Homily for Christmas Day
You are all very welcome again to the renovated, revamped Augustinian to celebrate the most popular feast in the year. The Church you left last Christmas morning is a very different Church to the one you entered this morning. We hope you found it a more welcoming church, you certainly found a more open Church, you found a brighter church, a church with a joyful optimistic hue to it, a church that is designed for a celebrating community.
This morning, we celebrate God's coming among us as a vulnerable baby. We celebrate the incarnation, God coming among us in the flesh. We celebrate the vulnerability of God, the humanity of God. This is not a God who lives unaffected, in isolated splendour. This is a God who is one of us. This is a God who entered into the human condition fully, who experienced hurt, pain and temptation, just like ourselves. But this is also the one who taught us to glory in our humanity, the one who shared his table with saints and sinners, but most especially with sinners. This is the one who came to the rescue of the host at the wedding feast when the wine had run out. This was the one who was very critical of the religious mores he inherited, because he judged them to conceal rather than reveal God whom he called Father. He became critical of the law because the law at become an end in itself. Tradition must be respected and venerated, of course. If we sever our roots, we run the risk of becoming shallow drifters. Through your presence here this morning, you are actively tapping into a healthy tradition. You are doing as your parents, your grandparents and your great-grandparents did.
There is nothing wrong with that. Our ancestors got a lot of thing right. And in deference to tradition, we will use two beautiful, ancient Augustinian chalices to celebrate Christmas Mass in the restored Augustinian here in Galway this morning. The small chalice that you see on the altar was commissioned by the Augustinians of Banada in 1641. The Galway Augustinians had been founded from Banada. The more elaborate Francis Comyn or Galway chalice was commissioned for the Galway Augustinians in 1721 when the friars lived and worshipped on the site of the present Taidbhearch theatre. The baptismal font you walked by as you entered the Church this morning also began life in that little Church, probably around the same time, circa 1721. So let it not be said that the present generation of Augustinians are insensitive to tradition, or worse still, ignorant of it. That will be obvious to anyone who would care to explore the sensitive nature of the recent renovations.
However, while tradition must be deferred to and respected, it must never be donned as a straight-jacket, or, worse still, a flack jacket. Tradition must be worn proudly, but worn lightly. Like God himself, we must remain open to the world. We are called to be servants of the Word and the world. "The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath" he preached. In other words, he opposed anything or anyone who diminished humanity. Many of his contemporaries experienced their religion as oppressive. That is not as God intended, he told them. 'I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly!' he told them. So this is God's message to humanity, mediated through the human being Jesus Christ: "I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly". That is why Christmas is such a wonderful feast: because the news is so good and uplifting.
The baby who was born on that first Christmas night grew up to be perhaps the most open-hearted, open-minded, and the freshest person who ever walked this earth. Despite our best efforts to control him and to monopolise him, despite our best efforts to make him respectable, he emerges anew to challenge every generation. But he will challenge every generation in a new way, because the 'Word is made flesh' anew in every generation. And our major challenge today is to recognize that fact: the fact that the Word is made flesh today, as surely as it was made flesh on that first Christmas night in the stable at Bethlehem. Christ will challenge my nephews and nieces in a very different way to the way he challenged me. He will challenge your children is a very different way to manner in which he challenged you. The world has changed, as we so often hear. The only thing we are certain of is that it will continue to change. Every generation attempts to rise to that challenge in its own unique way. Through these recent renovations, the present generation has responded to the challenge posed to the church by the contemporary world. And, as the Rev'd Patrick Towers remarked in this wonderful homily on the day of our opening last Sunday, the creativity of the artist must be married to the wisdom of the elders. Only then will the Temple of the Lord be gloriously revealed. Nothing happened in this Temple here by accident. Every alteration was mulled over, argued about, debated endlessly, and then the decision was made. Risks were taken at various stages, but the people who took the risk had a fairly clear vision of where they wanted to go. They were most certainly not walking in the darkness. The church had to be architecturally inviting, first of all. It had to visually compel people to enter. Ideally, the architecture will reflect the open welcome, and the bright optimism that Jesus radiated. It must then force them to question received assumptions concerning their faith. It must stretch them intellectually and emotionally, and lead them into a creative interrogation of tradition. They must be both affirmed, and challenged by what they find there. They will affirmed through being assured that 'God became man so that man might become God.' The bright hope of eternal glory is held out to them. But your greatest challenge will be to believe that the word has become flesh in the person sitting opposite you. True Christianity invites you to face your neighbour, not to turn your back on him or her. If you do not find Christ in the person opposite you, you most surely will not find him in the tabernacle.
Christmas is about our humanity, our redeemed humanity, our vulnerable humanity. It is of course a wonderful day, a day of wonder, for children especially. On Christmas Day we catch a glimpse again at our lost innocence. If we are fortunate enough, we will rediscover our own infant joy and wonder in the joy and wonder of our own little children. Santa is central to Christmas only because children are at the heart of the feast. And that is as it should be. The innocence and honesty of childhood will play a central role in today's celebrations. Patrick Kavanagh captured this centrality in the following few lines:
O Divine baby in the cradle
all that is truth in me
is my mind tuned to the cadence
of a child's philosophy.
We are celebrating God's gift of his infant son to us. What better way to celebrate this event than to surprise children with generosity. Hugh Leonard in one of his pieces on Christmas looks sardonically at the place of the adult at this children's feast. "Christmas is only for children," said the old man as he rolled his tenth empty beer bottle across the floor! Christmas is special to children but the rest of us must be permitted to feast on the crumbs of joy that fall from their tables. Have a lovely, peaceful and happy Christmas.