Christmas 2003
“For us men, and for our salvation, He came down from Heaven. By the power of the Holy Spirit, He became incarnate
from the Virgin Mary and was made man.” These lines from the 1600 year-old Creed we profess every Sunday and Holy Day
sum up the mystery and the meaning of Christmas. They tell us who Jesus is: the One who came down from Heaven, or God. They
tell us why He came: for our salvation. They tell us how He came: by the power of the Holy Spirit and from the flesh of the
Virgin Mary. They tell us what He became: man.
Who He is (God) calls forth from us the faith of Mary and Joseph and the adoration of the three Kings. Why He came
(for our salvation) calls forth the thanksgiving and joy of the shepherds. How He came (by the Holy Spirit and from the flesh
of the Virgin Mary) calls forth the holy fear and wonder of all those in the crib. What He became (man) calls forth our heartfelt
love, and also gives us great consolation and hope, since He wanted to be with us, so close to us, like us in all things,
except sin.
When Yahweh revealed His Name to Moses in the Book of Exodus, He had said: “I Am Who Am”, a mysterious
phrase which is perhaps best understood as meaning: “I am always present and faithful, and will thus be always present
and faithful to you, my people.” When He revealed His Glory to Moses, He went further, saying: “Yahweh, Yahweh,
God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger and rich in kindness and faithful love.” In the Child of Bethlehem,
God reveals in fullness exactly what His Name and His Glory mean for us: God is humility itself, God is helpless in His love
for mankind; God is “addicted” to mankind. He is prepared not just to travel to the ends of the earth, not even
just to the ends of the universe for love of us. No, He came from the ends of Heaven itself, He emptied Himself of His divine
glory, and appeared as a humble man. And as we know, He would go further still and travel to the farthest regions of the “underworld”
to rescue from death those for whose sake He would suffer and die.
Jesus is the unique and universal Savior of humanity, Immanuel, the only true God-with-us! His virgin-birth reveals
the tenderness of God’s holy embrace of our human state. He casts upon our shadowy existence the Light of God’s
merciful compassion. He offers us, if we would only receive it, liberation from fear, from error, from sin, from death. By
becoming man, He wants man to understand that man himself need not fear God, since God Himself both created and became man
for man’s own sake. By becoming a little, humble, dependent child, He delivers us from the illusion of worldly greatness
and power and identifies true greatness as being child-like. By becoming our brother, He restores the broken bonds of all
human relationships and renders possible the reconciliation of the family of mankind in Himself. Born of a woman, He removes
the curse God imposed upon Eve and restores God’s blessing to all child-bearing and to all children conceived in the
womb of every woman, no matter what the circumstances. Born in poverty as the foster-child of a carpenter, He removes the
curse God imposed upon Adam and restores God’s blessing to the dignity of all honest work, no matter how humble. Born
to a mother and a father, He upholds the authority of one and the other and submits Himself to them in the maturing virtue
of obedience, restoring order and security to the home. Born from His birth to persecution and flight, He takes to Himself
the cause of the downtrodden and the displaced. Born to a life that was largely routine and unknown, He blesses with His presence
the anonymity and tedium of the lives of the vast majority of human beings.
The uniqueness of this child beckons the uniqueness of every child that has ever been, and ever shall be, conceived.
As His Name was pronounced by the Angel before His conception, so He Himself pronounces in God’s Heart the name of every
child before it is conceived. The incarnation of Jesus is the definitive guarantee of the dignity of every child, born and
unborn, and the equally definitive assurance that, in the eyes of God and in the Heart of the Virgin Mother, no-one is anonymous,
no-one forgotten.
As a little baby: that is how God chose to begin the revelation of His Son
to us in the fullness of time. In that revelation is God’s unchanging “yes” to the human race. In it is
therefore the definitive hope which that “yes” gives to each one of us on this Holy Night. No matter how many
and how great the reasons each of us, and all of us, may have for sadness or anxiety –and God knows, in today’s
world, there are many!- the Light of the Star of Bethlehem bids us look upon the Christ-Child at Mary’s breast and forsake
our despair. For there, lying in the poverty of the manger, humble, helpless and, oh, so vulnerable, is the Son of God whose
love has conquered every evil and who, this very night, offers afresh to each one of us that deep and lasting peace for which
we long.
These are the gifts which the Son of God and the Child of Mary gives to every child of the human race. These are the
gifts we should speak of, think of, sing of, in our homes and our Churches today. These are the gifts our children should
learn of and be taught to love and long for, from Jesus. For these are the only gifts that will bring us true and lasting
joy.
And what price are we prepared to pay, not for the gifts, but to respond in kind to the Giver? Let me suggest that
we take the words of the Creed I mentioned at the beginning, and turn them around and apply them to ourselves. Perhaps this
is how it would sound: “For your sake, o Jesus Christ, and for your Glory, I will seek to keep my whole being fixed
upon the Kingdom of Heaven. By the power of the Holy Spirit, and by the
prayer of the Virgin Mary, I will seek to become ever more like You and so become more fully a child of God.”
In a few moments, we will recite those words from the Creed which I mentioned at the beginning, and which sum up the
Mystery and the meaning of Christmas. I invite you at that point to kneel and, as you do so, to see in your heart’s
eye that Star and that Child, to feel the immense hope His love brings you this Holy Night and to offer to Him the gift of
your whole self, the only worthy response to the One “who came down from Heaven, for us men and for our salvation.”
Msgr. Peter Magee
December 24th-25th,
2003: Our Lady of the Presentation, Poolesville: 6.30 pm
& 10.45 am
