THREE ADVENTS

 

Praised be Jesus Christ…now and forever.

 

Two days ago, Father Athanasius, a few seminarians, a few students, and I completed our 5^th Annual Penitential Pilgrimage for Sins Against the Holy Eucharist.  We hiked 18 miles from Saint Louis Abbey to the Shrine of Saint Joseph, downtown.  The first year we did it, I swore I’d never do it again.  The second year, I figured I was in better shape than I was the first year.  (I wasn’t).  So the third year, I made arrangements to have someone pick me up half-way through (he didn’t).  And the fourth year, I figured I had finally learned from my mistakes.  (I hadn’t).  This year wasn’t so bad.  Maybe it was the cool weather.  Maybe I had finally achieved that heroic victory over self.  Or maybe it was the painkillers.  But after eight hours of walking, I didn’t feel like I wanted to die…until the next morning, when I discovered that every muscle from just under my shoulder blades to just behind the pads of my toes was frozen stiff.  Yesterday morning, I didn’t feel like the hero of the day before.I had to do this sort of Frankenstein maneuver just to sit up and get my feet on the ground.  Then I spent the rest of the day walking like Charlie Chaplin.  As usual, Father Athanasius had some chirpy advice about stretching or ice or something, but I ignored him, because I was in too much pain.  Besides which, I had my own regimen of physical recovery which involved well…mostly…falling over and cursing.  But it worked!  Within 48 hours, I had progressed from what medical professionals call the Frankenstein stage to the Charlie Chaplin stage, to what I am calling the Mussolini stage, where you just do a sort of duck-step with your face screwed into a grimace…and now I think I’m able to move more or less like a normal undead human being.

All of this means, of course, that Thanksgiving is over and that the penitential season of Advent has begun.  The Church has set off on a new liturgical year.  On this first Sunday of Advent, we begin to count the days separating us from Christmas, and we are invited by Holy Mother Church to reflect on the reality of our Christian vocation and the many ways we’ve fallen short.  Jesus, after all, has entrusted us with the mission of attracting other souls to holiness.  So this is the time to root out any behavior that conceals or obscures that vision of holiness.

Our own soul has to be set in order before we can begin to attract others.

            "Our greatest need,” wrote Fulton Sheen, “is for someone who will understand that there is no greater conquest than victory over self; someone who will realize that real worth is achieved not so much by activity, as by silence...who will, like a lightning flash, burn away the bonds of anxiety which tie down our energies to the world; who with a fearless voice, like John the Baptist, will arouse our weak nature out of the sleek dream of unheroic response; someone who will gain victories not by stepping down from the Cross and compromising with the world, but who will suffer in order to conquer the world.”      

            So you see, we don’t just look forward to Christmas—we NEED it.  And we need it in three doses.   Firstly, we are looking forward to the memorial of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem; secondly, we are looking forwars to the birth of christ in our souls.  And lastly, we are looking forward to the coming of Christ at the end of time.  We tend to think of the first much more than the second or third, and we do a good job of celebrating Jesus’ birthday; but the spiritual Bethlehem is just as important . . . It was this second birth of Christ in the soul that Saint Paul insisted on when he wrote to the Ephesians, begging them to let Christ dwell in their hearts by faith and that they be rooted and grounded in love. This is the second Bethlehem, or the personal relationship of the individual heart to the Lord Christ.”

            Only then, having rejoiced in these two advents, can we look forward to the third, when Jesus will come in power and great glory at the end of time—when everyone will finally get what’s coming to them—when people will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

“The liturgy of Advent, therefore, helps us to understand the meaning of the mystery of Christmas,” wrote Saint John Paul II. “Because it is not just about commemorating a historical event. Instead, it is necessary to understand that the whole of our life must be an ‘advent,’ a vigilant awaiting of the final coming of Christ. Advent is an intense training that directs us decisively toward him who already came, who will come, and who comes continuously” in our souls.

In the Name of the Father…

 

More Cholos

           “Stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour."  This parable of the bridesmaids is the last of Jesus’ warnings that we should be vigilant.  He will come to us when we least expect it.  In the middle of the night, perhaps—or when we’re tired or grumpy or stressed out or annoyed.  The Bridegroom will come, he says, but not necessarily when we expect him.  And not necessarily in a form we will recognize. 

            I spent three weeks of my summer in Long Beach, California helping out at Holy Innocents Parish.  It is in an area that is, as one of its parishioners explained to me, “as ghetto as it gets.”  Long Beach is hard core inner city. Snoop Dog is from Long Beach.  And it’s also where I met my first cholo.  

            You see, fireworks are illegal in Los Angeles, which means the street gangs, who clearly have nothing against illegal activities, put on the fireworks displays. Since Covid, I am told, it has evolved into something of a competition—each inner city neighborhood looking to outdo the others—Compton vs. Long Beach vs. Inglewood vs. Watts—to the effect that, from dusk till dawn, the sky is saturated in every direction with the most incredible displays of pyrotechnics I’ve ever witnessed in my life—rockets, roman candles, multi-shots, fire-fountains, small arms fire, hand grenades, cherry bombs.  (I’m not joking.  This is a recording I made.)  

             I drove out to a friend’s house to see it.  But at two o’clock in the morning, it was still in full swing—and I had to go to bed.  Problem was, the gangs had most of the streets blocked off—for, you know, safety reasons—so I had to drive past a couple of informal, gang-sponsored road blocks.

            Anyhow, I get in my car, and I’m working my way toward Holy Innocents Parish on Copeland and 20th Street, and to get there, I have to drive straight through an enormous flock of cholos.

Now, for those of you who, like me, have not grown up with cholos, the Oxford English dictionary defines the term as a descriptive of  “a young man belonging to a Mexican American urban  subculture associated with street gangs and a fashion style characterized by its distinctive blend of baggy pants, plaid flannel shirts, bandanas, oversized jackets, classic sneakers, and face tattoos.”

            Well, the cholos stopped my car and requested that I exit the vehicle.  Mind you, I am dressed in the full monk habit, so when I get out of the car, one of these young Hispanic gentlemen looks me up and down and says to me, “Hey, what ARE you, Homes?”

To which I responded, “I’m a priest.”

            Now the guy I’m talking with has a tattoo of a teardrop under his left eye, and a smiley face on his neck with the words “Smile now. Cry later.” Around it.  And I’m trying figure out what that means for me, when one of his buddies shouts over, “No he ain’t.”

            So I say, “Uh…Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater, et Filio, et…”

            “Wait! Wait! Wait!” shouts the cholo with the teardrop tattoo, “Let me get my kids.”

            “Yeah, me too,” says another.

            And pretty soon, I’m blessing grandmothers, girlfriends, rosaries, holy medals…one guy says to me, “Man, I don’t have anything to give you.”  As if he hadn’t already given me one of the greatest experiences of my life.

            About an hour later, after I had a beer with them, we all took selfies, and they packed me a grocery bag full of tamales.  Then they cleared the street, and I drove on home, thinking “The earth is full of goodness.”

            Now, the reason I’m telling you this story is because I didn’t get the feeling these were church-going individuals.  I don’t think anyone would call them “wise” in any worldly sense.  But “the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength” and when they saw a stranger in their midst, they saw the face of Christ.  They saw Jesus in me when I couldn’t see Jesus in them.  The Bridegroom came to them in the middle of the night…and like the wise bridesmaids, they were ready.  Mind you, this wasn’t about me.  They never even asked my name.  But they were prepared to reverence Christ in me.

           “Stay awake, Homes” I can imagine them telling me, “for you know neither the day nor the hour." And it’s true.  I didn’t expect to see Jesus that night on the street in Long Beach California.  But I did—and he had a tattoo on his neck and a teardrop tattoo.

         

Cholos and Dostoyevskiy

  

Praised be Jesus Christ…now and forever!

   If you’ve been watching the news, then you’re probably as depressed as I am.  It just seems like everything is falling apart.  When I start feeling like this, I call to mind something one of our old monks used to tell me:  “Don’t be upset when there’s bad stuff in the news. At least the bad stuff is still newsworthy. Be upset when good things become newsworthy.”  And he was right.  Two days ago, I returned from California, which I’ve always thought of as the epicenter of weirdness for the universe.  But I met some great priests out there, and I saw good people leading lives of heroic virtue.  (Go off script here.  Tell cholo story). And these folks, I’m glad to say, never make the news because, as far as I can tell, they are the norm.
    Now, a few months ago, I started reading “The Brothers Karamozov.”  And I feel obliged to admit that I hate it. Personally, if there isn’t a good explosion within the first few pages of a novel, you’ve lost me—and the closest this book has come to an explosion (I’m only 300 pages into it) is that some kid threw a rock at one of the characters.  Frankly, I feel like throwing rocks at all of the characters. It’s just one interminable conversation after another. 
   The reason I’m still reading it is because on page 272, a priest named Zosima gives a sermon that’s given me some hope. It’s basically a diatribe about how horrible the world has become, which, I suppose, ought to make me more depressed.  Except that it was written 150 years ago and it sounds like it was written yesterday—which means things actually haven’t actually gotten that much worse.  So I’ve decided to plagiarize Dostoyevsky for my sermon this morning.  I’ve replaced some of the words, and I’ve skipped a paragraph here and there, but what follows is it…basically:

    “My friends,” says Father Zosima, “what is the priest? In the cultivated world, the word is nowadays pronounced by some people with a sneer, and by others it is used as a term of abuse, and this contempt for the priest is growing. It is true, sadly, that there are many slackers, gluttons, deviants and freeloaders among priests. Educated people point to these and say: “Priests are lazy, useless members of society; they live on the labor of others; they are shameless parasites.” 
     And yet how many meek and humble priests there are, who yearn for holiness and peace! These are less noticed, or we pass over them in silence. But how would theses educated people be if they were to discover that from these meek priests the salvation of the World will come!
   That is my view of the priest, and is it false? Is it too proud? Look at the people we call “sophisticated.” Has not God's image and His truth been distorted in them? Sure, they have science; but in science there is nothing but what is the object of sense. They want to base justice on reason alone, and in doing so, they have already proclaimed that there is no crime, that there is no such thing as sin—which, mind you, is consistent, for if you have no God what is the meaning of sin? They reject the spiritual world altogether, dismiss it with a sort of triumph, even with hatred. They have proclaimed the reign of freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom of theirs? Nothing but slavery and self-destruction! For they say: 
    “You have desires—satisfy them.  You have the right to be happy. Don't be afraid of satisfying your desires.  In fact, you should multiply them.” That is the doctrine of the modern world. And they call it “freedom”.  But what is the result of this multiplication of desires? In the rich…isolation and suicide; in the poor…envy and murder; for they have been given rights, but have not been shown how to use them. Our leaders tell us that the world is getting more and more united, more and more bound together in brotherly community, as it overcomes distance and sends thoughts flying through the air.
     But instead of gaining freedom, we have sunk into slavery, and instead of serving the cause of brotherly love, we have fallen into disharmony and isolation. For what can become of a man if he is a slave to his desires? He is isolated, and has no concern for the rest of humanity.  We have succeeded in accumulating a great mass of objects, but our joy in the world has grown less.
   And what cruelty we show to our children!  We give them machines for companions.  But is that what a child's heart needs? He needs sunshine, play, and good examples all about him, and at least a little love. There must be no more of this, my friends, no more torturing of children, rise up and preach that, quickly, quickly! 
     Of course, I don't deny that priests sin. To be sure, the fire of corruption is spreading visibly, hourly, working from above downwards. The spirit of isolation is coming upon us all.
    But God will save the world as He has saved it many times. Salvation will come from the people, from their faith and their meekness. People do still believe in righteousness.  Deep down, they have faith. See in one another the image of Christ, and it will shine forth like a precious diamond to the whole world. So may it be, so may it be! 

In the Name of the Father…

 

PETER LOOKED INTENTLY AT HIM

Acts 3:1-10

Peter and John were going up to the temple area

for the three o’clock hour of prayer.

And a man crippled from birth was carried

and placed at the gate of the temple called “the Beautiful Gate” every day

to beg for alms from the people who entered the temple.

When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple,

he asked for alms.

But Peter looked intently at him, as did John,

and said, “Look at us.”

He paid attention to them, expecting to receive something from them.

Peter said, “I have neither silver nor gold,

but what I do have I give you:

in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk.”

Then Peter took him by the right hand and raised him up,

and immediately his feet and ankles grew strong.

He leaped up, stood, and walked around,

and went into the temple with them,

walking and jumping and praising God.

When all the people saw him walking and praising God,

they recognized him as the one

who used to sit begging at the Beautiful Gate of the temple,

and they were filled with amazement and astonishment

at what had happened to him.

 

This is our first reading at mass today, and this morning, when I read it , it reminded me of a story that my friend, Walter Hooper, told me.  Walter was C.S. Lewis’ secretary, and they were walking down the street at Oxford and passed a panhandler.  Lewis reached into his pocket, pulled out some change, and threw it in the beggar’s hat.

         “Why did you do that?” says Walter, “You know he’ll just take that money to the pub and buy a drink with it.”

         “Well,” says Lewis, “That’s what I was going to do with it.”  

 

So that story reminded me of something that happened to me when I was seventeen.

 

You see, my sister worked for five years at a homeless shelter in Galveston, Texas, and I was driving her to a soccer game one afternoon, when we stopped at a light where a panhandler was wearing a sign that said, “Will work for food.”  As he came walking up to the car, I tried to avoid eye-contact.  But my sister, who was in the back seat, rolled down the window.  “Kristen!” he shouted, and stretched out his hand, “You got a dollar for me?”

         “Jimmy,” she says, “You know I’m not going to give you money.”  All the homeless people in Galveston have the same name, Jimmy, because it helps them avoid the authorities.

         And Jimmy laughs and says, “Yeah, I’d spend it on crack.” Then he reaches into the car and pats her on the head.  “You have a good day now,” he says.

         And she says, “I’ll be praying for you.”

         So we’re about three blocks on, and I said to my sister, “You rolled down your window to tell him you weren’t going to give him money?”

         And she says, “I know where he can get food.  He’s a client.  Money isn’t what he needs.”

         “So what does he need?” I say.

         “Eye contact,” she says. “He needs to be treated like a human.”

         So a few blocks later, there’s another panhandler at the light, and I go to roll down my window, and she shouts, “Don’t do that!”

         And I say to her, “I was going to make eye contact.”
         And Kristen looks at me like I’m about three years old, and she says, “No, stupid.  That’s mean. It’s like you’re faking him out. Just smile, wave, and shake your head.”

         “But you rolled down your window,” I said, and frankly, my feelings were a little hurt.

         “I rolled down my window,” she says, because Jimmy is my friend.”

         Now, what strikes me about this passage from Acts of the Apostles is not that they cure a crippled beggar, but that Peter looked intently at him…as did John.  That he in return looked intently at them…and that…Peter took him by the right hand.

We are told that the crippled man spent the rest of the day “walking and jumping and praising God”…and I have to wonder if he did that because he could walk…or because Peter shook his hand.

         If I’d shaken the hand of the first Pope, I’d have been jumping up and down too.

Go and Sin No More.

In preparation for this homily, I consulted the 21^st Century theologian, Charlie Waltz.  You probably haven’t heard of him because he’s an 8^th-Grader in our school.   You also probably haven’t heard of him because he isn’t a very good theologian.  He told me that the moral of our readings today is “don’t commit adultery or you're gonna get in trouble." Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that Saint Augustine had virtually the same interpretation! 

       In his commentary on the Gospel of John, he wrote: 

 

What is this, 0 Lord? --“Neither will I condemn you"?  Does this mean you’re okay with sin? Not so, apparently, because listen to what follows: "Go and sin no more."  Yes, Jesus did condemn, but he condemned sins, not the sinner.

Think about it.  (continues Saint Augustine) If Jesus tolerated sins, he would have said, “Neither will I condemn you; Now go and do whatever you like; I’ll look out for you no matter what you do.  Don’t worry about Hell. I’ll get you out.”

   But no, he didn’t say this. So pay attention!  By all means, love the gentleness of Jesus—but fear his truth as well.  The Lord is gentle, the Lord is long suffering, the Lord is full of pity; but the Lord is also just, the Lord is also true.

He gives us this present time to correct our behavior; but we—we prefer to focus on this present age and forget that it will come to an end some day.  Judgement has been delayed, but it’s still coming.

Let this woman be punished—but not by sinners; let the law be applied, but not by its transgressors.” 

 

So I think I see where Saint Augustine—and Charlie Waltz—are coming from.  I can imagine there was a wife somewhere in Jerusalem that day who was pretty disappointed to see her husband’s mistress weasel out of her punishment.  There was a home wrecked, a family torn apart, a marriage in jeopardy…and Jesus understood this too.  Which is why our gospel reading ends with the words “Go.Go and SIN NO MORE.”

   So.  Feel free to attend that raunchy bachelor party—so long as you can turn with confidence to the groom and tell him to sin no more.  Feel free to attend the wedding of your gay friends—so long as you are willing to stand up at the end of the ceremony and advise them to sin no more. Laugh at that racist joke—so long as you are willing to smile at the end and say, “Go and sin no more.”  Vote for that pro-choice politician—provided you write him a letter begging him to repent and sin no more.

But never use the gospel as an excuse to condone evil behvior.  “Jesus ate with sinners,” but he always, always admonished them to go and sin no more.

THE WORLD'S WORST WAITER

I spent the year before I came to the abbey taking Greek at Saint Louis U. and waiting tables at a fine dining establishment downtown.  For the record, I was, without a doubt, the world’s worst waiter.  I forgot which tables I was assigned, I brought entres before salads and deserts before drinks.   I once spilled an entire tray of margaritas down the back of a patron’s blouse.  And worst of all, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember the difference between Boston clam chowder and New England clam chowder.  Now…in my defense, The Wedgewood Supper Club (name changed so I don’t get sued) was a horrible, horrible place to work.  The busboys hated the waiters, the waiters hated the matre’d, the Matre’d hated the cook…and everyone hated Mister Van Crackle (name changed so I don’t get sued).  Not only was he a selfish, and irresolute leader, but he actually stole our tips.

Now, the reason I’m reliving this nightmare with you is because today’s reading about Jesus and the demon reminds me of a particular interaction I had with Mister Van Crackle.  You see, being universally scorned by my peers and employers had one advantage: I had nothing to lose.  So.  I wrote Mister Van Crackle a letter listing my greivences and had it notarized.  Of course, I never heard back from him.   He didn’t fire me or stiff my tables.   He just acted as though I’d never written the letter at all.  Which was infuriating!  So I sent a copy to the president of the Club Corporation of America, who, perhaps because even at that level, I was known mediocre employee, also ignored it.  I decided, then, to rewrite the entire letter, and send it certified mail to the board of directors.

I may be brash, but I’m not an idiot.  I had enough good sense, even then, to run it by my father first.  Who said, and I quote: “Mister Van Crackle knows you’re unhappy, right?   Presumably the president of the corporation knows this as well.  Am I right?  Both have chosen ignor you, right?  Well, then.  Listen carefully:  There’s a fine line between being assertive, and being an ass.  You are about to cross that line.”  When I continued to protest, he said, and again I quote: “He won.  You lost.  Get over it.  Get on with your life.”

For the first time in months, I, by my own volition, shut my mouth.  And with that, the demon of discontent left me.  I’m reminded of a quote from Saint Augustine: “It was not until I ceded the victory to Satan, that My Lord was able to win the victory on my behalf.  For what am I to myself without You, but a guide to my own downfall?”

A few weeks later, I quit my job, and went to wait tables at Augustino’s (which name I need not change because I loved it there).  Augustino Gabriele (whose name I won’t change because I love him too) had thought of an ingenious way of building comradery among his employees: about half-way through the night, he would steel $10 from the tips of every waiter in the house, put it in an envelope, and then give that envelope to the person on staff that we voted most helpful.  I remember accusing a busboy of helping me just so he could get the envelope.  All he did was smile at me and say, “Heck, yeah I want that envelop.” And that night, he got it.

A certain brother asked Saint Pambo of the Desert: Please help me! The devil is preventing me from loving my neighbor!

The elder said in reply: “Oh shut your mouth. Why don’t you just admit that you don’t want to be merciful? God said long ago: I have given you power over all the forces of the enemy?  Do you think He’s a liar?  Now go stamp down that evil spirit yourself!”

What these stories have in common is that same command that Jesus gives the devil in our gospel today: Be quiet.  Every exorcism begins with that simple command: “Shut your mouth.”

Oh, that today you would hear his voice:

"Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,

as in the day of Massah in the desert,

Where your fathers tempted me;

they tested me though they had seen my works."

“Brothers and sisters: I should like you to be free of anxieties,” says Saint Paul.  But you and I know that you won’t be, so instead, I’ll repeat—and I’ll repeat again—the words that Jesus proclaimed in the presence of the man with the unclean spirit:  “Be quiet.”  When you are overwhelmed by anger or lust or frustration or despair, when the demons of concupiscence and resentment gain the upper hand; when Satan himself seems to have definitively won the day, and everyone around you has surrendered to his lies…Be (pause) quiet.”  Admit you are powerless.  Admit that you lost.  Cede the victory so that Christ, who alone speaks with authority, can step in.

A clean heart create for me, O God, a steadfast spirit renew within me. Give me back the joy of your salvation, and a willing spirit sustain in me. THEN, O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.

 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

 

 

EVERYONE IS IN ON IT BUT

    Christmas is a return to our origins. It is possible to feel the “Spirit Christmas”, but only if we have the strength of mind to go back to kindergarten, and pretend that we never left. So I will not apologize, on Christmas morning, for taking you back to the origins of the human race; to those nursery rhymes which came together to form the introduction to the oldest story in the world, a story which begins at a time when the world did not exist at all. Those kindergarten stories have fallen out of vogue in recent years. We don’t like to be caught reading them; it was the same with our stuffed animals when we outgrew them. But I’ll say this much for those old kindergarten stories: you can write them off as primitive or patriarchal…or even sexist…you can undermine their authenticity by picking apart their authorship and archaeological accuracy, accuse their God of cruelty or barbarism…but you can’t escape those stories altogether. They will haunt you, primitive as they are. 

    But let’s not talk controversy today.  We’ll pass over the story of creation and the loss of Paradise.  The doors to that fantasy world will remain closed and locked for now, guarded by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens with their flaming swords.  

   The phrase we are asked to meditate on this morning is the very first utterance of fallen humanity; it is when Eve says, “I have produced a child with the help of the LORD.”

    In some abandoned cave, very far away, that first human mother gave birth to that first human child.  She called him Cain.  She and Adam had squandered their inheritance, had wasted it, committed a disgraceful crime and incurred a sentence of death; within a few years, for all they knew, human life would become extinct on the planet. But no, here was something saved from the wreckage; here was a new representative who would carry the torch of humanity. “For a child is born to us, a son is given to us;” the raw material of that Christmas carol rang through the primeval forest with a prophesy of our immortal hope.

    Now, trace the line of Eve’s posterity down through innumerable centuries, until you stop at a point roughly two thousand years ago.  And what do you see?  Why, it’s the same picture of a Mother and a Child! Even the setting is unaltered: we are still in a cave, for crying out loud! And our first thought is, “Heck, this isn’t any different from any other human birth! What mother wouldn’t adore her child? Isn’t that exactly what you see when you visit any labor ward at any hospital in the world?”

    And of course, we’re right. Like Eve, any new mother sees it as a kind of miracle—which it absolutely is; this particular thing has never happened before. And she’s right. All that is visible here—this tiny body—has come from her; has somehow, mysteriously assembled within her out of biomolecules and strings of DNA and amino acids.  How can that possibly happen? And yet we know that it happened, because this tiny thing is a human being, it is linked to an immortal soul. 

    This is indeed a miracle, not just to the mother and father, but to the entire human race!  A new being has come into existence. “For a child is born to us.”  Yes, well, the body comes from us; but the son-this particular Son—is given to us.  The soul doesn’t come from father or mother, but comes directly from God.

Still, the first thing we need to realize about Christmas, is that this birth is just like any other human birth.  And that is our precisely our guarantee: that although He was truly God, he was also truly man. God did not deceive us by taking on the appearance of humanity, like Zeus or Poseidon or Dionysus.  No, he became man.  That was the leverage, if you will, through which the work of our redemption was effected. 

    And, curiously, this is one of the lessons which the early Church found it particularly hard to teach. The first heretics were not people who denied Jesus’ Godhead; almost without exception, they were people who denied his manhood. They could believe that a god might come to earth; what they couldn’t believe was that he’d be human enough to be born—or to die.  This is why Muhammed rewrote the bible.  But also, perhaps, this is why the Middle Ages gave us the Christmas creche. As we kneel before the creche, the first thing we learn is the human reality of it all; God is actually here, among his creatures. Unto us a Child is born; it is not simply that God will come close to us, that he will stand at our side.  No, He will become one of us, become part of us.

     But now that we have said that it was just like any other human birth, we have to add, “…but you know, it wasn’t actually like any other birth…ever.” And the Church is not ashamed of the contradiction; when we are tracing the history of God made man, our very terms of reference are self-contradictory. This was like no other human birth, because the Mother in the cave this time, was and remains a virgin. Christians never lost sight of that—not even for a moment, no matter how great the temptation. And in those first centuries of Christianity, the temptation must have been very strong.  The earliest heretics didn’t try to deny that Jesus was truly divine; they denied that Jesus was truly human.  They argued that he was a ghost; or that he only appeared to be born of the Virgin Mary; he only appeared to suffer and die. It would have made sense if the Church had swung to the other extreme; had soft-pedalled or abandoned the doctrine of the Virgin Birth.  At least then it would have been easier to argue that Jesus was the human Son of a human Mother.  But the funny thing is, Christians have always had this instinct: that your theology is safe when your opponents accuse you of holding two contradictory beliefs.

    Yep.  That’s when you know you’re right.

    Throughout the ages, Christians have seen that Mother in the cave, but never for a second did they lose sight of the Virgin. So take a second look at the Christmas crib.  Your first view was wrong—or at least incomplete. When you first looked at it, it seemed like a beautiful picture of motherhood – that and nothing more. “I have produced a child with the help of the LORD””– it was the old cry of Eve, repeated down the centuries. But now it has reached its crucial expression: this particular cave at Bethlehem will be remembered as the birthplace of the greatest man who ever lived.

    And then…well…have you ever walked into a room and had the feeling that everyone there was in on a joke you didn’t understand—that there was some sort of secret everyone knew but you?  There is something like that in our second look at that Christmas creche. Everybody is keeping just a little too quiet; the shepherds seem to come in on tip-toe, the ass and the ox…they’re just lying there, not feeding, the angels seem to be standing at attention, waiting for something to happen. And then you take another look at the center of the group, and suddenly you notice what you really should have noticed before. A mother? But this is only a girl! It’s not just a question of age, it’s a question of atmosphere; they are playing a trick on you! It’s a girl dressed up as a young mother… And then you remember that there is no room here for dress-up or make-believe. This is the mystery of the Virgin Birth.

    And don’t think for a moment that Catholic reverence for virginity is just a prudish running away from sex. If we pass over this stuff in silence, it is not because we think them disgusting, but because we think them too holy to be mentioned in common talk. If the Fathers of the Church, from the earliest times, insisted on the virginity of God’s Mother, it was not because they wanted to pay her a compliment, by ascribing to her a well-known Christian virtue.  No!  It was exactly the other way around! They learned to reverence virginity because they had seen it in the Mother of God; because they had seen it in the stable of Bethlehem, and could not forget the experience. What they had seen there was an innocence which spoke to them of renewal. This other woman in the cave had brought them back to Paradise. Christmas Day is a birthday just like any other; and it is a birthday utterly unlike any other; and no wonder, for it is the birthday of us all.

    Go back now to that first woman in the cave; when she cried out, “I have produced child with the help of the LORD.” That was our birthday. The long history of woman’s child-bearing had begun; the process had been set in motion which was to give existence, all those centuries later, to you and me. Eve was the mother of life; and yet, what had she really given birth to when she boasted that she had a child?  She had borne the first murderer. He came into the world to bring death, death to his own brother. And that life which our first mother handed down to us is, after all, only a death sentence; sons of Eve, we are brothers to Cain and Abel, the villain and the victim of the first human tragedy.

    Okay.  Very sad.  But now, turn back to that second cave, that other woman; what did she accomplish? “I have come,” her son tells us, “that they may have life.” “The first-born among many brethren,” St. Paul calls him; our elder brother, who has brought us supernatural life.

I’ll say it again: We can feel the “Spirit Christmas”, but only if we have the strength of mind to climb to go back to kindergarten, and pretend that we never left.  And that is what we are doing when we pay our visit to the Christmas creche. We are going back to the cradle where life—supernatural life—first dawned for us; trying to recapture some breath of our own first innocence, as we look at the girl Mother, and the Infant God, and the manger which was all the cradle he had. It is difficult, at first, to get used to it; everything is so quiet, so secret; that world is so remote; you feel as if everyone is in on the joke but you. Yet this where you belong; you, too, have been born into the family of grace, and this is the cradle of it. Unto us a Child is born, to restore something of childhood, year by year, even to the most jaded, even to the most sophisticated, even to the most disillusioned of us.

 

*I feel obliged to admit that this entire homily was plagiarized from a sermon delivered seventy years ago by Ronald Knox.  All I’ve done is update the language and modernize some of the sentiments.  If you’d like to hear the original for yourself, in all it’s prim and noble rambling British glory, you can find it on YouTube under “Ronald Knox - A Sermon for Christmas Day (1950)”