplished
throughout the world: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among
men with whom he is pleased.” Amen!
MIDNIGHT
MASS
SOLEMNITY
OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Saint
Peter’s Basilica, Tuesday, 25 December 2007
Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
“The time came
for Mary to be delivered. And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped
him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room
for them in the inn” (Lk 2:6f.). These words touch our hearts every time
we hear them. This was the moment that the angel had foretold at Nazareth: “you will bear a
son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called
the Son of the Most High” (Lk 1:31). This was the moment that Israel
had been awaiting for centuries, through many dark hours – the moment that all
mankind was somehow awaiting, in terms as yet ill-defined: when God would take
care of us, when he would step outside his concealment, when the world would be
saved and God would renew all things. We can imagine the kind of interior
preparation, the kind of love with which Mary approached that hour. The brief
phrase: “She wrapped him in swaddling clothes” allows us to glimpse something
of the holy joy and the silent zeal of that preparation. The swaddling clothes
were ready, so that the child could be given a fitting welcome. Yet there is no
room at the inn. In some way, mankind is awaiting God, waiting for him to draw
near. But when the moment comes, there is no room for him. Man is so
preoccupied with himself, he has such urgent need of all the space and all the
time for his own things, that nothing remains for others – for his neighbour,
for the poor, for God. And the richer men become, the more they fill up all the
space by themselves. And the less room there is for others.
Saint John, in
his Gospel, went to the heart of the matter, giving added depth to Saint Luke’s
brief account of the situation in Bethlehem: “He came to his own home, and his
own people received him not” (Jn 1:11). This refers first and foremost
to Bethlehem:
the Son of David comes to his own city, but has to be born in a stable, because
there is no room for him at the inn. Then it refers to Israel: the one who is sent comes
among his own, but they do not want him. And truly, it refers to all mankind:
he through whom the world was made, the primordial Creator-Word, enters into
the world, but he is not listened to, he is not received.
These words refer
ultimately to us, to each individual and to society as a whole. Do we have time
for our neighbour who is in need of a word from us, from me, or in need of my
affection? For the sufferer who is in need of help? For the fugitive or the
refugee who is seeking asylum? Do we have time and space for God? Can he enter
into our lives? Does he find room in us, or have we occupied all the available
space in our thoughts, our actions, our lives for ourselves?
Thank God, this
negative detail is not the only one, nor the last one that we find in the
Gospel. Just as in Luke we encounter the maternal love of Mary and the
fidelity of Saint Joseph, the vigilance of the shepherds and their great joy,
just as in Matthew we encounter the visit of the wise men, come from afar,
so too John says to us: “To all who received him, he gave power to
become children of God” (Jn 1:12). There are those who receive him, and
thus, beginning with the stable, with the outside, there grows silently the new
house, the new city,
the new world. The message of Christmas makes us recognize the darkness of a
closed world, and thereby no doubt illustrates a reality that we see daily. Yet
it also tells us that God does not allow himself to be shut out. He finds a
space, even if it means entering through the stable; there are people who see
his light and pass it on. Through the word of the Gospel, the angel also speaks
to us, and in the sacred liturgy the light of the Redeemer enters our lives.
Whether we are shepherds or “wise men” – the light and its message call us to
set out, to leave the narrow circle of our desires and interests, to go out to
meet the Lord and worship him. We worship him by opening the world to truth, to
good, to Christ, to the service of those who are marginalized and in whom he
awaits us.
In some
Christmas scenes from the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, the
stable is depicted as a crumbling palace. It is still possible to recognize its
former splendor, but now it has become a ruin, the walls are falling down – in
fact, it has become a stable. Although it lacks any historical basis, this
metaphorical interpretation nevertheless expresses something of the truth that
is hidden in the mystery of Christmas. David’s throne, which had been promised
to last for ever, stands empty. Others rule over the Holy
Land. Joseph, the descendant of David, is a simple artisan; the
palace, in fact, has become a hovel. David himself had begun life as a
shepherd. When Samuel sought him out in order to anoint him, it seemed
impossible and absurd that a shepherd-boy such as he could become the bearer of
the promise of Israel.
In the stable of Bethlehem,
the very town where it had all begun, the Davidic kingship started again in a
new way – in that child wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. The
new throne from which this David will draw the world to himself is the Cross.
The new throne – the Cross – corresponds to the new beginning in the stable.
Yet this is exactly how the true Davidic palace, the true kingship is being built.
This new palace is so different from what people imagine a palace and royal
power ought to be like. It is the community of those who allow themselves to be
drawn by Christ’s love and so become one body with him, a new humanity. The
power that comes from the Cross, the power of self-giving goodness – this is
the true kingship. The stable becomes a palace – and setting out from this
starting-point, Jesus builds the great new community, whose key-word the angels
sing at the hour of his birth: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth
to those whom he loves” – those who place their will in his, in this way
becoming men of God, new men, a new world.
Gregory of
Nyssa, in his Christmas homilies, developed the same vision setting out from
the Christmas message in the Gospel of John: “He pitched his tent among
us” (Jn 1:14). Gregory applies this passage about the tent to the tent
of our body, which has become worn out and weak, exposed everywhere to pain and
suffering. And he applies it to the whole universe, torn and disfigured by sin.
What would he say if he could see the state of the world today, through the
abuse of energy and its selfish and reckless exploitation? Anselm of
Canterbury, in an almost prophetic way, once described a vision of what we witness
today in a polluted world whose future is at risk: “Everything was as if dead,
and had lost its dignity, having been made for the service of those who praise
God. The elements of the world were oppressed, they had lost their splendor
because of the abuse of those who enslaved them for their idols, for whom they
had not been created” (PL 158, 955f.). Thus, according to Gregory’s
vision, the stable in the Christmas message represents the ill-treated world.
What Christ rebuilds is no ordinary palace. He came to restore beauty and
dignity to creation, to the universe: this is what began at Christmas and makes
the angels rejoice. The Earth is restored to good order by virtue of the fact
that it is opened up to God, it obtains its true light anew, and in the harmony
between human will and divine will, in the unification of height and depth, it
regains its beauty and dignity. Thus Christmas is a feast of restored creation.
It is in this context that the Fathers interpret the song of the angels on that
holy night: it is an expression of joy over the fact that the height and the
depth, Heaven and Earth, are once more united; that man is again united to God.
According to the Fathers, part of the angels’ Christmas song is the fact that
now angels and men can sing together and in this way the beauty of the universe
is expressed in the beauty of the song of praise. Liturgical song – still
according to the Fathers – possesses its own peculiar dignity through the fact
that it is sung together with the celestial choirs. It is the encounter with
Jesus Christ that makes us capable of hearing the song of the angels, thus
creating the real music that fades away when we lose this singing-with and
hearing-with.
In the stable at
Bethlehem,
Heaven and Earth meet. Heaven has come down to Earth. For this reason, a light
shines from the stable for all times; for this reason joy is enkindled there;
for this reason song is born there. At the end of our Christmas meditation I
should like to quote a remarkable passage from Saint Augustine. Interpreting the invocation
in the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father who art in Heaven”, he asks: what is this –
Heaven? And where is Heaven? Then comes a surprising response: “… who art in
Heaven – that means: in the saints and in the just. Yes, the heavens are the
highest bodies in the universe, but they are still bodies, which cannot exist
except in a given location. Yet if we believe that God is located in the
heavens, meaning in the highest parts of the world, then the birds would be
more fortunate than we, since they would live closer to God. Yet it is not
written: ‘The Lord is close to those who dwell on the heights or on the
mountains’, but rather: ‘the Lord is close to the brokenhearted’ (Ps
34:18[33:19]), an expression which refers to humility. Just as the sinner is
called ‘Earth’, so by contrast the just man can be called ‘Heaven’” (Sermo
in monte II 5, 17). Heaven does not belong to the geography of space, but
to the geography of the heart. And the heart of God, during the Holy Night,
stooped down to the stable: the humility of God is Heaven. And if we approach
this humility, then we touch Heaven. Then the Earth too is made new. With the
humility of the shepherds, let us set out, during this Holy Night, towards the
Child in the stable! Let us touch God’s humility, God’s heart! Then his joy
will touch us and will make the world more radiant. Amen.
MIDNIGHT
MASS
SOLEMNITY
OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Saint
Peter’s Basilica, Thursday, 25 December 2008
Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
“Who is like the
Lord our God, who is seated on high, who looks far down upon the heavens and
the earth?” This is what Israel
sings in one of the Psalms (113 [112], 5ff.), praising God’s grandeur as well
as his loving closeness to humanity. God dwells on high, yet he stoops down to
us… God is infinitely great, and far, far above us. This is our first
experience of him. The distance seems infinite. The Creator of the universe,
the one who guides all things, is very far from us: or so he seems at the
beginning. But then comes the surprising realization: The One who has no equal,
who “is seated on high”, looks down upon us. He stoops down. He sees us, and he
sees me. God’s looking down is much more than simply seeing from above. God’s
looking is active. The fact that he sees me, that he looks at me, transforms me
and the world around me. The Psalm tells us this in the following verse: “He
raises the poor from the dust…” In looking down, he raises me up, he takes me
gently by the hand and helps me – me! – to rise from depths towards the
heights. “God stoops down”. This is a prophetic word. That night in Bethlehem, it took on a
completely new meaning. God’s stooping down became real in a way previously
inconceivable. He stoops down – he himself comes down as a child to the lowly
stable, the symbol of all humanity’s neediness and forsakenness. God truly
comes down. He becomes a child and puts himself in the state of complete
dependence typical of a newborn child. The Creator who holds all things in his
hands, on whom we all depend, makes himself small and in need of human love.
God is in the stable. In the Old Testament the Temple was considered almost as God’s
footstool; the sacred ark was the place in which he was mysteriously present in
the midst of men and women. Above the temple, hidden, stood the cloud of God’s
glory. Now it stands above the stable. God is in the cloud of the poverty of a
homeless child: an impenetrable cloud, and yet – a cloud of glory! How, indeed,
could his love for humanity, his solicitude for us, have appeared greater and
more pure? The cloud of hiddenness, the cloud of the poverty of a child totally
in need of love, is at the same time the cloud of glory. For nothing can be
more sublime, nothing greater than the love which thus stoops down, descends,
becomes dependent. The glory of the true God becomes visible when the eyes of
our hearts are opened before the stable of Bethlehem.
Saint Luke’s
account of the Christmas story, which we have just heard in the Gospel, tells
us that God first raised the veil of his hiddenness to people of very lowly
status, people who were looked down upon by society at large – to shepherds
looking after their flocks in the fields around Bethlehem. Luke tells us that they were “keeping
watch”. This phrase reminds us of a central theme of Jesus’s message, which
insistently bids us to keep watch, even to the Agony in the Garden – the
command to stay awake, to recognize the Lord’s coming, and to be prepared. Here
too the expression seems to imply more than simply being physically awake
during the night hour. The shepherds were truly “watchful” people, with a
lively sense of God and of his closeness. They were waiting for God, and were
not resigned to his apparent remoteness from their everyday lives. To a
watchful heart, the news of great joy can be proclaimed: for you this night the
Savior is born. Only a watchful heart is able to believe the message. Only a
watchful heart can instill the courage to set out to find God in the form of a
baby in a stable. Let us now ask the Lord to help us, too, to become a “watchful”
people.
Saint Luke tells
us, moreover, that the shepherds themselves were “surrounded” by the glory of
God, by the cloud of light. They found themselves caught up in the glory that
shone around them. Enveloped by the holy cloud, they heard the angels’ song of
praise: “Glory to God in the highest heavens and peace on earth to people of
his good will”. And who are these people of his good will if not the poor, the
watchful, the expectant, those who hope in God’s goodness and seek him, looking
to him from afar?
The Fathers of
the Church offer a remarkable commentary on the song that the angels sang to
greet the Redeemer. Until that moment – the Fathers say – the angels had known
God in the grandeur of the universe, in the reason and the beauty of the cosmos
that come from him and are a reflection of him. They had heard, so to speak,
creation’s silent song of praise and had transformed it into celestial music.
But now something new had happened, something that astounded them. The One of
whom the universe speaks, the God who sustains all things and bears them in his
hands – he himself had entered into human history, he had become someone who
acts and suffers within history. From the joyful amazement that this
unimaginable event called forth, from God’s new and further way of making
himself known – say the Fathers – a new song was born, one verse of which the
Christmas Gospel has preserved for us: “Glory to God in the highest heavens and
peace to his people on earth”. We might say that, following the structure of
Hebrew poetry, the two halves of this double verse say essentially the same
thing, but from a different perspective. God’s glory is in the highest heavens,
but his high state is now found in the stable – what was lowly has now become
sublime. God’s glory is on the earth, it is the glory of humility and love. And
even more: the glory of God is peace. Wherever he is, there is peace. He is
present wherever human beings do not attempt, apart from him, and even
violently, to turn earth into heaven. He is with those of watchful hearts; with
the humble and those who meet him at the level of his own “height”, the height
of humility and love. To these people he gives his peace, so that through them,
peace can enter this world.
The medieval
theologian William of Saint Thierry once said that God – from the time of Adam
– saw that his grandeur provoked resistance in man, that we felt limited in our
own being and threatened in our freedom. Therefore God chose a new way. He
became a child. He made himself dependent and weak, in need of our love. Now –
this God who has become a child says to us – you can no longer fear me, you can
only love me.
With these
thoughts, we draw near this night to the child of Bethlehem – to the God who for our sake chose
to become a child. In every child we see something of the Child of Bethlehem.
Every child asks for our love. This night, then, let us think especially of
those children who are denied the love of their parents. Let us think of those
street children who do not have the blessing of a family home, of those
children who are brutally exploited as soldiers and made instruments of
violence, instead of messengers of reconciliation and peace. Let us think of
those children who are victims of the industry of pornography and every other
appalling form of abuse, and thus are traumatized in the depths of their soul.
The Child of Bethlehem summons us once again to do everything in our power to
put an end to the suffering of these children; to do everything possible to
make the light of Bethlehem
touch the heart of every man and woman. Only through the conversion of hearts,
only through a change in the depths of our hearts can the cause of all this
evil be overcome, only thus can the power of the evil one be defeated. Only if
people change will the world change; and in order to change, people need the
light that comes from God, the light which so unexpectedly entered into our
night.
And speaking of
the Child of Bethlehem, let us think also of the place named Bethlehem, of the land in which Jesus lived,
and which he loved so deeply. And let us pray that peace will be established
there, that hatred and violence will cease. Let us pray for mutual
understanding, that hearts will be opened, so that borders can be opened. Let
us pray that peace will descend there, the peace of which the angels sang that
night.
In Psalm 96
[95], Israel,
and the Church, praises God’s grandeur manifested in creation. All creatures
are called to join in this song of praise, and so the Psalm also contains the
invitation: “Let all the trees of the wood sing for joy before the Lord, for he
comes” (v. 12ff.). The Church reads this Psalm as a prophecy and also as a
task. The coming of God to Bethlehem
took place in silence. Only the shepherds keeping watch were, for a moment,
surrounded by the light-filled radiance of his presence and could listen to
something of that new song, born of the wonder and joy of the angels at God’s
coming. This silent coming of God’s glory continues throughout the centuries.
Wherever there is faith, wherever his word is proclaimed and heard, there God
gathers people together and gives himself to them in his Body; he makes them
his Body. God “comes”. And in this way our hearts are awakened. The new song of
the angels becomes the song of all those who, throughout the centuries, sing
ever anew of God’s coming as a child – and rejoice deep in their hearts. And
the trees of the wood go out to him and exult. The tree in Saint Peter’s Square
speaks of him, it wants to reflect his splendor and to say: Yes, he has come,
and the trees of the wood acclaim him. The trees in the cities and in our homes
should be something more than a festive custom: they point to the One who is
the reason for our joy – the God who comes, the God who for our sake became a
child. In the end, this song of praise, at the deepest level, speaks of him who
is the very tree of new-found life. Through faith in him we receive life. In
the Sacrament of the Eucharist he gives himself to us – he gives us a life that
reaches into eternity. At this hour we join in creation’s song of praise, and
our praise is at the same time a prayer: Yes, Lord, help us to see something of
the splendor of your glory. And grant peace on earth. Make us men and women of
your peace. Amen.
MIDNIGHT
MASS
SOLEMNITY
OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Saint
Peter’s Basilica, Thursday, 24 December 2009
Dear Brothers
and Sisters!
“A child is born
for us, a son is given to us” (Is 9:5). What Isaiah prophesied as he gazed into
the future from afar, consoling Israel amid its trials and its darkness, is now
proclaimed to the shepherds as a present reality by the Angel, from whom a
cloud of light streams forth: “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior,
who is Christ the Lord” (Lk 2:11). The Lord is here. From this moment, God is
truly “God with us”. No longer is he the distant God who can in some way be
perceived from afar, in creation and in our own consciousness. He has entered
the world. He is close to us. The words of the risen Christ to his followers
are addressed also to us: “Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age”
(Mt 28:20). For you the Savior is born: through the Gospel and those who
proclaim it, God now reminds us of the message that the Angel announced to the
shepherds. It is a message that cannot leave us indifferent. If it is true, it
changes everything. If it is true, it also affects me. Like the shepherds,
then, I too must say: Come on, I want to go to Bethlehem to see the Word that has occurred
there. The story of the shepherds is included in the Gospel for a reason. They
show us the right way to respond to the message that we too have received. What
is it that these first witnesses of God’s incarnation have to tell us?
The first thing
we are told about the shepherds is that they were on the watch – they could
hear the message precisely because they were awake. We must be awake, so that
we can hear the message. We must become truly vigilant people. What does this
mean? The principal difference between someone dreaming and someone awake is
that the dreamer is in a world of his own. His “self” is locked into this
dreamworld that is his alone and does not connect him with others. To wake up
means to leave that private world of one’s own and to enter the common reality,
the truth that alone can unite all people. Conflict and lack of reconciliation
in the world stem from the fact that we are locked into our own interests and
opinions, into our own little private world. Selfishness, both individual and
collective, makes us prisoners of our interests and our desires that stand
against the truth and separate us from one another. Awake, the Gospel tells us.
Step outside, so as to enter the great communal truth, the communion of the one
God. To awake, then, means to develop a receptivity for God: for the silent
promptings with which he chooses to guide us; for the many indications of his
presence. There are people who describe themselves as “religiously tone deaf”.
The gift of a capacity to perceive God seems as if it is withheld from some.
And indeed – our way of thinking and acting, the mentality of today’s world,
the whole range of our experience is inclined to deaden our receptivity for
God, to make us “tone deaf” towards him. And yet in every soul, the desire for
God, the capacity to encounter him, is present, whether in a hidden way or
overtly. In order to arrive at this vigilance, this awakening to what is
essential, we should pray for ourselves and for others, for those who appear “tone
deaf” and yet in whom there is a keen desire for God to manifest himself. The
great theologian Origen said this: if I had the grace to see as Paul saw, I
could even now (during the Liturgy) contemplate a great host of angels (see in
Lk 23:9). And indeed, in the sacred liturgy, we are surrounded by the angels of
God and the saints. The Lord himself is present in our midst. Lord, open the
eyes of our hearts, so that we may become vigilant and clear-sighted, in this
way bringing you close to others as well!
Let us return to
the Christmas Gospel. It tells us that after listening to the Angel’s message,
the shepherds said one to another: “‘Let us go over to Bethlehem’ … they went at once” (Lk 2:15f.). “They
made haste” is literally what the Greek text says. What had been announced to
them was so important that they had to go immediately. In fact, what had been
said to them was utterly out of the ordinary. It changed the world. The Savior
is born. The long-awaited Son of David has come into the world in his own city.
What could be more important? No doubt they were partly driven by curiosity,
but first and foremost it was their excitement at the wonderful news that had
been conveyed to them, of all people, to the little ones, to the seemingly
unimportant. They made haste – they went at once. In our daily life, it is not
like that. For most people, the things of God are not given priority, they do
not impose themselves on us directly. And so the great majority of us tend to
postpone them. First we do what seems urgent here and now. In the list of
priorities God is often more or less at the end. We can always deal with that
later, we tend to think. The Gospel tells us: God is the highest priority. If
anything in our life deserves haste without delay, then, it is God’s work
alone. The Rule of Saint Benedict contains this teaching: “Place nothing at all
before the work of God (i.e. the divine office)”. For monks, the Liturgy is the
first priority. Everything else comes later. In its essence, though, this
saying applies to everyone. God is important, by far the most important thing
in our lives. The shepherds teach us this priority. From them we should learn
not to be crushed by all the pressing matters in our daily lives. From them we
should learn the inner freedom to put other tasks in second place – however
important they may be – so as to make our way towards God, to allow him into
our lives and into our time. Time given to God and, in his name, to our
neighbour is never time lost. It is the time when we are most truly alive, when
we live our humanity to the full.
Some
commentators point out that the shepherds, the simple souls, were the first to
come to Jesus in the manger and to encounter the Redeemer of the world. The
wise men from the East, representing those with social standing and fame,
arrived much later. The commentators go on to say: this is quite natural. The
shepherds lived nearby. They only needed to “come over” (see Lk 2:15), as we do
when we go to visit our neighbors. The wise men, however, lived far away. They
had to undertake a long and arduous journey in order to arrive in Bethlehem. And they needed
guidance and direction. Today too there are simple and lowly souls who live
very close to the Lord. They are, so to speak, his neighbors and they can
easily go to see him. But most of us in the world today live far from Jesus
Christ, the incarnate God who came to dwell amongst us. We live our lives by
philosophies, amid worldly affairs and occupations that totally absorb us and
are a great distance from the manger. In all kinds of ways, God has to prod us
and reach out to us again and again, so that we can manage to escape from the
muddle of our thoughts and activities and discover the way that leads to him.
But a path exists for all of us. The Lord provides everyone with tailor-made
signals. He calls each one of us, so that we too can say: “Come on, ‘let us go
over’ to Bethlehem
– to the God who has come to meet us. Yes indeed, God has set out towards us.
Left to ourselves we could not reach him. The path is too much for our
strength. But God has come down. He comes towards us. He has traveled the
longer part of the journey. Now he invites us: come and see how much I love
you. Come and see that I am here. Transeamus usque Bethlehem, the Latin
Bible says. Let us go there! Let us surpass ourselves! Let us journey towards
God in all sorts of ways: along our interior path towards him, but also along
very concrete paths – the Liturgy of the Church, the service of our neighbour,
in whom Christ awaits us.
Let us once
again listen directly to the Gospel. The shepherds tell one another the reason
why they are setting off: “Let us see this thing that has happened.” Literally
the Greek text says: “Let us see this Word that has occurred there.” Yes
indeed, such is the radical newness of this night: the Word can be seen. For it
has become flesh. The God of whom no image may be made – because any image
would only diminish, or rather distort him – this God has himself become
visible in the One who is his true image, as Saint Paul puts it (see 2 Cor 4:4;
Col 1:15). In the figure of Jesus Christ, in the whole of his life and
ministry, in his dying and rising, we can see the Word of God and hence the
mystery of the living God himself. This is what God is like. The Angel had said
to the shepherds: “This will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in
swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Lk 2:12; see 2:16). God’s sign, the
sign given to the shepherds and to us, is not an astonishing miracle. God’s
sign is his humility. God’s sign is that he makes himself small; he becomes a
child; he lets us touch him and he asks for our love. How we would prefer a
different sign, an imposing, irresistible sign of God’s power and greatness!
But his sign summons us to faith and love, and thus it gives us hope: this is
what God is like. He has power, he is Goodness itself. He invites us to become
like him. Yes indeed, we become like God if we allow ourselves to be shaped by
this sign; if we ourselves learn humility and hence true greatness; if we
renounce violence and use only the weapons of truth and love. Origen, taking up
one of John the Baptist’s sayings, saw the essence of paganism expressed in the
symbol of stones: paganism is a lack of feeling, it means a heart of stone that
is incapable of loving and perceiving God’s love. Origen says of the pagans: “Lacking
feeling and reason, they are transformed into stones and wood” (in Lk 22:9).
Christ, though, wishes to give us a heart of flesh. When we see him, the God
who became a child, our hearts are opened. In the Liturgy of the holy night,
God comes to us as man, so that we might become truly human. Let us listen once
again to Origen: “Indeed, what use would it be to you that Christ once came in
the flesh if he did not enter your soul? Let us pray that he may come to us
each day, that we may be able to say: I live, yet it is no longer I that live,
but Christ lives in me (Gal 2:20)” (in Lk 22:3).
Yes indeed, that
is what we should pray for on this Holy Night. Lord Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem, come to us!
Enter within me, within my soul. Transform me. Renew me. Change me, change us
all from stone and wood into living people, in whom your love is made present
and the world is transformed. Amen.
MIDNIGHT
MASS
SOLEMNITY
OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Saint
Peter’s Basilica, Friday, 24 December 2010
Dear Brothers
and Sisters!
“You are my son,
this day I have begotten you” – with this passage from Psalm 2 the Church
begins the liturgy of this holy night. She knows that this passage originally
formed part of the coronation rite of the kings of Israel. The king, who in himself is
a man like others, becomes the “Son of God” through being called and installed
in his office. It is a kind of adoption by God, a decisive act by which he
grants a new existence to this man, drawing him into his own being. The reading
from the prophet Isaiah that we have just heard presents the same process even
more clearly in a situation of hardship and danger for Israel: “To us a child
is born, to us a son is given. The government will be upon his shoulder” (Is
9:6). Installation in the office of king is like a second birth. As one newly
born through God’s personal choice, as a child born of God, the king embodies
hope. On his shoulders the future rests. He is the bearer of the promise of
peace. On that night in Bethlehem
this prophetic saying came true in a way that would still have been
unimaginable at the time of Isaiah. Yes indeed, now it really is a child on
whose shoulders government is laid. In him the new kingship appears that God
establishes in the world. This child is truly born of God. It is God’s eternal
Word that unites humanity with divinity. To this child belong those titles of honor
which Isaiah’s coronation song attributes to him: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty
God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Is 9:6). Yes, this king does not need
counselors drawn from the wise of this world. He bears in himself God’s wisdom
and God’s counsel. In the weakness of infancy, he is the mighty God and he
shows us God’s own might in contrast to the self-asserting powers of this
world.
Truly, the words
of Israel’s
coronation rite were only ever rites of hope which looked ahead to a distant
future that God would bestow. None of the kings who were greeted in this way
lived up to the sublime content of these words. In all of them, those words
about divine sonship, about installation into the heritage of the peoples,
about making the ends of the earth their possession (Ps 2:8) were only pointers
towards what was to come – as it were signposts of hope indicating a future
that at that moment was still beyond comprehension. Thus the fulfilment of the
prophecy, which began that night in Bethlehem,
is both infinitely greater and in worldly terms smaller than the prophecy
itself might lead one to imagine. It is greater in the sense that this child is
truly the Son of God, truly “God from God, light from light, begotten not made,
of one being with the Father”. The infinite distance between God and man is
overcome. God has not only bent down, as we read in the Psalms; he has truly “come
down”, he has come into the world, he has become one of us, in order to draw
all of us to himself. This child is truly Emmanuel – God-with-us. His kingdom
truly stretches to the ends of the earth. He has truly built islands of peace
in the world-encompassing breadth of the holy Eucharist. Wherever it is
celebrated, an island of peace arises, of God’s own peace. This child has
ignited the light of goodness in men and has given them strength to overcome
the tyranny of might. This child builds his kingdom in every generation from
within, from the heart. But at the same time it is true that the “rod of his
oppressor” is not yet broken, the boots of warriors continue to tramp and the “garment
rolled in blood” (Is 9:4f) still remains. So part of this night is simply joy
at God’s closeness. We are grateful that God gives himself into our hands as a
child, begging as it were for our love, implanting his peace in our hearts. But
this joy is also a prayer: Lord, make your promise come fully true. Break the
rods of the oppressors. Burn the tramping boots. Let the time of the garments
rolled in blood come to an end. Fulfill the prophecy that “of peace there will
be no end” (Is 9:7). We thank you for your goodness, but we also ask you to
show forth your power. Establish the dominion of your truth and your love in
the world – the “kingdom of righteousness, love and peace”.
“Mary gave birth
to her first-born son” (Lk 2:7). In this sentence Saint Luke recounts quite
soberly the great event to which the prophecies from Israel’s history had pointed. Luke
calls the child the “first-born”. In the language which developed within the
sacred Scripture of the Old Covenant, “first-born” does not mean the first of a
series of children. The word “first-born” is a title of honor, quite
independently of whether other brothers and sisters follow or not. So Israel is designated by God in the Book of
Exodus (4:22) as “my first-born Son”, and this expresses Israel’s
election, its singular dignity, the particular love of God the Father. The
early Church knew that in Jesus this saying had acquired a new depth, that the
promises made to Israel
were summed up in him. Thus the Letter to the Hebrews calls Jesus “the
first-born”, simply in order to designate him as the Son sent into the world by
God (see 1:5-7) after the ground had been prepared by Old Testament prophecy.
The first-born belongs to God in a special way – and therefore he had to be
handed over to God in a special way – as in many religions – and he had to be
ransomed through a vicarious sacrifice, as Saint Luke recounts in the episode
of the Presentation in the Temple.
The first-born belongs to God in a special way, and is as it were destined for
sacrifice. In Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross this destiny of the first-born is
fulfilled in a unique way. In his person he brings humanity before God and
unites man with God in such a way that God becomes all in all. Saint Paul amplified and
deepened the idea of Jesus as first-born in the Letters to the Colossians and
to the Ephesians: Jesus, we read in these letters, is the first-born of all
creation – the true prototype of man, according to which God formed the human
creature. Man can be the image of God because Jesus is both God and man, the
true image of God and of man. Furthermore, as these letters tell us, he is the
first-born from the dead. In the resurrection he has broken down the wall of
death for all of us. He has opened up to man the dimension of eternal life in
fellowship with God. Finally, it is said to us that he is the first-born of
many brothers. Yes indeed, now he really is the first of a series of brothers
and sisters: the first, that is, who opens up for us the possibility of
communing with God. He creates true brotherhood – not the kind defiled by sin
as in the case of Cain and Abel, or Romulus
and Remus, but the new brotherhood in which we are God’s own family. This new
family of God begins at the moment when Mary wraps her first-born in swaddling
clothes and lays him in a manger. Let us pray to him: Lord Jesus, who wanted to
be born as the first of many brothers and sisters, grant us the grace of true
brotherhood. Help us to become like you. Help us to recognize your face in
others who need our assistance, in those who are suffering or forsaken, in all
people, and help us to live together with you as brothers and sisters, so as to
become one family, your family.
At the end of
the Christmas Gospel, we are told that a great heavenly host of angels praised
God and said: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among men with
whom he is pleased!” (Lk 2:14). The Church, in the Gloria, has extended
this song of praise, which the angels sang in response to the event of the holy
night, into a hymn of joy at God’s glory – “we praise you for your glory”. We
praise you for the beauty, for the greatness, for your goodness, which becomes
visible to us this night. The appearing of beauty, of the beautiful, makes us
happy without our having to ask what use it can serve. God’s glory, from which
all beauty derives, causes us to break out in astonishment and joy. Anyone who
catches a glimpse of God experiences joy, and on this night we see something of
his light. But the angels’ message on that holy night also spoke of men: “Peace
among men with whom he is pleased”. The Latin translation of the angels’ song
that we use in the liturgy, taken from Saint
Jerome, is slightly different: “peace to men of good
will”. The expression “men of good will” has become an important part of the
Church’s vocabulary in recent decades. But which is the correct translation? We
must read both texts together; only in this way do we truly understand the
angels’ song. It would be a false interpretation to see this exclusively as the
action of God, as if he had not called man to a free response of love. But it
would be equally mistaken to adopt a moralizing interpretation as if man were
so to speak able to redeem himself by his good will. Both elements belong together:
grace and freedom, God’s prior love for us, without which we could not love
him, and the response that he awaits from us, the response that he asks for so
palpably through the birth of his son. We cannot divide up into independent
entities the interplay of grace and freedom, or the interplay of call and
response. The two are inseparably woven together. So this part of the angels’
message is both promise and call at the same time. God has anticipated us with
the gift of his Son. God anticipates us again and again in unexpected ways. He
does not cease to search for us, to raise us up as often as we might need. He
does not abandon the lost sheep in the wilderness into which it had strayed.
God does not allow himself to be confounded by our sin. Again and again he
begins afresh with us. But he is still waiting for us to join him in love. He
loves us, so that we too may become people who love, so that there may be peace
on earth.
Saint Luke does
not say that the angels sang. He states quite soberly: the heavenly host
praised God and said: “Glory to God in the highest” (Lk 2:13f.). But men have
always known that the speech of angels is different from human speech, and that
above all on this night of joyful proclamation it was in song that they
extolled God’s heavenly glory. So this angelic song has been recognized from
the earliest days as music proceeding from God, indeed, as an invitation to
join in the singing with hearts filled with joy at the fact that we are loved
by God. Cantare amantis est, says Saint
Augustine: singing belongs to one who loves. Thus,
down the centuries, the angels’ song has again and again become a song of love
and joy, a song of those who love. At this hour, full of thankfulness, we join
in the singing of all the centuries, singing that unites heaven and earth,
angels and men. Yes, indeed, we praise you for your glory. We praise you for
your love. Grant that we may join with you in love more and more and thus
become people of peace. Amen.
MIDNIGHT
MASS
SOLEMNITY
OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Saint
Peter’s Basilica, Saturday, 24 December 2011
Dear Brothers
and Sisters!
The reading from
Saint Paul’s
Letter to Titus that we have just heard begins solemnly with the word “apparuit”,
which then comes back again in the reading at the Dawn Mass: apparuit – “there
has appeared”. This is a programmatic word, by which the Church seeks to
express synthetically the essence of Christmas. Formerly, people had spoken of
God and formed human images of him in all sorts of different ways. God himself
had spoken in many and various ways to mankind (see Heb 1:1 – Mass
during the Day). But now something new has happened: he has appeared. He has
revealed himself. He has emerged from the inaccessible light in which he
dwells. He himself has come into our midst. This was the great joy of Christmas
for the early Church: God has appeared. No longer is he merely an idea, no
longer do we have to form a picture of him on the basis of mere words. He has “appeared”.
But now we ask: how has he appeared? Who is he in reality? The reading at the
Dawn Mass goes on to say: “the kindness and love of God our Savior for mankind
were revealed” (Tit 3:4). For the people of pre-Christian times, whose
response to the terrors and contradictions of the world was to fear that God
himself might not be good either, that he too might well be cruel and
arbitrary, this was a real “epiphany”, the great light that has appeared to us:
God is pure goodness. Today too, people who are no longer able to recognize God
through faith are asking whether the ultimate power that underpins and sustains
the world is truly good, or whether evil is just as powerful and primordial as
the good and the beautiful which we encounter in radiant moments in our world. “The
kindness and love of God our Savior for mankind were revealed”: this is the
new, consoling certainty that is granted to us at Christmas.
In all three
Christmas Masses, the liturgy quotes a passage from the Prophet Isaiah, which
describes the epiphany that took place at Christmas in greater detail: “A child
is born for us, a son given to us and dominion is laid on his shoulders; and
this is the name they give him: Wonder-Counselor, Mighty-God, Eternal-Father,
Prince-of-Peace. Wide is his dominion in a peace that has no end” (Is
9:5f.). Whether the prophet had a particular child in mind, born during his own
period of history, we do not know. But it seems impossible. This is the only
text in the Old Testament in which it is said of a child, of a human being: his
name will be Mighty-God, Eternal-Father. We are presented with a vision that
extends far beyond the historical moment into the mysterious, into the future.
A child, in all its weakness, is Mighty God. A child, in all its neediness and
dependence, is Eternal Father. And his peace “has no end”. The prophet had
previously described the child as “a great light” and had said of the peace he
would usher in that the rod of the oppressor, the footgear of battle, every
cloak rolled in blood would be burned (Is 9:1, 3-4).
God has appeared
– as a child. It is in this guise that he pits himself against all violence and
brings a message that is peace. At this hour, when the world is continually
threatened by violence in so many places and in so many different ways, when
over and over again there are oppressors’ rods and bloodstained cloaks, we cry
out to the Lord: O mighty God, you have appeared as a child and you have
revealed yourself to us as the One who loves us, the One through whom love will
triumph. And you have shown us that we must be peacemakers with you. We love
your childish estate, your powerlessness, but we suffer from the continuing
presence of violence in the world, and so we also ask you: manifest your power,
O God. In this time of ours, in this world of ours, cause the oppressors’ rods,
the cloaks rolled in blood and the footgear of battle to be burned, so that
your peace may triumph in this world of ours.
Christmas is an
epiphany – the appearing of God and of his great light in a child that is born for
us. Born in a stable in Bethlehem,
not in the palaces of kings. In 1223, when Saint Francis of Assisi celebrated Christmas in Greccio with
an ox and an ass and a manger full of hay, a new dimension of the mystery of
Christmas came to light. Saint Francis of Assisi
called Christmas “the feast of feasts” – above all other feasts – and he
celebrated it with “unutterable devotion” (2 Celano 199; Fonti
Francescane, 787). He kissed images of the Christ-child with great devotion
and he stammered tender words such as children say, so Thomas of Celano tells
us (ibid.). For the early Church, the feast of feasts was Easter: in the
Resurrection Christ had flung open the doors of death and in so doing had
radically changed the world: he had made a place for man in God himself. Now,
Francis neither changed nor intended to change this objective order of
precedence among the feasts, the inner structure of the faith centered on the
Paschal Mystery. And yet through him and the character of his faith, something
new took place: Francis discovered Jesus’ humanity in an entirely new depth.
This human existence of God became most visible to him at the moment when God’s
Son, born of the Virgin Mary, was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a
manger. The Resurrection presupposes the Incarnation. For God’s Son to take the
form of a child, a truly human child, made a profound impression on the heart
of the Saint of Assisi, transforming faith into love. “The kindness and love of
God our Savior for mankind were revealed” – this phrase of Saint Paul now acquired an entirely new
depth. In the child born in the stable at Bethlehem,
we can as it were touch and caress God. And so the liturgical year acquired a
second focus in a feast that is above all a feast of the heart.
This has nothing
to do with sentimentality. It is right here, in this new experience of the
reality of Jesus’ humanity that the great mystery of faith is revealed. Francis
loved the child Jesus, because for him it was in this childish estate that God’s
humility shone forth. God became poor. His Son was born in the poverty of the
stable. In the child Jesus, God made himself dependent, in need of human love,
he put himself in the position of asking for human love – our love. Today
Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the
mystery of God’s humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity.
Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this
season, and to discover behind it the child in the stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true
light.
Francis arranged
for Mass to be celebrated on the manger that stood between the ox and the ass (see
1 Celano 85; Fonti 469). Later, an altar was built over this
manger, so that where animals had once fed on hay, men could now receive the
flesh of the spotless lamb Jesus Christ, for the salvation of soul and body, as
Thomas of Celano tells us (see 1 Celano 87; Fonti 471). Francis
himself, as a deacon, had sung the Christmas Gospel on the holy night in
Greccio with resounding voice. Through the friars’ radiant Christmas singing,
the whole celebration seemed to be a great outburst of joy (1 Celano
85.86; Fonti 469, 470). It was the encounter with God’s humility that
caused this joy – his goodness creates the true feast.
Today, anyone
wishing to enter the Church of Jesus’ Nativity in Bethlehem will find that the
doorway five and a half meters high, through which emperors and caliphs used to
enter the building, is now largely walled up. Only a low opening of one and a half
meters has remained. The intention was probably to provide the church with
better protection from attack, but above all to prevent people from entering
God’s house on horseback. Anyone wishing to enter the place of Jesus’
birth has to bend down. It seems to me that a deeper truth is revealed here,
which should touch our hearts on this holy night: if we want to find the God
who appeared as a child, then we must dismount from the high horse of our “enlightened”
reason. We must set aside our false certainties, our intellectual pride, which
prevents us from recognizing God’s closeness. We must follow the interior path
of Saint Francis – the path leading to that ultimate outward and inward
simplicity which enables the heart to see. We must bend down, spiritually we
must as it were go on foot, in order to pass through the portal of faith and
encounter the God who is so different from our prejudices and opinions – the
God who conceals himself in the humility of a newborn baby. In this spirit let
us celebrate the liturgy of the holy night, let us strip away our fixation on
what is material, on what can be measured and grasped. Let us allow ourselves
to be made simple by the God who reveals himself to the simple of heart. And
let us also pray especially at this hour for all who have to celebrate
Christmas in poverty, in suffering, as migrants, that a ray of God’s kindness
may shine upon them, that they – and we – may be touched by the kindness that
God chose to bring into the world through the birth of his Son in a stable.
Amen.
MIDNIGHT
MASS
SOLEMNITY
OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Saint
Peter’s Basilica, Monday, 24 December 2012
Dear Brothers
and Sisters!
Again and again
the beauty of this Gospel touches our hearts: a beauty that is the splendor of
truth. Again and again it astonishes us that God makes himself a child so that
we may love him, so that we may dare to love him, and as a child trustingly
lets himself be taken into our arms. It is as if God were saying: I know that
my glory frightens you, and that you are trying to assert yourself in the face
of my grandeur. So now I am coming to you as a child, so that you can accept me
and love me.
I am also
repeatedly struck by the Gospel writer’s almost casual remark that there was no
room for them at the inn. Inevitably the question arises, what would happen if
Mary and Joseph were to knock at my door. Would there be room for them? And
then it occurs to us that Saint John takes up this seemingly chance comment
about the lack of room at the inn, which drove the Holy Family into the stable;
he explores it more deeply and arrives at the heart of the matter when he
writes: “he came to his own home, and his own people received him not” (Jn
1:11). The great moral question of our attitude towards the homeless, towards
refugees and migrants, takes on a deeper dimension: do we really have room for
God when he seeks to enter under our roof? Do we have time and space for him?
Do we not actually turn away God himself? We begin to do so when we have no
time for God. The faster we can move, the more efficient our time-saving
appliances become, the less time we have. And God? The question of God never
seems urgent. Our time is already completely full. But matters go deeper still.
Does God actually have a place in our thinking? Our process of thinking is
structured in such a way that he simply ought not to exist. Even if he seems to
knock at the door of our thinking, he has to be explained away. If thinking is
to be taken seriously, it must be structured in such a way that the “God
hypothesis” becomes superfluous. There is no room for him. Not even in our
feelings and desires is there any room for him. We want ourselves. We want what
we can seize hold of, we want happiness that is within our reach, we want our
plans and purposes to succeed. We are so “full” of ourselves that there is no
room left for God. And that means there is no room for others either, for
children, for the poor, for the stranger. By reflecting on that one simple
saying about the lack of room at the inn, we have come to see how much we need
to listen to Saint Paul’s
exhortation: “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom 12:2).
Paul speaks of renewal, the opening up of our intellect (nous), of the
whole way we view the world and ourselves. The conversion that we need must
truly reach into the depths of our relationship with reality. Let us ask the
Lord that we may become vigilant for his presence, that we may hear how softly
yet insistently he knocks at the door of our being and willing. Let us ask that
we may make room for him within ourselves, that we may recognize him also in
those through whom he speaks to us: children, the suffering, the abandoned,
those who are excluded and the poor of this world.
There is another
verse from the Christmas story on which I should like to reflect with you – the
angels’ hymn of praise, which they sing out following the announcement of the
new-born Savior: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among men with
whom he is pleased.” God is glorious. God is pure light, the radiance of truth
and love. He is good. He is true goodness, goodness par excellence. The
angels surrounding him begin by simply proclaiming the joy of seeing God’s
glory. Their song radiates the joy that fills them. In their words, it is as if
we were hearing the sounds of heaven. There is no question of attempting to
understand the meaning of it all, but simply the overflowing happiness of
seeing the pure splendor of God’s truth and love. We want to let this joy reach
out and touch us: truth exists, pure goodness exists, pure light exists. God is
good, and he is the supreme power above all powers. All this should simply make
us joyful tonight, together with the angels and the shepherds.
Linked to God’s
glory on high is peace on earth among men. Where God is not glorified, where he
is forgotten or even denied, there is no peace either. Nowadays, though,
widespread currents of thought assert the exact opposite: they say that
religions, especially monotheism, are the cause of the violence and the wars in
the world. If there is to be peace, humanity must first be liberated from them.
Monotheism, belief in one God, is said to be arrogance, a cause of intolerance,
because by its nature, with its claim to possess the sole truth, it seeks to
impose itself on everyone. Now it is true that in the course of history,
monotheism has served as a pretext for intolerance and violence. It is true
that religion can become corrupted and hence opposed to its deepest essence,
when people think they have to take God’s cause into their own hands, making
God into their private property. We must be on the lookout for these
distortions of the sacred. While there is no denying a certain misuse of
religion in history, yet it is not true that denial of God would lead to peace.
If God’s light is extinguished, man’s divine dignity is also extinguished. Then
the human creature would cease to be God’s image, to which we must pay honor in
every person, in the weak, in the stranger, in the poor. Then we would no
longer all be brothers and sisters, children of the one Father, who belong to
one another on account of that one Father. The kind of arrogant violence that
then arises, the way man then despises and tramples upon man: we saw this in
all its cruelty in the last century. Only if God’s light shines over man and
within him, only if every single person is desired, known and loved by God is
his dignity inviolable, however wretched his situation may be. On this Holy
Night, God himself became man; as Isaiah prophesied, the child born here is “Emmanuel”,
God with us (Is 7:14). And down the centuries, while there has been
misuse of religion, it is also true that forces of reconciliation and goodness
have constantly sprung up from faith in the God who became man. Into the
darkness of sin and violence, this faith has shone a bright ray of peace and
goodness, which continues to shine.
So Christ is our
peace, and he proclaimed peace to those far away and to those near at hand (see
Eph 2:14, 17). How could we now do other than pray to him: Yes, Lord,
proclaim peace today to us too, whether we are far away or near at hand. Grant
also to us today that swords may be turned into ploughshares (Is 2:4),
that instead of weapons for warfare, practical aid may be given to the
suffering. Enlighten those who think they have to practice violence in your
name, so that they may see the senselessness of violence and learn to recognize
your true face. Help us to become people “with whom you are pleased” – people
according to your image and thus people of peace.
Once the angels
departed, the shepherds said to one another: Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this
thing that has happened for us (see Lk 2:15). The shepherds went with
haste to Bethlehem,
the Evangelist tells us (see 2:16). A holy curiosity impelled them to see this
child in a manger, who the angel had said was the Savior, Christ the Lord. The
great joy of which the angel spoke had touched their hearts and given them
wings.
Let us go over
to Bethlehem,
says the Church’s liturgy to us today. Trans-eamus is what the Latin
Bible says: let us go “across”, daring to step beyond, to make the “transition”
by which we step outside our habits of thought and habits of life, across the
purely material world into the real one, across to the God who in his turn has
come across to us. Let us ask the Lord to grant that we may overcome our
limits, our world, to help us to encounter him, especially at the moment when
he places himself into our hands and into our heart in the Holy Eucharist.
Let us go over
to Bethlehem: as we say these words to one another, along with the shepherds,
we should not only think of the great “crossing over” to the living God, but
also of the actual town of Bethlehem and all those places where the Lord lived,
ministered and suffered. Let us pray at this time for the people who live and
suffer there today. Let us pray that there may be peace in that land. Let us
pray that Israelis and Palestinians may be able to live their lives in the
peace of the one God and in freedom. Let us also pray for the countries of the
region, for Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and their neighbors: that
there may be peace there, that Christians in those lands where our faith was
born may be able to continue living there, that Christians and Muslims may
build up their countries side by side in God’s peace.
The shepherds made haste. Holy curiosity and
holy joy impelled them. In our case, it is probably not very often that we make
haste for the things of God. God does not feature among the things that require
haste. The things of God can wait, we think and we say. And yet he is the most
important thing, ultimately the one truly important thing. Why should we not
also be moved by curiosity to see more closely and to know what God has said to
us? At this hour, let us ask him to touch our hearts with the holy curiosity
and the holy joy of the shepherds, and thus let us go over joyfully to Bethlehem, to the Lord
who today once more comes to meet us. Amen.
