Sermon for the Octave Day of Christmas
“And all they that heard it wondered at those things
which were told them by the shepherds”
Wonder is one of the strong and great features of Christmas, and, of course, of Christianity and of Religion in general! Philosophy, too, it is said begins in wonder. The wonder of Christmas is about “this thing which is come to pass,” literally, this thing that has happened, “the shepherds say one to another,” saying in their own country fashion what John in his Prologue proclaims as the central mystery of Christmas, “the Word was made flesh”. For that is the wonder of Christmas.
The shepherds’ Christmas is about that sense of wonder and about their witness to what “the Lord hath made known unto us,” as they say. For “when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.” What saying was that? “For unto you,” the angel had said to the shepherds in the fields, “is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.” This is the occasion for our wonder.
But what does it mean to wonder? It means to hold in awe and to ponder in our hearts and minds the meaning of what we have been given to behold. The truest sense of wonder is captured in the figure of Mary who “kept all these things,” all these things that were said about the child Christ, “and pondered them in her heart.” “Love is the weight of [our] soul[s],” Augustine said long ago, and the Latin word, pondus – weight – gives shape to the verb to ponder, namely, to weigh the meaning of things in our hearts and minds. It is the thing most necessary and yet for our culture and day, the hardest thing.
