Day: December 25, 2023

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour,
who is Christ the Lord”

The hustle and bustle of Christmas Eve gives way to the contemplative quiet and wonder of Christmas Morn. What seems long ago and far away is present and now. Everywhere is Bethlehem. “And so it was, that while they were there” – in Bethlehem – “the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her first-born son,” Luke tells us. Here is the son who is “the only-begotten of the Father full of grace and truth,” as we heard last night from the heights of heaven in John’s Prologue. From the heights of heaven to the lowliness of little Bethlehem. This is the wonder of Christmas morning.

The wonder is the unity of God and Man in Christ with the whole of creation. The three great masses of Christmas present to us the fullness of this wonder and delight. There is the Christmas Eve proclamation and celebration of the eternal Sonship of Christ who is the Word made flesh. There is the story of his actual birth made known in the angelic “tidings of great joy” in this morning’s Gospel. There is the Christmas of the Shepherds to whom the angelic news from heavenly heights is proclaimed and made known to us in Christmastide. Bethlehem is the place of these great wonders. It is paradise restored but also something more. It inaugurates a new vision and a new life.

The new vision and the new life is what has been made known to us in God’s self-giving love. What is made known is God with us and God for us. “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour who is Christ the Lord,” the Angel says to the Shepherds. “The glory of God,” as Ireneaus says, is vivens homo, our “living humanity” but alive only by beholding the vision of God; for “the life of man is the vision of God.” Bethlehem is the place of the vision of our humanity alive in the shining glory of the Lord. Alive in Christ, “the word made flesh” whose glory we behold, “the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father.”

But it is not our humanity alone in itself. It is not just us. Nor is it just the mighty and the powerful of the world, the privileged elite. In the quiet of Christmas morning, we are in the company of shepherds and angels with “a multitude of the heavenly host.” And only so are we with the holy Child who comes to us, the one who is the union of God and Man and who “defines for us what it is to be God and what it is to be human, in one, at the same time”. The Angel proclaims something great and wondrous; strong words of proclamation that point to a wonder and mystery. Through what the Angel proclaims and makes known we see the unity of the whole of creation with its Creator. The Angels, too, are part of that order. They do simply what belongs to their office and being, to their ministry. They are the messengers, the audible and visible thoughts of God made known to us.

(more…)

Print this entry