Sermon for the Second Sunday after Christmas
“Of his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace”
There is a rich fullness to Christmas, to be sure. We have had, perhaps, our fill of Christmas in too much eating, too much drinking, too much feasting, too much partying, too much snow, too much everything; even, it may seem, too much Church! (And, perhaps, for some both near and far, too much Curry!) There is, indeed, a rich fullness to Christmas.
It is something which one day cannot presume to capture nor that even twelve days with all the festivities of our social, family and communal gatherings can ever hope to exhaust. Such things belong, to be sure, to the rich fullness of this season, but only as attendant events. They circle about the central scene of Christmas. In a way, they are our poor attempt to capture something of the rich fullness of the Mystery of Christmas.
There is but one poor, humble scene of Christmas. It is the stable of Bethlehem. And yet, therein lies all the rich fullness of Christmas. That poor, humble scene contains a great crowd of scenes, a great gathering of Christmasses; in short, it opens to view a rich fullness of grace, even “grace upon grace”. There is more here, we may say, than meets the eye. It is altogether something for the soul. We are bidden to ponder the Mystery of the Word made flesh. The attitude of the Church is an essentially Marian attitude. “Mary kept all these things” – all these wondrous things that were said about the Child Christ by Shepherds and Angels – “and pondered them in her heart”. And only so can they come to birth and live in us.
There is the Christmas of the Shepherds, the Christmas of the Angels, the Christmas of Mary and Joseph and Christ’s holy birth, the Christmas, too, of Christ’s heavenly, eternal birth for “there was not when he was not”. And, shortly, there shall be the Christmas of the Gentiles in the coming of the Magi, without which, too, we would not have Christmas. For in their coming Christmas is “omni populo”, for all people. With the coming of the Magi, it is Christmas still and yet again. Christmas is more Christmas, not less, a richer fullness than ever we had envisioned. All come to Bethlehem.
