CHRISTMAS
2018
Today we want to read in silent
prayer and contemplation the Gospels of the birth of Jesus which are read at
Christmas.
Christmas invites us to let the
mystery of God, made vulnerable, surprise us.
Christmas invites us to be silent
and to allow the Presence of our Creator and Redeemer fill us.
Christmas invites us to discover His
presence in each human face, especially in the children and in the most
vulnerable.
Gospel
of the Midnight Mass – Luke 2:1-14
This Gospel has two different
scenes. Let us contemplate each one of them.
The first scene is the birth of
Jesus:
v Luke puts the birth of Jesus in the context of the
history of his time. He mentions names
and events, that we can find in any History
book. Luke wants to tell us that Jesus is a real human being, not a figment of
our imagination.
v There is a census, something that all of us are
familiar with, because every some years we have a census taken in our country. A census is always about counting people. How
interesting it is, to realize that behind the data of the census there are
realities that we do not know, joys and sufferings in the lives of those
counted, as it happened with the census of Quirinius.
v Joseph belongs to David’s family. According to the way
the census was conducted, everyone had to go back to his or her place of origin
to be counted. Therefore, Joseph had to
go to Bethlehem the city of David. He goes there with his wife who is with
child, at a very late stage of her pregnancy.
v The time to give birth came as they arrived in
Bethlehem. I leave it to each one’s imagination, especially of the women who
have given birth, what this moment means for a woman. Then we may look to Mary
and try to discover her feelings.
v There is no place for them at the inn. This can be
understood in several different ways:
o
There is no
place because they are poor
o
There is no
place because the inn is full.
o
There is no
place because they do not want to be disturbed by a woman in labor.
o
There is no place,
because the inn is full of people and this is not an adequate setting for a
woman to give birth. Giving birth requires privacy, intimacy, sacredness.
o
And the
innkeeper, that I am inclined to look at as a good man, offers them the cave
where the animals take refuge at night. There they will be able to be by
themselves.
v And Luke says very briefly” the time came for her to
have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling
clothes.”
o
An the time
came for her, the hour that every pregnant woman expects with joy because she
is going to see for the first time the face of her baby; but at the same time she is overcome by
anxiety, she does not know what will happen to her, especially when it is the
first child, as in the case of Mary.
o
Joseph helped
Mary to give birth to her son. I like to imagine Joseph, the just man, the good
man, with tears in his eyes as the mystery was enfolding in front of him. Tears
of thanksgiving and emotion on seeing the face of the Son of God made the Son
of man. He would have to be the father of the son of God, his God who had asked
him to change the plans he had for his life with Mary, and thus cooperate in the work
of the salvation of the human race.
o
Mary sees, kisses,
and feeds for the first time her baby, who is the Son of the Eternal
Father.
o
I believe that
it is impossible for us to understand the fullness of this mystery, so full of
joy and suffering at the same time. Let
us contemplate in silence, admiration and unconditional love this mystery.
Let us contemplate the second scene
of this same gospel: There are some shepherds watching their flock during the
night.
v They live in the fields; they do not live in houses,
not even in stables. They take turns in
keeping their flocks.
v Shepherds were considered people of not good standing
in society: they were poor but they were seen as liars, as thieves, people who
had to do many things in order to survive.
v To them the angel of the Lord is sent to announce the
good news of the birth of the Son of God among us. An angel had also been sent
to Mary, to Zechariah, to Joseph. Let us analyze the message, because it
contains several of the dearest themes
of Luke:
o
Be not afraid. Fear is the
natural reaction of the human being in the presence of the Mystery, of God or
of his messengers. Jesus will repeat these same words to his apostles on Easter
Sunday evening.
o
I have good
news to proclaim to you, which will be the cause of great joy. The joy of the presence of God in our life, in
our society, in our history. God is
always a cause of joy. In the Old Testament, Zion was invited many times to
rejoice because “your King comes to you.”
o
Today, it is the “now” of salvation. Luke uses several
titles to describe the child who has been born and who is the cause of joy:
Savior, Messiah, and Lord. Jesus is all of that and more, but this is the
paradox of God’s work, so different from our works and our parameters, our King
comes as a poor and vulnerable baby.
o
Poverty, although Luke
does not mention the word poverty, he says that the baby was wrapped in
swaddling clothes, and lay in a manger. These are signs of poverty. God could only be born in poverty, because
riches most of the times are void of meaning, and of truth. Real poverty is the
same as truth.
o
Praise, many more
angels join the first angel and they sang “GLORY
TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST AND ON EARTH PEACE… to men and women of good will. Praise and peace, two words that we find more
than once in Luke’s Gospel. After the
annunciation Mary sings, in the evening of Easter Sunday Jesus greets his own
saying: PEACE.
Let us continue now with the Gospel
of the Sunrise Mass.
Gospel
of Luke 2:15-20
It has been said that Luke was a
painter, and that he painted the portrait of Mary; but some commentators say
that the best paintings of Luke were painted with his words, not with brushes.
The gospel of the Midnight Mass had
two scenes. The gospel for the Sunrise Mass has also two different scenes: the
shepherds, and Mary.
v The shepherds decide to do something about the good
news they have received, they go to see the truth of what has been told to
them.
v Because they go, they see. What do they see? A newborn baby in a manger,
Joseph and Mary. We have here another of
the themes cherished by Luke, faith. He
does not mention the word, but the scene speaks more eloquently than words.
They see a baby and they recognize in
that vulnerable baby, as vulnerable as any other baby, the Messiah and Lord.
v The shepherds made know the message that had been told
about the baby.
v The first scene ends here.
The second scene is about Mary.
v Mary kept all those things, reflecting on them in her
heart.
o
She kept them,
these are her memories. The memories of everything that had to do with the
baby:
§ At the annunciation; the reaction of her parents, of
Joseph and of the people of
Nazareth.
§ The journey to
Bethlehem, during which both Joseph and Mary could share their experience about
the baby that was in Mary’s womb. The birth, the shepherds… All of these are
her memories.
o
She cherishes
them in her heart, meditates on them. Luke does not say that Mary understands,
she cannot understand them, they go beyond our human understanding. But she
cherishes them, and believes because she trusts in the God who has made the
promises to her. Faith is to trust he who has called us to life and has given
us his salvation.
Mass
of the Day – Gospel of John 1:1-14
Ø The Gospel for this Mass is taken from the Prologue of
John’s Gospel. Luke has painted,
described for us four different scenes related to the birth of Jesus.
Ø John leads us into the mystery, he removes the curtain,
this is the meaning of revelation, to see what is behind the curtain like in a
theatre. He helps us to discover the mystery hidden behind the events and the
different characters.
Ø In the two former Masses Luke has narrated the birth
of Jesus, called Messiah and Lord.
Ø The Church, the community of the believers and
followers, led by the Spirit sent by Jesus to her, has deepened into the theological
meaning of the events related to the birth of Jesus. Let us hear what John has to say
o
In the
beginning was the Word… and the Word was God. If we go to the first book of the Bible, the
Book of Genesis the first words are “In the beginning…God created… and
God said … God says his Word and the abyss becomes a wonderful and beautiful
creation.
o
John continues
his theological reflection and says that the Word existed from the beginning,
that without him nothing came to be. The
darkness did not recognize him. Darkness,
our own and that of our society, and of our world
cannot understand and accept his light.
o
John proceeds
and says that the light, the Word, was
in the world, but the world did not acknowledge his presence.
o
He came to his
own and they did not welcome him. Sometimes we think that these words are said
of the people of Bethlehem; but I believe that we need to enter into our heart,
and to discover, in how many ways we do not welcome him into ourselves. Only in
this way we will be able to understand the dreadful mystery of the human heart
that can refuse to recognize and welcome his or her Creator.
o
To those who
did accept him… According to some
commentators verses 12 and 13 refer to
the virginal birth of Jesus, and also to our baptism.
o
And we reach
now the climax of the prologue AND THE WORD BECAME FLESH
§ The creating Word, the Word who is the Eternal
Father’s Son
§ Became flesh. Flesh means the condition of the sinful
and vulnerable human being. Without having any sin, because God cannot sin, he
becomes like us, to be able to nail to the cross, as Paul says, our flesh and
in so doing to give us his life, the life of the Father’s Son.
§ He made his dwelling among us, in some translations he
“put his tent among…” This sentence makes us think of the nomads, the pilgrims
who do not stay in a same place forever.
We are all pilgrims in this world. He puts his tent and lives like
anyone of us. John
Paul II in the document for the preparation of the Third Millennium wrote: he loved with a human heart, he worked with hands
of a man, talked… he was and is one of us.
§ This gospel ends with the words that John will repeat
in his I Letter. He is fascinated in awe by the truth of what they had
experienced living with Jesus “and we saw his glory, the glory as of the
Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.”
§ THIS IS THE BABY WE CONTEMPLATE IN BETHLEHEM WITH MARY
AND JOSEPH, SURROUNDED BY ANIMALS, GREETED BY THE SHEPHERDS AND PROCLAIMED BY
THE ANGELS:
GLORY
TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST AND ON EARTH PEACE TO MEN AND WOMEN OF GOOD WILL.
