Wednesday, December 25, 2024

Homily of Bishop Kevin Doran at Christmas Eve Mass

Most of us have probably done a bit of shopping over the last few weeks. 

Some of you may have pushed out the boat and bought a new laptop or a tablet. There’s nothing quite like a brand-new device. It always seems so much faster than the one you had before. The software is freshly installed and the hard-drive is clean. It gathers information, processes it, and churns it out faster than you could imagine. 

Every few weeks it updates itself. But, over time, your new device picks up bugs, and sometimes the programme files become corrupted and have to be re-installed, so that your tablet or your laptop can continue to do what it was designed to do.

I want to take you back to the story of Creation in the Book of Genesis. You probably remember that the Bible spreads the story of creation over a number of days, and at the end of each part of the story we hear “And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day”. It is an essential part of our biblical faith that everything God created was good. Man and woman are created in God’s own image. That means we are created good, and we are created for relationship with God.

But, like the iPads and the laptops, God’s creation has a way of becoming corrupted over time. Not only do the lakes and the rivers become polluted, and the animals and the trees develop diseases, but man and woman also drift away from what God intended them to be. The Book of Genesis suggest to us that this happens because the first people gave into the temptation to think that they knew better than God what was good. The story of the Old Testament is really all about the installation of updates to correct “spiritual and moral bugs” that hold God’s people back from becoming what He has created them to be.

The prophets and religious leaders, like Jeremiah and Isaiah, were constantly calling people back into a more faithful relationship with God, and a more just and peaceful relationship with one another. But somehow it is never enough!

When the angel Gabriel comes to Mary with the message that she is to be the mother of God, He tells her that her child will be called Jesus, a name which means “Saviour”. His birth is what we celebrate this evening.

According to St Luke, the angel of the Lord told the shepherds not to be afraid. “Do not be afraid” is a very important message. It think it means much more than simply “don’t be afraid of what you see and hear in Bethlehem tonight”. I think, if we understand the message of the angel properly, it actually means that there is no longer any need ever to be afraid again, because “Today in the town of David a saviour has been born, who is Christ the Lord”. But what does it mean? How is this child different from all the prophets who came before Him?

The Church teaches that, in his one person, Jesus combines two natures; divine nature and human nature. It is what we call the doctrine of the Hypostatic Union. It isn’t simply an idea thought up by theologians. It is how his disciples experienced him during his life on earth. It seems to me that, when the Son of God was conceived in the Womb of the Virgin Mary, what happened was a total resetting of our human software. God was no longer sending messages. He himself was entering into human history. He was putting himself into our human DNA, so that he could show us in his own life what it actually means to be in the image and likeness of God.

The reading from the prophet Isaiah presents a powerful image of a world at peace. “All the footgear of battle, every cloak rolled in blood is burnt and consumed by fire”. And Isaiah makes a connection between this and the fact that “there is a child born for us”. But it would be naïve to think that the birth of a child, even the Son of God, would solve all the problems of our world; the casual way in which we dispose of human life; the way in which we have normalised homelessness; so many other things. From the beginning, God created us in his image and gave us the gift of reason and free will. Now, in Jesus, He has shown us how he wants us to live.

In our second reading, St. Paul says: “God’s grace has been revealed, and it has made salvation possible for the whole human race”. How is it possible? It is possible because each one of us can choose to enter into the new relationship with God which Jesus has established for us, through his birth and life among us; through his death and Resurrection. Each of us, living by the Spirit of Jesus, has the possibility of making the world a better place, through our own attitudes and actions. As St Paul says:

“God’s grace …has taught us ….to give up everything that does not lead to God and all our worldly ambitions; we must be self-restrained and live good and religious lives here in this present world, while we are waiting in hope for the blessing which will come with the Appearing of the glory of our great God and saviour Christ Jesus.”

The good news is that, in spite of all the negativity that we see around us in our world, people who are inspired by the life and teaching of Jesus continue his mission every day, in every corner of the earth; educating, caring, healing, working for justice and peace and, in all sorts of ways, giving the gift of themselves in the service of others. If you will be one of them, you can be part of saving the world.

One of the signs of hope for me in this past week was that, while the usual Christmas celebrations are suspended for a second year in Bethlehem, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pizzaballa was able for the first time in many months to celebrate Mass with the beleaguered Christian community in Southern Gaza and to bring with him some emergency relief which was badly needed. In some way or other “this also came to pass because a child was born”.

I leave you with a final thought from a Sermon preached by Saint Augustine many years ago. He asks: “What greater grace could God have made to dawn on us than to make his only Son become the son of man, so that a son of man might in his turn become son of God?” Through the coming of Jesus, each one of you is a daughter or a son of God. May he help you to live as members of His family.