St Peter’s Cathedral, Belfast
Readings : Is. 9.1-7; Ps 95 ; Tit. 2.11-14; Lk.2.1-14
I. The Liturgy of the Word for the Nativity : a window unto the saving mystery of the Incarnation
The
Liturgy of the Word on this Christmas night narrates the drama of the
birth of God in the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth. With human
words and literary devices these age-old and sacred texts speak of the
self-revelation of God in human history.
Year
in and year out, and from generation to generation, these texts provide
us with a glimpse of the divine as deciphered at work in history by
prophet and first Christian writers.
Prayed
and thought over, these lines of Sacred Scripture, the words, and
settings of these readings for the Feast of the Nativity, stretch our
human sense of the transcendent. Based on these readings, our prayer
and thought processes introduce us to the person of Jesus of Nazareth,
the Son of God in the Christ child and to the Good News of the gospel He
offers.
II. Gospel Good News in hard times
As
in recent years, we hear this Good News in a time of great worry and
stress for all our families. Most immediately we and our families feel
the impact of the economic recession. Unemployment, loss of work,
joblessness for our youth and for friends not so young, negative equity,
poverty and new forms of poverty in our families and neighbourhoods
loom in the ambient air. These tough and hard-hitting realities are the
setting in which we receive and re-live the Good Tidings of Christmas
2012.
Beyond
this immediate insecurity, a further set of questions and issues
preoccupy our time. Among them feature such issues as, humanly apt
models for the world economy and models for its just governance so that
work is secured and wealth is produced and distributed in justice, care
of the cosmos and creation, issues of gender and gender identity, the
future of marriage as an institution, ethical limits and the frontiers
in the bio-sciences and biotechnological research, issues of ethnic
identity and its legitimate expression. One could go on.
These and a
host of issues induce a sense of living at the edge, a sense of living
on an uncertain frontier, that would seem to lead to possible, massive
and tectonic shifts in lifestyle, in our habits, in established and
accepted anthropological and cultural paradigms.
In
regard to all of this stuff of our almost daily experience, a few
question arise for Christmas thought and discussion : what shifts are
likely to take place? Will humanity guide them so that they ennoble
human life and existence? Will these shifts enhance and improve life,
the system of human values in the domains of personal and social ethics?
What contribution will we as Christians make to humanity’s efforts to
address all these burning issues? Will you and I play our part? How
shall we do so?
III Christian Faith – a faith and lifestyle for the edge
Against
this sketch of our times, many thinking people, Christian believers
included, have a sense of being suspended precariously on the edge. As
Tennyson put it : ‘the old order changeth yielding place to new’. John
Henry Newman, shared by the Anglican and Catholic traditions, friend of
Fr Charles Russell, of Co Down, a priest of this diocese, who spent his
life in Maynooth College, once asserted that ‘ to live is to change, and
to change is to become perfect’.
In
any event, if we feel on edge in the face of massive changes around us,
if we feel insecure in the face of all that is happening, it is worth
looking again at the narrative of Christ’s birth.
In that scene and event, it is noteworthy that God is born on the edge, in insecurity, in the provisional setting of a stable.
Indeed
his mission, his permanent engagement with those on the margins, his
crucifixion, his death between two thieves, reveals God as linked
inextricably to the precarious edge, to the domain of the powerless, to
the frontier with the unknown and insecure. This is the surprise of God
as revealed in the Jewish Christian tradition.
In
Jesus of Nazareth, born of the young woman Mary, and through his
mission, God has revealed the power that is divine grace to address and
save humanity, particularly at the edge. This Gospel grace is offered
freely. Its capacity to save depends in some part on our active
co-operation and the lifestyle and values we espouse in concrete
practice.
IV The secular : periscope to the sacred
An
intriguing feature of our times, and in which we celebrate the
Incarnation, my dear friends in Christ, is that the secular order of
everyday life – the new frontier issues just referred to – unveils
with ever sharper profile questions of the meaning and the purpose of
life.
The secular order, professional and daily experience, are
birthing questions of ultimate meaning, questions regarding the purpose,
dignity and meaning of human life and how such meaning and dignity are
to be provided for in the structures of society.
In arenas of experience
and knowledge, the secular order is unveiling ultimate questions that
cannot be answered without the input of religious insight offered in
dialogue with the human sciences and reason and as a living continuation
of the saving mystery of the dynamic of the Incarnation. The secularist
denial of the utility of such dialogue leads to an impoverishment of
the secular.
The
salvation-mystery of God incarnate in the historical person of Jesus of
Nazareth, the Christian insight that each human being bears an imprint
of the divine, is born in the image of God, the life and mission of
Jesus – these foundational elements of Christian faith are the grounds
and the stuff of the Good News that informs the engagement of Christian
faith and lifestyle with the permanently opaque and tumultuous nature of
the human condition, that is ever in need from generation to generation
of the word and grace of salvation.
Whatever
the issues of our personal life span, we cannot totally escape the
drama of salvation, the cry of the poor and powerless for justice, the
human search for ultimate meaning and its codifications.
V. Christmas : a time to connect in faith with the Person of Jesus Christ
Christmas
Night and Christmas Day offer an oasis in the year’s calendar. The
Christmas season offers a time to re-connect with family, with friends,
perhaps with the roots of one’s identity, with the person of Jesus
Christ as the centre of personal Christian faith.
In
this Year of Faith in particular, running from Sunday 11 October past
until the Feast of Christ the King on Sunday 24 November next year, this
Feast of the Nativity of Christ offers us, whatever our condition, an
invitation to re-discover:
- The sacred liturgy and personal prayer
- The Christian tradition of art, culture and engagement with societal issues
- Christian thought and literature
- The biblical and Gospel contribution to our human value system and ethics
- Christian anthropology and Catholic Social Thought
as
spring-boards for vigorous, thoughtful and full lifestyle, for
engagement with the human condition into which God was born in order to
save humanity from evil and the power of sin.
The
Christ child, gazed upon in 2012, invites us to kindle our journey of
faith, an adventure yes, sometimes an odyssey, always a life choice
which limbers up heart, mind and all one’s mental and bodily energies.
Engagement
in faith with the mystery of the incarnation leads to self-possessed
living. It links us to community and socialises qualitatively. It opens
our minds and hearts to new meaning, to an anthropology of salvation and
to a saving Hope.
May
the Hope and Joy of the Good News be in our hearts and homes, on our
streets and in our neighbourhoods this Christmas and in the New Year.
Amen.