This is the theme of the beautiful Prologue that begins John’s gospel. Light has burst into our world, the light that is the Word of God. This Word or Wisdom produces the world, including ourselves. Just as the sun’s light is the source of all our energy on earth, so the Word or Light of God is the source the sun and other trillions of stars.
In the beginning was the Word, through which all things came to be. The Word is the light that enlightens all people. Light which darkness can never overpower. This is the best news of all, for our world is shot through with darkness, caused by the bad things we do to each other when we selfishly seek to please ourselves, without thinking of other people or how we are harming other creatures that the Word has made.
It is selfishness that allows millions of our sisters and brothers to be starving this Christmas; that allows children to be abused, or exploited in pornography. Wisdom is forgotten when whole populations are oppressed, or even massacred, as happened here in Australia, and is happening in Myanmar, Yemen, Ukraine, Palestine and countless other places. We need to find the Light, when in this wealthy nation many children are hungry, and many people have no home.
The central mystery that Christians treasure is that the Word which created us, came among us. Born to the girl Mary. Jesus of Nazareth is the Word become flesh, who lived among us. He is the Light of the world, whose teaching and example enlighten us. He stood firmly against the worst evils that our structures of religion and the state can do to people, and overcame them nonviolently, by love. By passing through death he showed us the way to become enlightened, and how to build God’s Reign of light and love.
Is it any wonder we put up Christmas lights to mark his birth, and feast with our families and friends?
It is easy to be distracted from the most important things in life. Months before the day when we celebrate the ancient festival of Christ-Mass, the shops that invite us to buy their goods are gaudily decorated but seldom mention the One whose birthday we are celebrating. Children hope to receive gifts from a man with a white beard, dressed in red suit and cap, but no one reminds them that Santa Claus is Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century bishop in Southern Italy who helped poor children with his gifts.
Has the Christian church partly lost focus? When Saint Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome – today’s First Reading – he announced the “Good News”: that the crucified man, Jesus of Nazareth had passed through death and that we have all received amazing gifts because of him. Paul declared that Christ is now God among us, fulfilling the ancient prophecy of Isaiah about a baby called Immanuel, “God with Us”. The sublime gift of the Good News assures us that God is for us, loves us, and that we ourselves are “holy”, like God’s own self. Can we receive any gift more precious than love?
Who, what, is this God who loves us? Every people has formed its own “image” of the unseen Source that made the stars and our world. But when we attempt to describe God or God’s actions we can use only mythological stories, which are not untrue but are always inadequate because we must take images from our limited material world to describe the indescribable infinite.
The gospel writers were looking back from a few decades after Jesus had passed through death. John described him simply as the son of Joseph (John 1:43, 6:42); Mark and Matthew mentioned his brothers and sisters (Mark 4:31, 6:3, Matthew 13:55). Matthew and Luke also tell how his mother Mary was still a virgin when Jesus was conceived in her by the Holy Spirit. We cannot presume that all these precious attempts to describe God’s works in human words, are literally true in every detail.
When trying to give maximum dignity to what we honour most, we sometimes risk destroying the truth by exaggerating. The shocking truth of the Incarnation is that God is deeply joined to our world and our humanness at its most wretched: in the awful humiliation of his tortured death, and in his ordinary birth in a shed. The unimaginable God was born just as we were: weak and fragile, amid blood and pain. Some Christians, perhaps uneasy about their own sexuality, have tried to insist that Jesus was born miraculously, or that his body was not really physical. We find it difficult to accept our awesome dignity, that God is within us, and often miss the point that God’s is in every neighbour too, and within the other species that we so often exploit and destroy.
Scholars * have shown that many early Christian writers like St Augustine and St Jerome, who strongly shaped our Christian tradition, often minimised the value of human love, sexuality and parenthood. But the glorious truth is that we can be co-workers with God’s Spirit especially in these primary human activities.
Not only is God within us as friend. Because we carry “the Son of God in all his power” (Romans 1:4), we can give people around us far greater gifts than tinsel-wrapped chocolates or clothing. We can change our world. While it is important to honour each other with gifts and family celebrations, there are things of greater value than these. Pondering and using the precious divine gifts that are available for the asking, we will find even deeper joy in the Christ-Mass season.
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* E.g. Uta Ranke-Heinemann, Eunuchs for Heaven. The Catholic church and Sexuality. 1990.
We are rightly proud of the kindergartens, schools, and health care we provide for our children. But it is important to recall that a huge number – perhaps even half – of the world’s little ones cannot get the care, education and even the food that they need. They would get all they needed, if we spent on them just a fraction of the money we spend on weapons and war. These days it is painful even to look briefly at video footage coming out of Afghanistan, Yemen and Ethiopia. Children starving to death are surely one of the most heart-breaking sights we could ever see.
It have had the privilege of visiting extremely poor people in the slums of Manila and cities in India and Pakistan. Those people have always impressed me by their warm and generous hospitality, and particularly by their love for their children. But I am told, and sometimes have seen myself, that once a new baby has grown a bit, becoming mobile and partly independent, the parents simply cannot give it the loving attention it deserves and needs. Those parents work for long hours, but have little money and don’t even have a secure living space, so their children often roam the streets, and some become involved with drugs and crime.
Today is Christmas! Quite rightly we celebrate with great joy and hope, for it is the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth. But again, it is important to recall that he too was born in poverty; he was a homeless refugee, and after a short life was to die in total poverty, without dignity and abandoned by his friends. Yet his birth, which we rejoice in today, puts us in touch with the greatest beauty and the deepest meaning that we human beings can know.
Today’s first reading from the prophet Isaiah told us, poetically, that the news Isaiah is offering us is so good that even the feet of those who bring this news are beautiful. What news could be that good? Isaiah had glimpsed something of God, and seen that God is not threatening, but will comfort us, bring us peace, make us happy and completely safe: our Saviour. These are final, absolute promises. It doesn’t seem as if we can achieve these things in this lifetime, but in fact we can. When we know and trust God deeply enough, none of life’s pains and troubles will overwhelm us, but we can see them as preparing us, making us deeper and stronger.
Human beings have always wondered about how we came to be here… what is the source of our being; what mind could have created all the life-forms we see on earth, and our human mind, and love? If we are be honest, we know that there are dimensions beyond our senses, which people enter when they die.
The first chapter of John’s gospel goes much deeper into this than Isaiah could. God, the Infinite Mystery, who has no beginning, God has come among us. John tells us that God’s ‘Word’ – God’s Eternal Wisdom; which we can properly call God’s Son – has become flesh: has been born as a weak little baby, in a shed for animals!
Here we are at the limits of our understanding. It reminds me that just last night a big new telescope was to be launched into orbit around the earth – much bigger than the Hubble telescope. It will peer at the furthest edges of the trillion galaxies that we so far know about. John’s gospel is a bit like this new telescope. When we speak of the Son of God becoming human, we are way out of our depth. But we can believe this Christian author from the first century. He had thought deeply about Jesus who was murdered on a cross, but had passed through death, and gave us his Holy Spirit. John and the early Christians were sure that God had entered our human family.
This does not explain the mystery for us: God is totally indescribable. But John tries, using metaphors: He says: Christ is our Life, and Christ is our Light. But again, the scientists do not even know exactly what is the physical light that comes from the sun, or from a light bulb. But we believe that this baby, Jesus the Christ, is the light for all people.
Christ is our Light, the Meaning of our lives. In a certain number of days, we are each going to meet him. We will be in that light, in peace, infinite happiness, in God forever. Without end. Eternally. Let’s all wish Jesus a happy birthday, and have a wonderful Christmas ourselves!
Among the wonderful stories that make up world literature we find many tales about people who are deprived, lonely and poor, but who are helped to find their strength and eventually succeed. Perhaps the best know in Cinderella, but there’s also Tom Thumb, the Ugly Duckling, the young boy Gavroche in Les Miserables and many more. Cinderella’s story can be traced as far back as 5th century China – and there was a different version in Greece in 600 BC.
In everyone’s heart there is a longing to overcome our littleness and our weakness, and we express this in our myths and fairy stories. The prophet Micah reminds us of this theme we read him on this last Sunday before Christmas. Like all the prophets in the bible, Micah spoke about hope, to fragile people who thought they had had no hope at all. Each of the Bible’s prophets, in his – or her – own way, was telling people who were suffering terribly, that ‘God is on your side’.
We will understand the prophets better if we notice two things: first, that they were speaking to people who were suffering terribly. Tyrannical kings oppressed and cruelly exploited the common people; foreign armies invaded their nation and besieged their cities, killing, raping and burning crops until starving people sometimes turned to cannibalism to survive. Secondly, the prophets were bringing an amazing new message to humanity. God was prompting and inspiring the prophets to tell people that the Infinite Mystery who made us, loves our weak human race, and longs to bring our world into a state of peace and harmony based on love; helping us to overcome our greed, bullying, and destruction. God is in the process of saving us.
The prophets couldn’t see all the details, but just as we dream, in our myths and fairy stories, they saw God’s power working through things that were small and weak. Isaiah talked of a lonely servant of God who suffered and was destroyed, but who somehow was helping and healing many people. He was foretelling Christ. Most prophets spoke of a small remnant, a few people who would survive the trauma of invasion and destruction and would return from exile to start again. In today’s reading, the prophet Micah speaks about a future leader who would protect and feed the people. Not a king from the royal house in the capital, Jerusalem; but from the obscure village of Bethlehem. Long before Micah, king David had also come from Bethlehem, chosen despite being the youngest and least in his family.
Long after Micah, again in Bethlehem, Jesus was born, fulfilling the ancient prophecies. New-born babies are beautiful in their weakness, and when we celebrate Jesus’ birth each year, we are moved to see that his cot was just a humble feed-box, in a shed for animals. We recall that at the end of his life he will ride a donkey into Jerusalem as a parody of royal processions, and he will hang dying on a cross, under the mocking label ‘King of the Jews’. This is how God saves us: through the weaknesses and littleness that we are most ashamed of!
In today’s gospel we see a pregnant teenager, Mary, making a risky journey to share her joyful news with her older, pregnant cousin Elizabeth. They are excited about their tiny unborn babies, quite unaware that they – mere ‘weak women’- are the turning point in human history. Micah and the other prophets started us on our long human journey to understand what God is like. Mary and Elizabeth took us a to a new level.
Today’s second reading from Hebrews confirms that God is not malicious or cruel; God in no way harms us, nor want us to offer ‘sacrifices’ by destroying valuable animals or things. Sacrifice means to ‘make holy’, and we do this by loving each other. The gift God wants from us is that we spend ourselves by valuing every person, especially the weakest. When we love, and forgive our enemies, we may feel as if we are losing out, but when we do any small act of kindness, whenever we love someone, we are imitating Jesus’ generous self-emptying. We are being like God! Our small actions are helping to build up the Reign of God, and prepare us for the unseen mystery of eternal life.
Finding The Treasure 