UNTO US A CHILD IS BORN

A SERMON FOR CHRISTMAS DAY

“Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given.”  I was thinking the other day how little we know about the birth of history’s famous men.    Kings, presidents, great explorers and inventors, writers and artists, men renowned in their generation, whose names we remember and admire even today.  We may be quite familiar with their exploits and their works, and many of them are even famous for the way they died, but what do we know about the circumstances of their birth, or even their childhood?  The fact is, we usually don’t care to know or bother to remember, because quite simply, that part of their life just isn’t relevant to the deeds for which they are famous.

So why has God revealed so much about the birth of his only-begotten Son at Christmas?  Why did the evangelists St. Matthew and more especially St. Luke, record so much about the birth of Christ?  It would surely have been sufficient if the Gospels had begun with the baptism of our Lord in the River Jordan, and the start of his earthly ministry at the age of thirty.  Or would it?

God doesn’t reveal his truths to us for no reason.  And there are many, many reasons why we have been given so much information about our Blessed Lord’s birth.  We can learn so much about our Saviour from the events surrounding his nativity in Bethlehem.  We witness his poverty and humility, as he is born in a stable, and at the same time, his royalty, born the descendant of the House of King David.  We behold his divinity, declared by the herald angels, and his humanity as he is wrapped in swaddling clothes to keep him warm.  He manifests himself first to his chosen people the Jews, when the shepherds come to adore him, and then to the Gentiles, Wise Men from the east who follow the star and bring him gifts.

All these things and more we learn from the Christmas story.  The Nativity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the stable at Bethlehem is a scene familiar to all Christians.  We meditate upon these events in the Third Joyful Mystery of the Rosary, and it is truly a joyful festival day unalloyed by sadness of any kind.  “Joy to the world, the Lord is come, let earth receive her King.”

For no matter how incongruous it might sound, this newborn baby was born a king.  Kings are not usually born as king.  The normal procedure is that a king and queen have a baby boy, who spends his early years as a prince until his father, the king, dies.  At that point, and at that point only, does he become king.  But in the case of our Lord Jesus Christ, his Father was the most High Almighty God, who was and is eternal and shall never die.  Thus, the Son of God was never a “king in waiting” but the living Heir, human and divine, born the King of Israel.

And so we have this apparent contrast between the idea of a high and mighty king on the one hand, a ruler and judge of his people, and this tiny newborn infant, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, the epitome of innocence, pure of soul and body, and so apparently indifferent to the world around him.  

God has reasons for presenting us with this paradoxical concept of an Infant King.  He is our King whom we revere and worship, our Judge whom we must fear, but at one and the same time he is a tiny baby whom we would cherish and protect and love.  Our Christmas carols provide some hints as to this mysterious contrast.  For example, in the carol “Hark, the herald angels sing, Glory to the newborn King,” we find a most meaningful and consequential line in the  third verse, where we sing “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate Deity.”  Think about those words for a moment—"Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate Deity.”  It’s not just the kingship of God’s own Son hidden in the form of a little Child, it’s far more.  What we have in this little Child of Bethelehem is the Divinity itself hidden in the form of a human being.  And not just any human being, but a human in his most simple, most innocent, and most vulnerable form of all, that of a tiny baby.

The mystery of God made man, “the incarnate Deity”, is the very essence of the Christmas story.  It is the reason and purpose for which Christ was born, that he may take on human form so that he could suffer and die, while retaining his divine nature so that he could make the sufficient and infinite reparation for the sins of humanity.  God and man, it was the only possible way to reopen the gates of heaven after Adam’s Fall.  

With this in mind, we Christians should be quite open to the mystery of the Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament.  If the Godhead can hide himself in the form of a little baby, then why not in the form of a tiny piece of unleavened bread?  Is it any more or less a miracle than the events of this wondrous day when God’s presence became visible for the first time in this world of sin?  “O Godhead hid, devoutly I adore thee.”  Adoro te devote, latens Deitas.   It’s a famous eucharistic hymn known to all of us, written by St. Thomas Aquinas for the feast of Corpus Christi.  We could equally sing it before the image of the Christ Child lying in the tabernacle of his manger.  Remember what a manger is.  It comes from the French word, manger, which means “to eat”, and it’s a trough or rack, a feeder used to contain food for the animals in the stable.  The Christ Child’s first home in this cold world was where animals take their food.

The Child who lies in the manger would grow to change water into wine at Cana, and wine into his Precious Blood at the Last Supper.  His flesh would become “food indeed,” he told his disciples, and he described himself as the Bread of Life, an unambiguous reference to the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.  He was born in the House of Bread, which if you translate the words into Hebrew, are Beth Lehem, Bethlehem.  The manger where the animals fed was his first tabernacle, and he still dwells today in the tabernacles of our churches, his new House of Bread and our new Bethlehem, where we once again “Come to the Manger,” where all we faithful “Come and Adore Him, Christ the Lord.”  There is no essential difference between the Child in the Manger and the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.  They are one and the same, God divinely human.

It’s Christmas Day.  Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given.  And this gift of a Saviour is a gift that keeps giving.  If you don’t believe me, come back to Mass next Sunday, every Sunday.  What we celebrate so very specially on this, Christ’s birth-day, it’s our joy to celebrate every day the Mass is said on our altars, where the Word is made flesh, and dwells amongst us.  

For now, blessed be this day on which it all began.  Let us kneel in awe before this mystery of our Redemption, and give Glory to God in the highest.  Come, all ye faithful, joyful, triumphant, and let us give thanks unto God for the gift of the Infant King.