December 25, 2019
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas
Isaiah 9:1-6
Psalm 96: 1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14
It is very difficult to see in the darkness. We can stumble over things and get hurt in the darkness. We can become agitated by our imagination when we are in the dark. The darkness can make us feel isolated and lonely, not seeing and not being seen. Yet, our eyes can soon grow accustomed to the darkness and we can become satisfied with stumbling around a room in the dark. We can soon numb our imagination’s turbulence simply by imagining that “there’s no need to be afraid of the dark.” The darkness can begin as our acquaintance, soon become our companion, and end up serving as a friend of our convenience.
The shepherds kept watch over their flocks in the dark of night. They paid attention and kept watch amid the darkness in order to protect their flocks from very real dangers that they knew prowl in the dark of night to prey upon the flock — dangers that their experience had taught them were not simply figments of their imaginations. The shepherds paid attention in the darkness of night. Their attentiveness to their watch prepared them to hear the angels sing and to see God’s glory in the Christ Child born in circumstances familiar to them including the dark dank of a stable, probably where many of them had been born or seen their children born.
They were accustomed to the dark and how to pay attention in the dark, but their encounter with the Christ Child revealed to them that they don’t belong to the dark, nor would the dark prevail. They recognize in the Child that, even more than the Child belonging to them in their poor circumstances, they belong to the Child who is born as the Light of the World in the midst of darkness — so that they might become one with this light of the world.
This idea of “keeping watch” is a central theme of Jesus’ message as presented throughout Luke’s Gospel. Luke’s Gospel begins with shepherds keeping watch and awake in the dark of night. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asks his Apostles present to keep watch with Him and to stay awake and attentive in the dark of night. The shepherds are watchful people because in their poverty they cannot offer God only a small part of their lives. They depend totally on His Providence; it’s all or nothing and so they are watchful for Him. The shepherds cannot afford to befriend the dark. As Pope Benedict XVI once observed, “Only a watchful heart can instill the courage to set out to find God in the form of a baby in a stable.”
We are here tonight in this cathedral amid darkness because God has given us the grace to pay attention as the shepherds paid attention to the light amid darkness. We are here because in the same Christ Child born anew amid the darkness, we see by the Light of the world the real and unconditional love of God. The Christ Child has brought us here so that our eyes can no longer remain accustomed to the darkness nor can we settle by living alone and isolated with the figments of our imaginations. We realize in the dark of night in this cathedral that there is no need to be afraid of the darkness. Only when we live as children of the Light, the Light is never extinguished and casts no shadows.
Unlike the figments of our imagination stunted by the dark, the Christ Child is not imaginary. He is really born of Mary. Christ is the Light of the World, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. A proverb holds that you become what you love. Adam and Eve loved the darkness and so human beings became dark. Yet, God loved human beings, and so He became one of us that we might be one with the Light and no longer of the dark. The real presence of God’s love outflanks and undercuts the pretense of human imagination.
Our entrance procession for the celebration of this Mass began with the hymn “Adeste Fideles.” We translate this roughly as “O Come all Ye Faithful,” but “Adeste” more truly is translated as “Be Present, Be Attentive.” We are attentive to two messages of the mystery of this night: the historic and the prophetic. There is the historic and real scene of the crib, the compelling scene of the poor shelter of the stable protecting Mary and Joseph, the birth of the Christ Child, shivering in the cold and swaddled for His warmth and protection, the baby Jesus sleeping where animals feed. Everything about this scene grabs our attention: the night, the cold, the poverty, the injustice, the indifference, the solitude; and, then, the incomparable message of the angels, the arrival of the shepherds, the light casting away the darkness.
Our faithful attention should also turn next to the second message of Bethlehem, the prophetic message of the Christ Child. The Child born tonight is Christ the Lord who is our Savior, sent by the Father to deliver us from the darkness of sin and fear. We are attentive to His birth as the Light of the World, and because of this, we are attentive to His mission that He generously offers us as our mission of light into darkness. Thus, we leave tonight obliged in love to be attentive to His presence in others who are affected by and accustomed to the darkness — so in need of the light that now has shone upon and in us. Our attentiveness has brought us to the stable tonight with the shepherds to see the Christ Child; our attentiveness must guide us out of this cathedral tonight to see the same Christ Child present in the poor, in the unborn, in the refugee, in victims of crime, in those wounded in battle, in those who are ignored and overlooked in a society that has grown accustomed to the darkness and indifferently imagines the darkness to be inevitable and not all that bad.
The vulnerable baby in the manger, the Word made flesh, proclaims in the wordlessness of infancy that He requires of us only our love. As Pope Saint Paul VI reminded us on Christmas night many years ago, “Is not that power which is Christ exercised completely for us, for our benefit, for our salvation, for our love? Christ came for us, not against us. He is not a competitive rival to us. He is not an enemy. He is a guide for us on our way, He is a friend. And that means for all of us: each and every one of us can rightly say: the Christ Child has come for me.”