Thursday, December 31, 2015

MARY, THE WOMAN OF FAITH.

Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. Luke 2:16-21
AIM: To present Mary as the model of trusting faith in the new year.
          A new year! What will it bring? Some great success? Humiliating failure?  Unexpected happiness, or sudden loss? Dramatic change, or just more of the same? Illness, suffering, or death? We cannot know what the new year will bring. The one certain thing about the future is its uncertainty. As we venture into the unknown, the Church gives us, on this New Year’s Day, a feast in honor of Mary, the Mother of God. Does this mean that Mary is as important as her Son, equal even with God? Of course not.
          Why does the Church dedicate this first day of the new year in a special way to Mary? Because Mary is, in a unique way, the woman of faith. While only on the threshold of her teens, Mary was asked by God to venture into an unknown future, filled with suffering, the purpose and end of which she could not possibly understand in advance. We think of the angel’s message to Mary, that she was to be the mother of God’s Son, as something wonderful. To Mary, however, it meant being an unmarried mother in a little village, where everyone knew everyone else’s business, and where gossip was rife.
          The faith which enabled Mary to accept her role in this mystery was no once-for-all thing. Her faith, like ours, needed to be constantly renewed amid suffering and misunderstanding. Joseph wanted to break their engagement. In the Jerusalem temple Mary heard the aged Simeon prophesy her Son’s rejection and his mother’s suffering. When her twelve-year-old Son told Mary and Joseph, who for three days had thought him lost in Jerusalem and sought him frantically, that he had to be in his Father’s house, Luke tells us that “they did not understand” what he was telling them. (Lk 2:50)
          There would be much more that Mary did not understand and could not understand. In time her Son left home. Often thereafter he seemed to be fulfilling his own command about “hating” parents and other close relatives, and one’s “own life too” (Lk 14:26). At Cana, the site of his first miracle, Jesus appeared to treat his mother with perplexing disrespect. Even at the Last Supper Jesus made no place, it seems, for his mother. Only at Calvary was she permitted to stand beside her now dying Son, along with “the disciple whom Jesus loved” — deliberately left anonymous, so that he can represent the ideal follower of Jesus Christ in every age and place. 
          There on Calvary Mary experienced the full truth of Simeon’s prophecy three decades before: that a sword would pierce her own soul. There she shared the anguish of her dying Son, as he cried: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Calvary was the final and greatest test of Mary’s faith, the place where she had to renew once again, as she had done so often before, the declaration of trusting faith with which she had begun: “Let it be done to me according to your word.” The final glimpse we have of Mary in the New Testament shows her to be still the woman of faith: joining with the friends of Jesus in prayer in the upper room at Jerusalem, before the outpouring of God’s Spirit at Pentecost, as Jesus had promised.  (Cf. Acts 1:24)
          The Church sets Mary before us today because she, like us, needed faith to journey into the unknown; because her faith can inspire in us the we faith we need for our journey into the unknown; and because Mary’s prayers support us on our pilgrim way.
          Let me conclude with some words which evoke this trusting faith.  They were written in England about a century ago. As you listen, you may wish to imagine them being spoken to you by Mary, the woman of faith, as you cross the threshold of a new year.
          “And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown. And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than a light, and safer than a known way.’” [M. Louise Haskins; quoted by King George VI of England in his Christmas broadcast, 1939]

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

WHO WERE THE WISE MEN?


Epiphany.  Matthew 2:1-12.

AIM: To present the wise men’s search as a model for us. 

          Who were these “magi from the east,” who set out to follow a star and found instead “the child [Jesus] with Mary his mother”? We know the magi from other translations as “the Wise Men.” To their contemporaries they were not wise. They were crackpots who were not playing with a full deck. Who were they in reality?

1.       The Wise Men were searchers.

In his book about the infancy narratives in the gospels of Luke and

Matthew, Pope Benedict XVI says that the Wise Men “represent the inner dynamic of religion toward self-transcendence, which involves a search for truth, a search for the true God and hence ‘philosophy’ in the original sense of the word.” (p. 95) They were not content with routine, with life as they found it. They wanted more. Yet the Wise Men were not idle daydreamers. They were willing to abandon routine, to set out on what seemed to everyone but themselves a madcap journey, following a star.

          People are searching today – searching for answers to life’s mysteries. If this is God’s world, people ask, why does he permit so much pain, injustice, and suffering? Must we always live under the threat of international terrorism? How can we master the dark forces within ourselves that threaten to drag us down from the highest and best that deep in our hearts we want, and to destroy our inner peace: dark forces like envy, hatred, lust, resentments, sloth, and the self-centeredness of conceit and pride? Is death simply the end, like the snuffing out of a candle? Or is there life beyond death?   

          Those are just some of the questions that perplex us today. There are many more. Sometimes it seems there is no end to life’s questions, problems, and mysteries. When we are tempted to fear that there are no real answers to our questions, because life at bottom is meaningless, the Wise Men can help us. Like us, they were searchers. But they were more.

2.       The Wise Men were discoverers.

          They continued their search despite its seeming futility, despite all discouragements and setbacks. In the end they were rewarded. They found the One they were looking for. Matthew tells us that when the Wise Men finally arrived at the end of their long journey, “they were overjoyed.”

          The One whom they encountered as a baby would speak often about this joy three decades later. He would tell of the shepherd’s joy at finding his lost sheep; of the woman’s joy at finding her lost coin; the joy of the dealer in precious stones finding one day in the bazaar a pearl so large and flawless that it made all he had seen and owned up to then seem cheap baubles by comparison; the joy of the day laborer at discovering in his employer’s field an unsuspected treasure that would change his life. 

          For all these people the joy of discovery was purchased at the price of lengthy searching. Even the laborer accidentally finding the treasure buried in the field he was plowing had behind him years of grinding toil, when the very idea that he could ever rise above the subsistence level seemed ludicrous. The Wise Men’s joy was purchased at the price of perseverance in the face of many defeats and the scorn of those who thought them mad.

          Our own search for answers to life’s mysteries is – whether we know it or not – a search for the One whom the Wise men found. It is a search for God. The search is not in vain. God can be found. God wants to be found.

          We think the search is all ours. In reality, God is already searching for us.  The One who led the Wise Men by the shining of a star leads us onward by the powerful attraction of his love, shining in the face of his Son, Jesus Christ. For us, as for the Wise Men at the end of their search, great joy awaits: the overwhelming joy of knowing that we have been found by the One who, all along, was searching for us, though we never realized it at the time. 

          The Wise Men’s search, and their joy in discovering the One they sought, encourage us. But the Wise Men were not only searchers and discoverers –

3.       The Wise Men were worshippers.

          Matthew tells us that in the joy of discovery, “they prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh” – the most precious, and the most costly thing that each possessed.

          The end of the search, then, is neither the discovery nor the joy. When at last you have found the One who, all along, has been searching for you, everything is transformed. The only fitting response is worship.

          To worship means to forget ourselves. It means entrusting ourselves to the One who is greater than our greatest thought and higher than our most lofty imagining; and yet who is present in the humblest and smallest and weakest of his creatures, as he was present in the infant at Bethlehem. Worship is the highest form of prayer there is. The late Bishop Fulton Sheen wrote:

          “The person who thinks only of himself says prayers of petition. The person who thinks of his neighbor says prayers of intercession. The person who thinks only of loving and serving God says prayers of abandonment to God’s will. And that is the prayer of the saints.”  

So who were the Wise Men? They are our fellow travelers on life’s pilgrimage. Matthew leaves them nameless. Hence they can bear our names. Wise is every Anne and John and Mary and David who is not content with life as it is; who is willing to break with routine in order to search for answers to life’s mysteries; who refuses to admit that life is meaningless, but continues to search for answers and meaning despite all difficulties and discouragements. Yes, wise are all those who persevere in this search until it ends in joy – and joy gives way to worship.

          Who, then, are the Wise Men? The Wise Men are ourselves, in God’s plan and according to God’s will. One thing alone can prevent the accomplishment of God’s plan and God’s will for your life: your own deliberate and final No. 

          “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod,” we heard at the end of the gospel, “they departed for their country by another way.” The Fathers of the Church say, ‘But of course’: no one comes to Jesus and goes back the same way he came. The encounter with the Lord changes us. We go home from Mass changed, because here we have been brought into the bright circle of God’s love – not just to give us a warm feeling inside, but so that we may share that love with others: Jesus’ sisters and brothers – and ours too. 

"THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH."


Homily for December 31st, 2015: John 1:1-18.
          If you came to Mass on Christmas morning, you probably heard this gospel. You may have thought it strange. Where are the shepherds, the manger, Mary and Joseph? Where is their child? Instead of these familiar Christmas figures we have heard about abstractions: light and darkness, the Word becoming flesh.
Let=s start with another word: Aincarnation.@  It means Ataking on flesh, embodiment.@ This building is the incarnation of an idea in the mind of the architect who designed it, and of the sacrifices that made its construction possible. Children are the incarnation of their parents= love. And Jesus is the incarnation of God. 
We cannot see God. Jesus shows us what God is like. That is why this Christmas gospel calls Jesus God=s Word. A word is used to communicate. Jesus is God=s word because he is God=s communication to us: not a lifeless, abstract statement, but God=s living and breathing utterance and self-disclosure.    
When we listen to Jesus, we hear God speaking to us. When we look at Jesus, we see what God is like. What do we see when we look at Jesus? We see that he preferred simple, ordinary people. He came to the world in a provincial village where nothing interesting or important ever happened. Jesus moved not among wealthy or sophisticated people, or among scholars and intellectuals, but among ordinary people. They were the ones who welcomed him most warmly. The rich and powerful and learned had difficulties with Jesus. Many were hostile to him – then, and still today.
In his youth Jesus worked with his hands in the carpenter=s shop. His teaching was full of references to simple things: the birds of the air, the wind and the waves, the lilies of the field, the vine, the lost sheep, the woman searching for her one lost coin, leavening dough with yeast, the thief breaking in at night. Those were images that everyone could understand. Jesus also told stories: so simple that they capture the interest of children; yet so profound that learned scholars are still studying them today.
In preferring simple people and simple things, Jesus was showing us what God is like. He who is God=s utterance and word, God=s personal communication to us, is saying through all the circumstances of his life that God loves humble people. God is especially close to those who feel that they are not in control of their lives; that they are the victims of circumstances; that their lives are a tangle of loose ends and broken resolutions.

It is because God gave us his Son at Christmas that we give gifts to one another. The greatest gift we can give cannot be bought in any store. It is the gift God gave us at Christmas: the gift of himself. Look at Mary=s child: helpless, vulnerable, and weak, as all babies are. He is God=s way of saying: >This is how much the Lord God, creator of heaven and earth, loves you; enough to be become tiny, insignificant, vulnerable.= Jesus, the personal utterance and word of God, is God=s gift to you. He wants you to share this gift with others.

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

JESUS' HIDDEN YEARS


Homily for December 30th, 201: Luke 2:36-40.

          The prophetess Anna, whom we have just heard about in the gospel, was very old. “She never left the Temple, “Luke tells us, “but worshipped day and night with fasting and prayer.” There are such people in the Church today: contemplative nuns, who do not leave the convent for charitable or other good works, like most Catholic Sisters. They lead mostly hidden lives, praying for others.

          Anna has evidently been praying, as devout Jews had done for centuries, for the coming of God’s promised anointed servant, the Messiah. When Mary and Joseph brought their baby into the Temple to present him to the Lord, as the Jewish law required, both the priest Simeon and Anna recognized at once that this infant was the long awaited Messiah. How they most have rejoiced! Anna’s joy is evident in the fact that she cannot keep the news to herself. “She gave thanks to God,” Luke tells us, “and spoke about the child to all those who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.”

          Then comes what at first seems like an anti-climax. Mary and Joseph return to Nazareth with their child. Save for a glimpse of Jesus back in the Jerusalem Temple at age twelve, we know nothing about his boyhood, adolescence, or young manhood until, at age 30, he begins his public ministry with 40 days of fasting in the desert. These are called his so-called “hidden years.”

          Are they really so hidden, however? “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” people in Nazareth will ask later (Mt. 13:55). So we can assume that as a boy, Jesus must have worked in the carpenter’s shop. Is it conceivable that any shoddy work came out of that shop? that customers were kept waiting beyond the promised date? Luke tells us that in that shop, Jesus “grew in size and strength, filled with wisdom.” He did that by accepting the burdens, duties, and frustrations of a very ordinary and outwardly uninteresting life.

He calls us to do the same.

Monday, December 28, 2015

"WHOEVER HATES HIS BROTHER IS IN DARKNESS."


Homily for December 29th, 2015: 1 John 2:3-11.

          “I am the light of the world,” Jesus says in John’s gospel (8:12). How dark the world would be without him. In baptism we were commissioned to be lenses and prisms of that light, shining from the face of Jesus Christ. In today’s first reading the apostle John tells us how we fulfill that commission. “Whoever loves his bother remains in the light . . . Whoever hates his brother is in darkness; he walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”

          To understand these words we need to know that the words “love” and “hate” here do not refer to feelings. They refer to our conduct. This becomes clear if we look at the words of Jesus himself in the parable of the sheep and the goats in chapter 25 of Matthew’s gospel. There Jesus says that when we come to stand before God in judgment, he won’t ask us how many prayers we’ve said, or how many Masses we have attended. He will ask instead how we have treated other people.

          To those on his right hand, designated as sheep in the story, the king (a stand-in for the Lord God) will say: “Come, you have my Father’s blessing! … For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, in prison and you come to me.” Astonished at these words, those on the king’s right hand ask when they had done all those things. To which the king responds: “As often as you did it for one of my least brothers, you did it for me.” 

Then, to those on his left hand, designated as goats in the story, the king says: “Out of my sight, you condemned, into that everlasting fire prepared for the devil and has angels!” To explain this harsh judgment the king tells those on his left that they have done none of those things. Conduct and not feelings is the standard by which both are judged.

          We pray then in this Mass that when the Lord sends his angel to call us home to Him, he will find us walking in the light --  by doing good to those we encounter along life’s way.

Sunday, December 27, 2015

THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS


Homily for December 28th, 2015: Matthew 2:13-18.

          Which of us does not remember the brutal killing of 20 young schoolchildren, first and second graders, in Newtown/CT six years ago? It happened the Friday before the third Sunday in Advent, which is called “Rejoice Sunday” because the readings are about joy and rejoicing. I was away from St. Louis, visiting friends in northern Virginia, just outside of Washington/DC, and staying in the rectory of a large parish. I had prepared a homily for Rejoice Sunday, on the theme of joy.  

          As soon as the terrible news came from Connecticut, I knew I could not preach about joy, when our hearts were breaking at the slaughter these innocent children. Away from home, and without access to the books I use for homily preparation, and the mass of material already on my computer, I was unable to produce the full text which I would have done had I been at home. I reflected long and hard about what I could say which would help people grieving over this tragedy. And I prayed that the Holy Spirit would give me the words I needed.   

At 11 o’clock on that Sunday morning I stood before a congregation of at least 300 people to speak about grief and how God can bring good out of evil. My own voice was breaking as I did so. When I finished, I knew that God had answered my prayers for inspiration and guidance. The whole congregation erupted in applause. And I remember saying to myself: “It’s not about you, Jay, it is about the Lord.”

          Today’s gospel tells us about a tragedy every bit as great as that one three years ago. In a frantic attempt to kill the baby king whom the Wise Men from the East had told him about when they passed through Jerusalem two years before, the cruel Gentile tyrant Herod ordered the slaughter of all the boys in and near Bethlehem two years old and younger.

          We cannot observe the feast of the Holy Innocents in America today without thinking of the mass killing of unborn children, a quarter of all babies conceived, which goes on day after day and year after year, leaving their mothers, most of them acting under pressure from others, burdened for life with regrets, shame, and guilt – a burden no woman should have to bear. This modern slaughter of the innocents will end only when hearts and minds are changed and people become as ashamed of abortion as we now are about slavery. For that we pray at Mass today.

Friday, December 25, 2015

"YOU WILL ALL BE HATED BECAUSE OF MY NAME."


Homily for Dec. 26th, 2015: Acts of the Apostles 6:8-10; 7:54-59; Mt. 10:17-22.

          A priest fifteen or perhaps more years ordained, told me recently that he was concerned about the overly rosy image of priesthood being offered to today’s seminarians. The recruitment material sent out by Vocation Directors is full of success stories. All the photos on the websites of today’s seminaries show young men laughing, smiling, and joking. None of this is false. Thousands of priests testify to the joy of serving God and his holy people as a priest. You’re looking at one of them right now. The late Chicago priest-sociologist and novelist Fr. Andrew Greely said: “Priests who like being priests are among the happiest men in the world.” And he cited sociological surveys to back up this statement.

          The result of all this happy talk, my priest-friend told me, was that young priests who have a bad day, a bad week, or who encounter rejection or failure, start thinking that perhaps they have chosen the wrong vocation and should abandon priesthood. Jesus never promised his disciples that they would have only joy, success, and happiness. Both of today’s readings are about the price of discipleship. “You will be hated by all because of my name,” Jesus says at the end of today’s gospel. Only after these words warning about the cost of discipleship does he proclaim the good news: “But whoever endures to the end will be saved.”

          Christmas is a feast of joy, of course. But the day after Christmas year reminds us each year that this joy has a price. In a dispute with his enemies, the deacon Stephen, the Church’s first martyr, cries out: “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” Infuriated by the supposed blasphemy in those words, his enemies take Stephen outside the city and stone him to death. Omitted from our first reading are Stephen’s dying words: “Lord, do not lay this sin to their charge.” Jesus too suffered outside the city. Among his Last Words was the prayer: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Speaking a few years ago to a group of priests about the increasing secularization of our society, the late Cardinal George of Chicago said, in what he later admitted was an “overly dramatic fashion”: “I expect to die in bed; my successor will die in prison; and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.” Mostly omitted by those who quote these words, is the good news which the cardinal spoke in conclusion: “His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has done so often in human history.”

Thursday, December 24, 2015

"I MUST BE IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE."

Feast of the Holy Family. 1 John 3:1-2, 21-24; Luke 2:41-52.
AIM: To present the story of the boy Jesus in the Temple, and his return to Nazareth, as a model for our lives.
How much do we know about Jesus= childhood and youth? Apart from the story we have just heard in the gospel, nothing. He drops completely from view from the age of twelve until his baptism by his cousin, John, when B according to Luke=s gospel B Jesus was Aabout thirty years old@ (Luke 3:23). Three things in today=s gospel deserve consideration: Jesus= words to his parents; his return to Nazareth; and his mother=s reaction.
1.       ADid you not know that I must be in my Father=s house?@ Jesus asks his worried parents, worn out from a frantic three-day search for their twelve-year-old son. The question is Jesus= first recorded utterance in Luke=s gospel. He speaks the words in the building which, for all believing Jews of that day, including Jesus himself, was the earthly dwelling place of God. The Temple at Jerusalem was the most sacred shrine of the people God had chosen to be especially his own.
With Jesus= coming, however, God was creating a new dwelling place on earth: not a building of wood and stone, but the living flesh of the twelve-year-old boy who stood in that building and spoke of his need to be Ain my Father=s house.@  Later, at the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus would stand in the Temple again to prophesy its destruction and its raising up again Ain three days.@  (John 2:18) That prophecy was a scandal to Jesus= devout countrymen. Even his friends did not understand what Jesus was talking about until after his resurrection. Then, John tells us, they recalled the Master=s words and realized that he had been talking about Athe temple of his body@ (John 2:19-22).
Because Jesus is himself God=s temple, the dwelling place of God on earth, only one thing mattered for him: doing his Father=s will. How did Jesus come to recognize his unique status as God=s Son and earthly dwelling place? We do not know. Today=s gospel indicates, however, that he came to this recognition gradually. It says that he asked questions of the teachers in the Temple. Clearly he did not come into the world knowing all the answers. Like every other human child, Jesus had to learn. His humanity was no mere disguise. It was real. Like every one of us, Jesus learned things as he grew and developed. The wording of Jesus= question to his parents in our gospel indicates, however, that even at age twelve, he had at least an inkling that his relationship to God was unique. He does not speak, as he would later teach his followers to do in his model prayer, of AOur Father.@ He says instead, AI must be in my Father=s house.@ Here is what Pope Benedict says in his new book about the infancy narratives about this exchange between mother and son:
Jesus’ reply to his mother’s question is astounding: How so? You were looking for me? Did you not know where a child must be? That he must be in his father’s house, literally ‘in the things of  the Father, Jesus tells his parents: I am in the very place where I belong – with the Father, in his house. There are two principal elements to note in this reply. Mary had said: ‘Your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.’ Jesus corrects her: I am with my father. My father is not Joseph, but another – God himself. It is to him that I belong, and her I am with him. Could Jesus’ divine sonship be presented any more clearly? (p. 123f)
2.       This flash of youthful insight (if that is what it was) is immediately followed, however, by what looks like an anticlimax. Instead of remaining in his Father=s house at Jerusalem, Jesus returns to Nazareth with Mary and Joseph, to resume the normal life of a Jewish boy of his day. The great moment passes. Jesus surprises us.  He would continue to surprise people throughout his earthly life. He remains the master of surprise today.
Even to his closest friends Jesus was always something of a mystery. The gospels speak repeatedly of their failure to understand him. Jesus= friends began really to comprehend who he was, and what his life meant, only after the greatest of all his surprises: the empty tomb of Easter morning.
3.       One of those surprised by Jesus, and unable to understand him, was his own mother. Today=s gospel tells us that she and Joseph Adid not understand@ their son=s words about having to be Ain my Father=s house.@ Starting with the message from the angel Gabriel, that she was to be the mother of God=s Son, Mary received many messages about him: from the shepherds, recounting what the angels had told them; from those mysterious Awise men from the East@; from the prophecies of Simeon and Anna about her infant Son in this same Jerusalem Temple; from her husband=s dream warning of danger to their child and the need to flee to Egypt.
Despite all these messages, however, Mary would never fully understand her Son. Even for the woman who was closer to Jesus than anyone else on earth, Jesus remained shrouded in mystery. Like every human being before and since, Mary had to walk by faith, not by sight.
We must do the same. On this Sunday after Christmas, the last in 2012, the old year is almost gone. In a few hours we shall cross the threshold of a new year.  What will it bring? We cannot know. Conceivably the year of grace 2013 could bring us some great experience B deeper insight, perhaps, into life=s meaning, or into God=s special purpose for the one life he has given us B something comparable to the insight given to the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Jerusalem Temple about the meaning and purpose of his life. If so, the experience will pass: for us, as it did for Jesus.
Jesus= brief moment of bright vision in the Temple was followed by the years of hidden labor in the carpenter=s shop at Nazareth. And it was there, in accepting the burdens, duties, and frustrations of a very ordinary and outwardly uninteresting life, that Jesus Aadvanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man,@ as Luke tells us at the end of today=s gospel.
Do you want to advance, as Jesus did? Which of us does not? We advance in age whether we wish it or not. Advancing in wisdom and favor before God and others, however, is not automatic. To do that we must do what Jesus did. We must be willing to let go of life=s great experiences, no matter how beautiful they may be.  We must accept the challenges, the duties, and the burdens which each day brings us. Never look back. Christmas is past. Look forward. The late Archbishop Fulton Sheen used to say: AThere are no plains in the spiritual life; either we are going up, or we are going down.@ He was right. 
Advancing in wisdom and favor before God and others means, above all, taking to heart the words of St. John in our second reading: AGod=s commandment is this: we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us. Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them. And the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit he gave us.@

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

"THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH."


Christmas Mass during the day.  Heb. 1:1-6; John 1:1-18.
AIM: To explain the Incarnation and its significance for us.
It=s a strange gospel for Christmas, isn=t it? Where, we ask, are the shepherds, the manger, Mary and Joseph? Where is their child? Instead of these familiar Christmas figures we have heard about abstractions: light and darkness, the Word becoming flesh.
Let=s start with another word: Aincarnation.@ It means Ataking on flesh,  embodiment.@ This building is the incarnation of an idea in the mind of the architect who designed it. It is the incarnation or embodiment too of the sacrifices that made its construction possible. Children are the incarnation of their parents= love. And Jesus is the incarnation of God. 
We cannot see God. Jesus shows us what God is like. That is why this Christmas gospel calls Jesus God=s Word. A word is used to communicate. Jesus is God=s word because he is God=s communication to us: not a lifeless, abstract statement, but God=s living and breathing utterance and self-disclosure.    
When we listen to Jesus, we hear God speaking to us. When we look at Jesus, we see what God is like. What do we see when we look at Jesus? We see that he preferred simple, ordinary people. He came to the world in a provincial village where nothing interesting or important ever happened. Jesus moved not among wealthy or sophisticated people, or among scholars and intellectuals, but among ordinary people. They were the ones who welcomed him most warmly. The rich and powerful and learned had difficulties with Jesus. Many were hostile to him.  That was true then. It remains true today.
Jesus was of the earth, earthy. In his youth he worked with his hands in the carpenter=s shop. His teaching was full of references to simple things: the birds of the air, the wind and the raging waves, the lilies of the field, the vine, the lost sheep, the woman searching for her one lost coin, leavening dough with yeast, the thief breaking in at night. Those were images that everyone could understand. Jesus taught also in parables: stories so simple that they capture the interest of children; yet so profound that learned scholars are still studying them today.
In preferring simple people and simple things, Jesus was showing us what God is like. He who is God=s utterance and word, God=s personal communication to us, is saying through all the circumstances of his life that God loves humble people.  God is especially close to those who feel that they are not in control of their lives; that they are the victims of circumstances; that their lives are a tangle of loose ends and broken resolutions.
In his earthiness Jesus shows us God=s love for this world and everything in it. Often we think of God and religion as concerned only with some higher, spiritual realm. That is wrong! God loves the earth and the things of earth. He must love them, because he made them. And God does not make anything that is not lovable.  As John, the writer of today=s gospel, tells us in a later chapter: AGod so loved the world that he gave his only Son@ (Jn 3:16).
It is because God gave us his Son at Christmas that we give gifts to one another. The greatest gift we can give cannot be bought in any store.You cannot order it from an 800-number or over the Internet. You cannot wrap it. You cannot send it through the mail, by UPS or Federal Express. It is the gift God gave us at Christmas: the gift of himself. Even as a baby Jesus is God=s personal word and communication to us. In the words of our second reading, he is Athe refulgence [that means the shining forth] of [God=s] glory, the very imprint of his being.@
Look at Mary=s child: helpless, vulnerable, and weak, as all babies are. He is God=s way of saying: >This is how much the Lord God, creator of heaven and earth, loves you; enough to be become tiny, insignificant, vulnerable.= Jesus, the personal utterance and word of God, is God=s gift to you  He wants you to share this gift with others. You do so when, like God himself, you give yourself to others: when, like Jesus, you too love the company of ordinary people; when, like him, you remain close to the earth and the things of earth.

In a few moments we shall be offered our greatest and most important Christmas gift: the body and blood of our Lord, of Jesus who is God=s personal word to each one of us. The consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist are Christ=s body and blood: all his power, all his goodness, all his love. He offers all this to us:

C       not as a reward for services rendered;

C       not because we are good enough (for none of us is);

C       but because he is so good that he wants to share his power, his goodness, and his love with us.

Jesus gives us this greatest of all gifts under one strict condition: that what we here receive, we generously share with others.