COME TO THE MANGER

 A SERMON FOR CHRISTMAS DAY

We have come to think of this world we live in as godless.  A godless world…  What is that, a godless world?  A world without God?  Well, not exactly, because God is everywhere, whether we know it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not.  Certainly, for an increasingly greater number of people in this world, God has ceased to exist, at least in their own minds.  He plays no role in their lives, and they very rarely think of him at all, except perhaps when they’re in trouble and demand he perform a miracle for them.  Otherwise, when these folks actually do think of God, their thoughts are like the thoughts of King Herod—‘this God is a danger to us, he is an obstacle, preventing us from doing all the “pleasant” things we want to do, and therefore we must drive him out of this, our brave, new world.’  And like King Herod, they send out their soldiers—the Antifa thugs and Black Lives Matter brigade, the looters in the department stores, the woke politicians in Congress and the military, the propagandists in the schools and corporate media—and they all conspire together to make sure all references to God and his laws are obliterated from the national consciousness.  They try their best to “cancel” God.

So, in this sense, we do live in a godless world.  And yet our catechism teaches us that God is everywhere.  There is no corner of this godless world that actually is godless.  For he is there, whether or not we want him to be there.  He is there from the depths of the ocean to the highest peaks, and even beyond throughout the vast universe he created.  We may not see his presence, we may not hear the heavenly choir in constant praise of his divine majesty—‘Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus’—and yet we know he is there, hidden in every cubic inch of his creation, hidden in every breath we take, every thought we have.  God is present.

He is present in different ways.  His omnipresence in creation is of a spiritual nature.  His presence in a tree does not make that tree God.  We are not pantheists who think that every element of creation actually is a god.  We don’t worship “Mother Earth.”  We merely acknowledge that the earth and all the elements it contains, by their beauty, their form, their very existence, reflect the presence of the Creator within them.

But then, sometimes, God intervenes in our world, and although still hidden, he makes his presence known.  We see this in Holy Scripture, when God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and then later, when the Hebrews fled Egypt to go to the Promised Land, the same Moses wrote that “The Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light.”

Even today, the same divine intervention comes to us in the Blessed Sacrament, where the Real Presence of Almighty God descends upon our altars, hidden this time under the form of bread and wine.  Hidden, always hidden.  God hides himself, because we mere mortals are incapable of seeing God as he is really us.  Think about it: we have five senses—sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell—each a physical aspect of our own finite, mortal, human body.  How can any of these very limited senses grasp the enormity, the infinite beauty of the divine?  It’s impossible, and so when God appears to us, he does so in a hidden way so that we can know his presence, and yet not perceive it physically.  It’s the way it has to be, if you think about it.

But there was a day, many years ago, in a stable in Bethlehem, when God’s presence took on a whole different aspect.  It took the form of a little Child, who was born and actually dwelt amongst us.  Great kings and mere shepherds were drawn to that Child.  With their own eyes they saw his tiny face peeking out from his swaddling clothes; with their ears, they heard his little baby sounds; they could reach down and stroke his Holy Face.  For the first time, man could see God.  No wonder then, that we call him the Light of the World.  Like the burning bush and the pillar of fire of the Old Testament, God now illuminated a dark world with his light.  Only this time, he didn’t merely appear as a light—he was that Light.  He drove out the darkness of that night with the very light of his presence, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.  This appearance of God in human form that first Christmas did not herald in a physical light, but something far greater.  The Light of Christ would drive out the spiritual darkness of sin, unable to withstand the presence of this God made man.

There are no words to describe the enormity of what took place that midnight long ago in the piercing cold of winter.  And yet, this great event was hidden away in the most unexpected of places, a ramshackle little stable amid the filth of the animals whose home it was.  The Light of Christ was not visible to the surrounding world.  No one would ever have thought to come to the manger and witness this occasion.  And so God sent physical lights, one in a far-off land in the form of a star, which would lead three kings to Bethlehem.  But now, on Christmas night, lights were seen all around the Little Town of Bethlehem.  Most people were asleep, but out in the fields there were shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night.  And “and, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them.”  This angel revealed to the shepherds what had happened, “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”  And he told them where to go and what they would see when they got there.  “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest.”  For on this night, there was, such as there had never been before, “Glory to God in the highest”.  And from those highest heavens, the herald angels sang that glory to the newborn King.  They sang that glory with great joy, and that Joy was transmitted to the world.  Joy to the world.

What a pity, you might think, that we don’t have this joy today.  For we can no longer behold the divine face of the Christ Child dwelling among us.  When we come to the manger today, it’s to look at a mere statue of a little baby in his crib, but it’s not the real thing.  Oh really?  How easily we forget!  Look for a while at the manger scene, but then shift your eyes over to the right a little way.  The same Son of God who was present on that first Christmas morning, the exact same Son of God who is represented by that little statue over there, is present again at the words of consecration during our Mass.  He may be hidden under the form of bread and wine, but let’s not forget that even in Bethlehem, the dazzling brilliance of the eternal and almighty God had to be hidden under his human nature as a little baby—after all, this was the closest he could come to allowing us to see him.  Yes, we saw him literally “in the flesh”, but this was the Word made Flesh—not merely a man child, but God himself, hidden behind this flesh.  God is always hidden. 

Today, we may no longer see the Christ Child in the flesh, but let’s be conscious of the gift this Child left us at the end of his all too short life.  It was the precious gift of his eternal Real Presence, a presence that would continue, through the continuation of his sacrifice on the Cross in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, a Mass that can never be abolished, no matter how hard his enemies might try.  Hidden here on our altar at Mass, under the form of bread and wine, imperceivable to our physical senses, lies the same divine Being as once hid himself under the form of a Child in Bethlehem.  There is no difference, and we are called to this manger to receive him into our hearts just as the shepherds were called to the stable in Bethlehem to receive him in their midst on that first Christmas morning.  So come to the manger!  Venite, adoremus!  O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord!