Location: St. Joseph Catholic Church
(Earlville, IA) – 4 p.m. Saturday – Christmas vigil
Basilica of Saint Francis Xavier (Dyersville, IA) – 12 a.m. (Midnight)
& 10:30 a.m.
Date: Wednesday December 25th
(Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord; “Mass during the Night”)
READINGS:
1st Reading: Isaiah 9:1-6
Resp. Psalm: Ps. 96:1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13
2nd Reading: Titus 2:11-14
Gospel: Luke 2:1-14
FOCUS: The birth of Jesus is good
news; it brings with it the promise of a new life.
FUNCTION: Come regularly to Sunday Mass;
live in relationship with the Lord.
An
ancient promise. An unexpected and unusual pregnancy. A long journey. An anxious
young couple. A strange and unique place
for birth. An angel from heaven
announcing good news. A choir of angels
singing praise to God.
This
is the stuff of Christmas. It’s all part
of the story commonly called, “The
greatest story ever told.” But for
all of us here today (tonight), it’s more than just a story – it’s the truth of
our Christian faith. We don’t gather
every year to celebrate a fairy tale like Peter Pan or Cinderella or Alice in
Wonderland or any other such story; what we celebrate today (tonight) isn’t the
stuff of children’s bedtime stories – it’s the stuff of history. Today we celebrate the fulfillment of God’s plan
to send us a savior.
The
longing for a savior is written on our hearts; it takes on many variations in
pop culture, but it’s the same desire – the desire for someone to come and be
the hero we need, the hero who will save us from our wickedness, the hero who
will conquer darkness and bring forth the light of victory. Think about the popular versions of the story
of a savior – maybe it’s Maximus from the movie, Gladiator, or William Wallace
from the movie, Braveheart, or Neo from the Matrix trilogy, or comic book
heroes like Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman; I’d argue that all these
characters are a product of the human desire for a savior. These people represent a desire for a
special, “anointed” person – a hero who will pull us back from the brink of
destruction, restore order, and establish peace. We love these stories because they fill us
with hope and they help us believe that good can conquer evil, that light can
gain the victory over darkness.
And
we have this desire because, deep down, we all know we need a savior; when we
look around us, it’s easy to see that we’re living in a fallen, sinful world,
and that’s why war, hatred, violence, disease, racism, bigotry, and death all
exist in our world – we’re surrounded by imperfection because we’re living in
an imperfect world, a world in need of a savior. And when we take a good, hard look at our
hearts, we realize that we, too, are capable of great evil – many of the things
I just mentioned exist because of our capacity for evil. We are capable of committing terrible
atrocities like the WWII Jewish Holocaust, or the 9-11-01 terrorist attacks, or
the WWII bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or any of the other awful things we
might see on the evening news. Deep
down, we all know we need a savior.
And
the good news of Christmas is this: God has sent us a Savior, and His name is
Jesus Christ. Christ is a title that literally
means, “Anointed One,” and Jesus is the “anointed one” sent to us from God
above to save us from our sins. Consider
the angel’s words said to the shepherds from the Gospel we just heard – “Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to
you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a Savior has
been for you who is Christ and Lord. And
this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling
clothes and lying in a manger.”
And
we need to understand that the child Jesus is not simply one savior among
others, because no other “savior” has ever been identified as the Lord, the
maker of the heavens and the earth. God
didn’t just send us a savior; God Himself became our savior by becoming a human
being in the womb of the Virgin Mary. He
chose to take on our humanity that He might save us not from the “outside-in”
but from the “inside-out” – He took on our heart in order to transform our
heart; He took on our eyes in order to transform our eyes; He took on our hands
in order to transform our hands; He took on everything about us (except sin) in
order to transform us from within; anything less would have been like putting a
Band-Aid on a mortal wound. Jesus, our
Savior, is one of us, but He is also the best of us, because not only is He the
Son of Man, He is also the Son of God.
The
first reading said, “For a child is born
to us, a son is given us; upon His shoulders dominion rests. They name Him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero,
Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.” Jesus
is the fulfillment of that ancient prophecy – He is the child lying in the manger,
the newborn King, the infant Savior of the world.
It
is Jesus – only Jesus, always Jesus; He was born in a crib for us so that He
might one day carry a cross for us; He was born in a manger where animals feed
so that He might one day feed us with His Body and Blood; He was born an infant
so that He might grow up and show us what it means to be a man; and He was
named Jesus (which means “The Lord saves”) so that He might be our Savior.
Dear
friends, Christmas is good news for us – the Savior we desire has been sent to
us by God; He is Jesus of Nazareth; and He was born in a lowly stable more than
2,000 years ago because God loved the world so much that He didn’t want to see
us die because of sin, but wanted to give us eternal life in His kingdom. This is the good news of Christmas – God has
not abandoned us or forsaken us; He has loved us so much that He sent us His
only Son to be our Savior.
This
is the real meaning of Christmas. The
infant child – Jesus of Nazareth, the babe lying in the manger – is God’s
greatest gift to us; we give good gifts to others because God gave His best
gift to us.
How
might we respond? Jesus Christ, the Son
of God, was born among us and became a man so that we might become more like
God. What can we offer Him in
thanksgiving? What gift can we give to
God, who gave His Son to us? The best
gift we can give is our very life; only our heart and soul, which He created, is
a fitting gift back to the Creator of the heavens and the earth.
This
Christmas, if you’ve been away from Church and from God for a while, we’d like
to invite you to come back – come and worship with us on Sundays; come and listen
to His word speaking to your heart; come and find new hope in the midst of the
craziness of life; come and discover God’s gift of peace by forming a relationship
with the Prince of Peace, born for us this Christmas.
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