Mass of Christmas Day 2023

There’s a song from the Broadway musical “Mame”: For I've grown a little leaner, grown a little colder, grown a little sadder, grown a little older. And I need a little angel sitting on my shoulder. I need a little Christmas now. We did need Christmas, and we do still need Christmas so thank God Christmas has come. Just as Easter looks immediately forward to eternal life, Christmas looks first to a life in this world.

Manger scene in Abbey church

Although He is the eternal God from God, we celebrate at Christmas the birth of Jesus as a human baby, God come to us, God with us, God one of us, a God who experiences what we experience: birth, growth, learning, puberty, temptation, success, joy, friendship, opposition, failure, misunderstanding, fatigue, pain. We celebrate the birth of a man who grew into a healer, literally and figuratively, physically and spiritually. Advent, now over, recalls the time before Christ, the longing for such a healer to set things right, a time of anxious waiting, trusting that God would do just as he said he would. And God did, in His own surprising way. And so now at Christmas we thank God and celebrate. We always give this greeting to each other, to friends and strangers alike: Merry Christmas. Merry is an old word. It means fundamentally “happy,” but visibly happy and full of joy in behavior rather than just in interior feeling. The first person history records wishing anyone a Merry Christmas was the martyr-bishop St. John Fisher in a letter he closed with the words, “Our Lord God send you a merry Christmas.” So, the greeting means Happy Christmas. Happiness is what every sane human being seeks, even the worst sinner, who thinks that his sin will bring him happiness.

Christmas is the time of Christ, our time. It is the time since 1 AD, but the happiness we wish each other is for now, today, and for the future. We know our eternal happiness rests in Jesus Christ. But not everyone knows or believes that. Our secularized post-Christian society believes happiness rests in material prosperity, symbolized by many and expensive gifts and lavish food which are so heavily promoted at Christmas time. Christmas may be just another holiday to some, but in wishing someone Merry Christmas, even someone who takes umbrage at the religious aspect of Christmas, one is simply wishing that person deep happiness. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. God meets us where we are, all of us. That’s the way Jesus and the Apostles preached, to people as and where they were. So, to the unbelievers unappreciative of a Merry Christmas, just tell them you wish them happiness. No strings attached. You don’t want anything from them, just want true happiness for them. That ought to make them stop and think. And that pause is where God can enter. God can and does enter pauses. We might think of that as we sing or hear “Silent Night.” If we make too much noise or are surrounded by too much noise and business, there’s little possibility for God to get a word in. As we go through the busyness of life year by year, it’s easy for us to develop a sort of deafness and insensitivity to God and our faith. As we begin a new year, a new age as it were, after Christmas, ask yourself: Do you want to be happy, truly and deeply happy? Are you truly and deeply happy? Only you can answer that, but I’m pretty sure that no matter how happy you are, that there is room for improvement, since perfect happiness is not found in this world or this life.

John Hegnauer’s “Flight into Egypt” (St. Joseph chapel, Abbey Church)

The way to deepen happiness is by deepening faith in the Source of Happiness, and so deepening a relationship with God, a God who became so relatable as to become a human like us on that first Christmas. Now, if you are happy and seeking happiness, would you not like those whom you love also to be happy? Christmas is an invitation not only for us but also for those who have lost touch with God, the faith and the Church. We too may become distant from God…. but God stays close to us. That is the fundamental meaning of Christmas: God with us, waiting for the moment, the opportunity to get through to us. Christmas may be the moment for you or someone you love. The wise men, the Magi, responded to an invitation God put into the stars. They were wise enough to read it and answer. God puts many invitations into our lives. He does not delete us from his mailing list if we don’t respond. He keeps trying. That’s because God really does love each and every one of us, even in our worst, weakest or most indifferent moments, however long those may last. Whatever way God is calling you and inviting you to come closer, to be happier, may you hear, listen and respond, and thereby may you become happier on your life’s journey. And above all, keeping Christ in Christmas and in every day of the new year to come, may you arrive at the destination of perfect happiness that God has designed just for you. Merry, Happy, Christmas.
 

Abbot Michael Brunner, O.S.B. serves as the superior of Portsmouth Abbey. He offered this homily for the Mass of Christmas, 2024, celebrated in the Church of St. Gregory the Great.