These familiar words of the Prophet Isaiah, words which capture the hope of Christmas, might ring hollow for us in these troubled days. A few weeks ago I was in Tigray, in Northern Ethiopia, to visit camps for internally displaced people.
Following a brutal war in which one million people died, about 3.5 million people—our brothers and sisters—now live in these camps. It is difficult to convey the suffering and the degradation the Tigrayan people have endured. They were forced to flee their homes, leaving everything behind.
And Tigray is but one place. This Christmas—as last—we find ourselves on the side-lines of an unrelenting war in the land in which Jesus was born which has raged for 14 months, pushing the death toll well over 45,000. Gaza, which is about the size of County Louth, has effectively been made into one massive camp with 2.3 million inhabitants, most living in makeshift accommodation atop the rubble of their homes. Unimaginable violence buries people beneath the rubble of their homes, hits the bewildered and abandoned elderly, and brutalises children in the innocence of their daily lives. The wounded, the ill and infirm die for lack of access to hospitals and medical supplies. Military checkpoints make the supply of emergency relief exceedingly difficult, with the result that malnutrition and starvation—even if it is not always reported in the West—take their toll. The injustices that happen now in Gaza are no justification for past injustices. The people of Gaza and the Holy Land, and also the people of Lebanon, and Ukraine have come to know full well that of which Isaiah speaks, when he talks of “the footgear of battle, every cloak rolled in blood…” (9:5). As Pope Francis says, “according to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide, which needs to be carefully investigated” to determine what is truly happening.
As we celebrate the Feast of Christmas, the contrast between the hopes inspired by our celebration of the birth of Christ, the Prince of Peace, and the brutal, dehumanising realities of war in Gaza weighs ever more heavily upon us. For the darkness that envelops the Holy Land lies like a pall over us in Dublin too. It is into this darkness of human making that the Prince of Peace comes. “The time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to a son, her firstborn.” (Luke 2:6).
The familiar texts of the Christmas Mass—in all their simplicity—convey a profound truth: our Saviour was born in a particular place at a particular time. He was born under Emperor Octavius, who had himself named Augustus when he reached the pinnacle of power; when Quirinius was governor of Syria; during the reign of Herod. Our God enters our history. In Jesus, God enters into our history, as it is, in all its complexity, its beauty, and its darkness and horror. The “Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24) has entered history, and makes our history holy. God has revealed his closeness. God is not far away.
But there is more: God enters the world in the most vulnerable way possible—as an infant, and as the child of people who do not count for anything. Just reflect for a moment on how God came to be “God with us” (Matt 1:23): God could have chosen to come as a powerful monarch, simply walking out of the Judean desert. But instead, out of respect for his creation, and out of a desire to experience all that we experience, he irrupted into human history as a child. That means that Jesus not only entered the world with a human body, and knew our limitedness first-hand, but entered a world of incomprehensible violence and war, resentment and revenge, famine and sickness. He was born of Mary among a people who at that time were dominated by an empire at the pinnacle of its power. The terrors of greed and unjust power affected his life from the moment of his birth. He was willing to undergo all these things including death. God knows us better than we know ourselves.
The horrors and the deaths of the conflict in Gaza, and the cynical devastation there and in the many conflicts in the rest of the world that appear to be forgotten, are not the final word in the human story, the story God writes among us. “Today a Saviour is born to you.” (Luke 2:11) Today does the Saviour come to us: today, the only day we have. Christmas calls us to welcome the Prince of Peace this very night. Mary and Joseph, the Shepherds and the Magi, in their various ways, welcomed the mystery of God into their lives. God broke into their lives. But what might it mean to welcome the Prince of Peace?
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, whom many of you will know as the author of The Little Prince was an airman during the Second World War. He knew first-hand the cost and consequences of war. Shortly before his death in that war, he reflected on peace, and on how peace comes about. Poet that he was, he found a wonderful image: “Peace,” he says, “is a tree that grows a long time.” Sometimes we grow frustrated, and lose hope when things do not happen according to our plans or in the timeframe we envisage. But peace-building, growing peace, is something that take lots of time. It must happen in the real world, or it does not happen at all. It takes time to come into the real world, to come to know the other, to learn to trust. It demands endurance; it lives out of hope. This we have learned on this island. May we, and our political and civic leaders discover what we can do to witness to the Prince of Peace in this unsettled time.
May Christ be born again this night in the hearts of all believers. May his light shine into the darkness that drives all war. May he reveal its ultimate futility. May his Spirit well up in our hearts to bring us the hope that makes true life possible. We need to discover this hope, because without it, we collapse in on ourselves. May the Spirit give us the One who is the source of that hope. May we welcome him. On this holy night, if you look at the crib, you will see that “great light” which was seen “by the people who walked in darkness” (see Isa 9:1). That light was seen by the nameless people—the powerless—of an all-powerful empire. It was not seen by the mighty, nor by the crafty Herods of this world. It was, and will always be seen, by the little ones, “the gentle and humble in heart.” (Matt 11:29) May the Holy Spirit, who brought Christ to life in Mary, bring the Prince of Peace to life in us. May the Spirit strengthen us; may he “guide our feet on the way of peace.” (see Luke 1:79)
+Dermot Farrell
Archbishop of Dublin