Author: CCW

“His name was called Jesus”

What’s in a name? Mere words signifying whatever we choose? Or something more signifying the truth and the reality of what is signified? How do we name things? Are the terms of our naming merely conventions which could be otherwise? Are there not many different names for the same things and are there not different meanings and shades of meaning belonging to words themselves? Such is the wonder and the mystery of words and names.

Something of the wonder and the mystery of words and names are concentrated for us in Bethlehem. What are we to make of the strong words and names proclaimed in the Scriptures on this Octave Day of Christmas? Bethlehem, it seems, is the place of words and names that speak beyond the confines of a stable and a manger. Bethlehem is the place where the Word made flesh is named and signified as Jesus. Such is the wonder and the mystery of this day.

The idea of the Word made flesh, it seems to me, challenges the all-too-easy nominalism and relativism of our culture, as if names were merely of our choosing and at our convenience and as if names and words convey no real meaning beyond what meaning we choose to give to them; in short, that words and names signify no reality. We are really only talking to ourselves.

But Bethlehem shows us something more. It makes visible the astounding wonder of the unity of creation with the Creator and the unity of the whole of our humanity considered in and through the objective differences of its constituent parts. Bethlehem speaks to the deep desires of human hearts and to the form of those desires in their contemporary complexity. What are our environmental concerns about except a yearning and a longing for some sort of connection with the world of which we are a constituent part but from which we have alienated ourselves by our technocratic exuberance and arrogance? What are our social and political concerns about except a yearning and a longing for peace and harmony, for true unity and respect for all the peoples of the world?

Does not Bethlehem speak to such hopes and aspirations? Does not the spectacle of the Word made flesh in the lowliness and humility of Bethlehem speak to our desires? “Rich and poor, high and low, one with another”, shepherds and the Magi-Kings, the poor of the earth and the angels of heaven, humans and animals, men and women, and, especially, God and man, are all one in the wonder and worship of the child of Bethlehem. Here words and names begin to find their meaning.

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“These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth”

The Feast of the Holy Innocents is perhaps the most challenging of the three Christmas holy days. It challenges the sentimental aspects of Christmas and opens us out to its deeper meaning. Like The Feast of Stephen, nothing of our world of cruelty and suffering is glossed over or hidden from view. Yet nothing could be more disquieting than the slaughter of the Holy Innocents, the killing of children simply because they happen to be in the way, simply as a policy of political expediency.

The Feast of the Holy Innocents open us out to some of the larger biblical features of the Christmas story, particularly the flight into Egypt seen as the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy that “out of Egypt have I called my Son”. But how and why is the child Christ in Egypt? Because of Joseph being warned in a dream about the wrath of Herod seeking to kill the child whom he thinks is a rival to his kingship, little knowing that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, and little knowing, too, like Pilate, that he has no power at all except it were given him by God. The story also looks back to the story of Moses, to the policy of infanticide enacted by Pharaoh as an attempt to control the Hebrew population.

Yet the real power and the poignancy of the story lies in its theological meaning, especially as indicated in the reading from The Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine. We are privileged to see things there from a heavenly viewpoint and to learn something about suffering which otherwise remains simply unfathomable in our lives. Like “Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not”, we are often distraught and inconsolable and destroyed by the deaths of little infants or of those who never come to full birth. Such deaths are part of the tragedy of our humanity and yet this feast suggests that there is meaning to be found even in such loses.

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“Even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written”

Books and books, a world of books and a world of words but even and always more than the world. Christmas celebrates something more than ideas and words wafting about on the wind or drifting in and out of our minds. Christmas celebrates the Word made flesh. The three holy days of Christmas underscore something of the radical meaning of the Incarnation: first, with The Feast of Stephen reminding us of the integral connection between Christmas and Easter, and, especially, of the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins which belongs to our Christian witness; now, secondly, with The Feast of St. John the Evangelist; and, then, thirdly, with The Feast of the Holy Innocents.

The Feast of St. John the Evangelist recalls us to the great mystery of Christmas wonderfully signalled in The Prologue of his Gospel read on Christmas Eve. It recalls us to his teachings, his doctrine, found at once in his Gospel and in his Epistles. The Epistle reading from 1^st John echoes the great Gospel of Christmas and serves as a kind of homily or commentary about the meaning of the Incarnation, something which John is especially concerned to proclaim, to think and to contemplate. “That which was from the beginning” namely “the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God” is that, he says, “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life”, that is what “we declare unto you.” And why? “That ye also may have fellowship with us … and that your joy may be full.”

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