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 gives names
and events which we can find in any historical 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. 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 were conducted,
everyone had to go back to their 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 moments
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. To give
birth requires privacy, intimacy, sacredness.
o
And the innkeeper, that I am inclined to look at as
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
sawddling 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 own life, 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 to be 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 was also sent to Mary to Zechariah, to Joseph. Let us
analyze the message, because it contains several of the themes so dear to
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 many times are void of meaning, and of truth. Real poverty is the truth.
o
The praise, many more
angels join the first angel and they sing “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 the Gospel of Luke. 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 painte, 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 And because
they go they see. But, what do they see? A new born 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 recognized in that vulnerable baby, as vulnerable as
any other baby, the Messiah and Lord.
v And 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 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. 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. But the darkness did not acknowledge
it. Our darkness, our own and the 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 the Word.
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 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.
§
