“For today in the city of David a Savior has been born for
you who is Messiah and Lord.” (Luke 2:11)
As we gather for Midnight Mass, there is always a sharp
contrast between darkness and light. The
first reading from Isaiah reminds us that God’s people who walk in darkness
have seen a great light. Behold, say the
angels, this light is born for us this day.
We too walk through the darkness of this night towards our beautiful
church with its tall steeple lighting up the night sky. We walk with the shepherds towards the manger
to behold this marvelous event. God
humbles himself and becomes a child.
It is always striking when we hear the story of the birth of
Christ that this King was born in such poverty.
We hear the name of the Roman emperor at the very beginning of tonight’s
gospel. The very name of the emperor
carried authority and power and fear. He
ordered the mighty Roman army to conquer foreign lands and to defend his
territories. And yet in a small hamlet, in
the poorest of conditions, another King is born. He too brings an army but a celestial one. We hear of the host of angels that go out
into the countryside to announce his birth.
Jesus is born without any trappings of power or riches or prestige. The powerful did not visit him this day: only the shepherds who like this child were
very poor as well.
And this is the lesson of this encounter between God and
humanity: we must be humble to recognize and embrace this child. A powerful person, a person whose ego is
bigger than them, a person that carries their head a bit too high looking down
on others cannot possibly recognize this Christ child. Is it any wonder the when you enter the
Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem that you have to bend and lower your head
to fit through the small door? We can only
encounter this newborn King in our lowliness, in our poverty, in our
humility. God has dared to become human
so that we can embrace him, touch him, hear him and fall in love with him.
Yet humility is so difficult for us to grasp. Pope Francis in his Midnight Mass homily
asked: “How do we welcome the tenderness
of God? Do I allow myself to be taken up by God, to be embraced by him, or do I
prevent him from drawing close?” The
pompous and the arrogant cannot possibly know who this Jesus is. How many times in this very church have we
given off an air of superiority because we’ve been here for decades and look down
on those who just got here? This is not
Christian. This has no place in the
Church as the Pope reminded those who worked with him earlier this week that we
could not have any airs of power or arrogance in us if we are to relay the
Christian message effectively. We have
to be meek and humble like the Christ Child.
It is becoming humble that we are able not only to love God
as he deserves but able to love others particularly the poor. “How much the world needs tenderness today!”
the Pope lamented. We gaze on the
tenderness of Mary with her newborn baby and learn from her example. We learn from the humility of Joseph who put
his pride aside to take Mary and this child into his home and cared for
them. We must be small like our
Lord. The Holy Father concludes: “When
we realize that God is in love with our smallness, that he made himself small
in order to better encounter us, we cannot help but open our hearts to him, and
beseech him: Lord, help me to be like you, give me the grace of tenderness in
the most difficult circumstances of life, give me the grace of closeness in the
face of every need, of meekness in every conflict.”
We gather as one family tonight to adore this newborn
King. We gather and marvel at his
smallness and ask him to make us small and humble like him so that we can love
and allow ourselves to be loved like him.
Cast off the darkness of pride and ego and embrace the light of meekness,
tenderness and humility this night.
Allow yourself to be loved by God in your smallness.
Merry Christmas.
