The array of
practices and traditions that surround the celebration of Christmas is so vast
as to be impossible to catalogue, from trees and gifts to cookies and carols
and beyond, into those unique domestic rituals and inside jokes that every
family nurtures without fully knowing quite how they started. They are individually and collectively
delightful and marvelous evidence of our human ability draw together to rejoice
with one another.
One look around you
over the past four weeks was enough to indicate that something was underway that
pulled people together, uniting them in purpose and intention. Even the generic greeting that public
etiquette permits -- “Happy Holidays!”-- speaks in its ubiquity to the power of
this season to draw people out of themselves and toward one another.
Happiness and
holidays are good things, good for people and good for society, and I try not
to go all Grinch on people when they invoke that happiness when I am immersed
in Advent and Christmas. Still I long to
say, But wait, there is more, if I
may quote an old advertisement.
A recent column by
the Archbishop of Denver, Samuel Aquila, drew my attention to the difference
between holidays and holy days. They draw our attention beyond the horizon of
all that we have done and are doing, toward what God has done and is
doing.
A
… quality of feasts is that they recalibrate our perception of what matters by
drawing us out of our everyday existence. When we celebrate holy days, we
recall the past events, words and miracles of God, but we also turn our hearts
and minds to our future. Doing this reminds us that God loves us, and points us
to our ultimate goal in life—living in intimate communion with him forever in
heaven.
There is no more
basic example of a holy day than Christmas.
It is not when God took flesh as Man (that would be the Annunciation),
nor is it when he did his most awesome work of sacrifice for our salvation
(that would be the Holy Triduum at Easter).
It is simply when God was born an infant, not so much simply emerging as
rather erupting into our human existence. This direct and simple, immediately
recognizable event has amazing power in lives young and old even in our own
day.
The proper response,
the natural response, the human response is self-evident: O come let us adore Him! as the song so often and so clearly
says. At the heart of our holy days is
the holy act of giving God what we owe Him, which in fact is the same as what
we long to give Him: our devotion, thanks, and love. The Christmas Mass is in some way the most
natural, most basic, and most intelligible action the Church does. Thus the Christmas Mass is also in some way
the most natural, most basic, and most intelligible action that we people can
do.
This divine aspect to
our celebration, this Tradition at the heart of our traditions, adds something
to our celebration that goes deeper, accomplishes more, and lasts longer than
the human fellowship and fun that so many people legitimately but limitedly
enjoy in their holidays.
Archbishop Aquila,
whom I have known for years, went on to quote another person I have long
venerated: In his book “Dogma and Preaching,” Cardinal Ratzinger expressed this
dimension of feasts beautifully. He wrote, “It means that for the moment he is
freed from the stern logic of the struggle for existence and looks beyond his
own narrow world to the totality of things. It means that he allows himself to
be comforted, allows his conscience to be moved by the love he finds in the God
who has become a child, and that in doing so he becomes freer, richer, purer.
If we were to try celebrating in this fashion, would not a sigh of relief pass
across the world?”
One hundred years ago
today, the nations of Europe were at one another’s throats, five months into the
First World War. Hundreds of thousands
had already died of the millions who would eventually fall. But that Christmas, troops on opposite sides
of No Man’s Land, soldiers who had been murdering one another, emerged from
their trenches and greeted one another with carols and cheer, to shake hands,
laugh, talk, and even play sports together.
It was The Christmas Truce of 1914, an example of the “sigh of relief”
that Cardinal Ratzinger mentioned.
The day and the truce
passed, and the war in all its savagery ground on. The subsequent Christmas,
far less charity was to be found; and Christmases after that, none at all. I fear that relentlessness set the tone for
the century since.
However, the same
grace, mercy and peace that prompted that divine interruption of human misery
is as alive and potent as He ever was. Many
of our neighbors will be united in the fun and festivity of the holidays, but
that will pass with the brittle trees at the curb and bags of crumpled
giftwrap. You will have at the heart of
your traditions that divine infant, that holy child. He will erupt into your
family time, into your celebrations, and even into your loneliness. He will erupt not only into that manger in
Bethlehem, but onto this altar in Four Corners.
Come, let us adore Him! Worship the God who makes your holiday holy
days, and gives you joy that will last.
I invite you and your
families to turn your minds and your hearts to God, and allow yourselves to be
comforted, and allow your consciences to be moved by the love you will find in
the God who has become a child. You will
be freer, richer, and purer, and you will be a cause for a sigh of relief from
the world.
Any holiday can be
happy, but the days touched by God are to be holy. On behalf of Fathers
McCabe and McDonell, and all the generous souls who labor in this parish to
bring you grace, I pray that God erupt into your life, and give you and yours,
all whom you love, and everyone you encounter, a joyous, blessed, and holy
Christmas.
Monsignor
Smith
