Sermon for the Octave Day of Christmas
“But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”
It is, I have to admit, one of my favourite Scriptural passages. It captures in a phrase the essential meaning and activity of the Church. The Church is, if nothing else, Marian, precisely in this attitude of mind and activity of soul presented in this passage. It is all part of the wonder and mystery of Christmas and how that wonder and mystery is meant to stay with us. How so? By keeping all these things, and pondering them in our hearts. In a way, it is as simple as that. We are what we contemplate.
Christmas is more than a one-day, a three-day or even a nine-day wonder. There are the twelve days of Christmas that keep us at that holy scene, that bid us abide at Bethlehem and contemplate the great mystery of God with us. Today is The Octave Day of Christmas, the eighth day, which like the musical scale, takes us home again but with an heightened sensibility and higher understanding. This morning we are presented with Luke’s poignant account of the Shepherds’ Christmas: their coming “with haste” by acting upon the Angelic message; their “[finding] Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger”; their “see[ing] this thing which has come to pass”, literally, “this saying that has happened,” and, perhaps, above all else, their “ma[king] known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child”. Luke as always is wonderfully restrained and yet precise.
The effect of the Shepherds “ma[king] known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child” is especially noteworthy. It goes to the heart of the mystery of Christmas. (more…)
