I have determined to not prepare any homilies for the Christmas Masses, for it would be far too tedious considering the long list of readings the Church has prepared for us. So, I thought for a Christmas post, I would simply drift through some of these readings.
Many families will turn up for the first Mass of Christmas this evening, which is the vigil Mass, which anticipates the great festival. If you attend this Mass, you will suffer through the long genealogy of our Lord given at the top of S. Matthew’s gospel. For priests, this is mostly a stumbling through mostly unfamiliar Hebrew names. Matthew, writing for a Jewish audience, begins with the first Jewish patriarch, Abraham, and omits several levels to flatten the whole into three sets of fourteen: from Abraham to David (I), from David to the deportation of the people to Babylon (II), and from the deportation to Christ (III).
I: Abraham – Isaac – Jacob – Juda – Phares – Esron – Aram – Aminadab – Naasson – Salmon – Booz – Obed – Jesse – king David –
II: Solomon – Roboam – Abias – Asa – Josaphat – Joram – Ozias – Joatham – Achaz – Ezechias – Manasses – Amon – Josias – Jechonias –
III: Salathiel – Zorobabel – Abiud – Eliacim – Azor – Sadoc – Achim – Eliud – Eleazar – Mathan – Jacob – Saint Joseph, spouse of the BVM – Christ.
I’ve highlighted some of these great ancestors of Christ in His humanity. Abraham, of course, is the father of the nation. His son Isaac and his grandson Jacob are normally named with him as the great patriarchs, so that when the Holy One appears to the law-giver Moses in the Exodus story, He identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jacob’s son Juda is significant for the Jews and Christians because his is the tribe from which came the great shepherd-king David, and the prophets of old Israel promised repeatedly that a new king David, the Successor of David, would one day return to bless the nation. Booz, or Boaz, is significant in joining the bloodline of Juda with that of the Moabites from the East of the Jordan, for he married the widowed wife of a cousin of his, the Moabitess Ruth. Decades later, King David would find this link useful, when he was fleeing for his life and sent his family for protection to the king of Moab. David received the promise that the Salvation (Hebrew, Yehoshuah, Greek, Jesus) of God would emerge from his own descendants, which is why such people as the blind beggar of the gospel stories called Christ Jesus, Son of David. Solomon, the son of David, would upgrade the religion of the people by building a stone Temple in Jerusalem and activating his father’s detailed liturgical preparations for it. Centuries later, Achaz received the promise of the virgin birth of Christ, as given by chapter seven of the prophecy of Isaiah. Ezechias and Josias are the most highly regarded of the kings of Judah, who restored and preserved the ancient religion before the kingdom was destroyed and the Temple levelled in 587 BC. Seventy years later, Zorobabel built a second Temple and restored the old religion, and his family carefully preserved for the remaining centuries the promise once made to King David, that his Successor would arrive as the anointed (Greek, Christ) king of the Jews. For as God says through the prophet Isaiah in the first reading at the vigil Mass,
“For love of Sion I will no more be silent, for love of Jerusalem I will never rest, until He, the Just One, is revealed to her like the dawn, until He, her Deliverer, shines out like a flame. All the nations, all the kings of the nations, shall see Him, the Just, the Glorious, and a new name shall be given thee by the Lord’s own lips.”
Prophecy of Isaias, 62: 1-2 [link]
The Just One we know as Christ and the people receives a new name in Him. They are called after Him. Once the children of Adam and (as Jews by blood) of Abraham, once reborn in Christ they are His children. And that brings us to the night Mass, which many of us will celebrate as a midnight Mass. Our readings day begin with Isaiah’s several names for the Successor of David.
“For our sakes a Child is born, to our race a son is given, whose shoulder will bear the sceptre of princely power. What name shall be given Him? Peerless among counsellors, the mighty God, Father of the world to come, the Prince of peace. Ever wider shall His dominion spread, endlessly at peace; He will sit on David’s kingly throne, to give it lasting foundations of justice and right; so tenderly He loves us, the Lord of hosts.”
Prophecy of Isaias, 9: 1-19 [link]
So, the Child bears a sceptre of princely power, great counsellor, unsurprisingly He is mighty God and Father of the future world, and Prince of Peace. Having received this wonderful prophecy, the midnight Mass now presents us with the circumstances of Christ’s birth in the gospel narrative. Joseph is given to be a son of David himself, and tradition tells us that Mary his wife was as well. The very reason they went to Bethlehem was to honour the census command of the Roman governor Quirinius in Antioch, and every man had to return to his home country for it, so Joseph headed for the traditional home town of shepherd-king David – Bethlehem – where he must have had family property. But why did angels send a message only to the shepherds on the hills about the birth of Christ? Perhaps they were the only ones awake at that hour. And perhaps it was because they were shepherds, and were being summoned to receive their own Shepherd, Who is God in the flesh.
The sequel to the call of the shepherds is their arrival at the crib, and that takes us to the dawn Mass, which gives us the reaction of the shepherds. Neither Mary nor Joseph were expecting visitors so very early, but the shepherds described the astonishing angel choirs on the hills, and Mary promptly stored the information away so she could later tell S. Matthew about it. The shepherds had more to rejoice about than simply proving the words of the angels on the hills. As religious Jews, they may have remembered the lines of Isaiah, given us by the first reading at the dawn Mass, which were coming to fruition before their eyes. Here the Deliverer is God Almighty Who brings His labour or task of redemption to completion in His birth as a human child. By innocent humanity is fallen and sinful humanity restored. Such is His plan. So, the sinful are no longer forsaken.
“Out, out through the city gates! Give My people free passage; a road, there, a smooth road, away with the boulders on it! Raise a signal for all the nations to see. To the furthest corners of the earth the Lord proclaims it, A message to queen Sion: Look, where thy Deliverer comes, look, how they come with Him, the reward of His labour, the achievement of His task! A holy people they shall be called, of the Lord’s ransoming, and thou the city of His choice, no more forsaken.”
Prophecy of Isaias, 62: 9-12 [link]
And, with the day Mass, we set aside the history of the Nativity of Christ and rejoice and marvel in the reality of it. So, Isaiah sings for joy in the first reading that first Jerusalem – the Jewish nation, that is – is renewed and then she becomes a beacon to the rest of the world. For Salvation comes from God through the Jewish nation, through the little Jewish boy lying in the manger in the Bethlehem stable. And the Church has no better song for this than the great hymn at the top of the Gospel of S. John, with which I shall end this post.
“At the beginning of time the Word already was;
Gospel of S. John, 1: 1-14 [link]
and God had the Word abiding with Him,
and the Word was God.
He abode, at the beginning of time, with God.
It was through Him that all things came into being,
and without Him came nothing that has come to be.
In Him there was life, and that life was the light of men.
And the Light shines in darkness,
a darkness which was not able to master it.
A man appeared, sent from God, whose name was John.
He came for a witness, to bear witness of the light,
so that through him all men might learn to believe.
He was not the Light;
he was sent to bear witness to the Light.
There is One Who enlightens every soul born into the world;
He was the true Light.
He, through Whom the world was made, was in the world,
and the world treated Him as a stranger.
He came to what was His own,
and they who were His own gave Him no welcome.
But all those who did welcome Him,
He empowered to become the children of God,
all those who believe in His Name;
their birth came, not from human stock,
not from nature’s will or man’s,
but from God.
And the Word was made flesh,
and came to dwell among us;
and we had sight of His glory,
glory such as belongs to the Father’s only-begotten Son,
full of grace and truth.“
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 