Solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lord or Christmas

Vigil: The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham… Matthan became the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Christ (Mt. 1:1-25).

Night: “Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Lk 2:1-14).

Dawn: When the angels went away from them to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place… So they went in haste… Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God (Lk 2:15-20).

Day: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us (Jn. 1:1-18).

Today, the Light came into the world. Today, as it has done for over two thousand years, the Light shatters the darkness and the shadows of the night and illuminates us. That Light has a face and a name: Jesus Christ, prophesied by the prophet Isaiah: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” (Mass during the Night, Is. 9:1-6). He is the Light of the world that shines in the darkness (Jn. 1:9, 3, 19; Mass during the Day). He is the Hope that does not disappoint (Rom. 5:5). Jesus, from the root and lineage of David (cf. 2 Sam. 7:8ff.), the fulfillment of God’s promise to King David (Fourth Sunday of Advent). Jesus is the radiant morning star (Rev. 22:16).

The event

This is Christmas: a Fact, an Event that changed the course of history. God became man to make us children of God (cf. Saint Irenaeus). It is such an important event, it is so decisive, that the liturgy itself makes us savor it in slow motion as it were, offering us not one, but four different Christmas liturgies: the Vigil Mass (around 6:00 pm), Mass during the Night (usually between 9:00 and 12:00 pm), Mass at Dawn (between 7:00 and 9:00 am) and Mass during the Day (from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm). These four liturgies help us savor all the joy of this Event that has surprised/overturned human plans.

This is the joy of Christmas: “For today … a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord” (Lk. 2:11; Mass during the Night). The Lord Jesus draws near to us to tell us not to be afraid, to break the indifference we have with each other, because God, in Jesus His Son, has taken on our humanity, wounded by sin, to save us.

Historical details

Luke’s text, the one we listen to during the Mass during the Night, is rich with chronological and historical details: “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled… This was the first enrollment when Quirinius was the governor of Syria…” (Lk. 2:1-2). These details could leave us indifferent since we are so eager to get at the news that Jesus was born. But they are not secondary details because they indicate that Jesus’ birth is not a “fairy tale”, but is a fact that is completely historical.

Genealogical Tree

As is indicated in the Gospel proclaimed during the Christmas Vigil, Jesus is inserted within a genealogical tree that is not all that perfect. And yet, He accepted to enter within this family history, where saints do not stand out. The long list contains the patriarchs, then the kings before the Babylonian exile. Some kings were faithful, others were idolators, immoral and assassins. There is a lot to be said about King David, in whom faithfulness to God was intertwined with sin and crimes (we can recall the crime he confessed in Psalm 50 after having murdered Uriah).

Jesus’ genealogy serves as a testimony and confirmation that Jesus is of “David’s lineage” (cf. Mt. 1:6ff), and that the promise God made to David that he would build him “a house” (cf. 2 Sam. 7) found its complete fulfillment in Jesus. The genealogy demonstrates that Jesus is part of a larger story – this applies to Jesus as Man – and is the One who inaugurates a new story.

Behind every name, however enigmatic at times, is a story about how God made something possible. It is a page that reveals that behind every face there is someone chosen by God who has made a promise. This was true at one time and it is true today. We too have been “called” by God’s grace. “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you” (Jn. 15:16). We are not called due to our own merits, but through God’s mercy: “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jer. 31:3). This is what we can be certain of: “Before birth the Lord called me, from my mother’s womb” (Is. 49:1).

Just as in the past, so too today, Jesus enters within this story and invites us to look beyond. He invites us to read this particular historical and social time not as a litany of defeats to lament, but with that Light that comes from high and illumines everything.

After all, not even Joseph and Mary found themselves in a very easy context…

The manger

“The time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger” (cf. Lk. 2:6-7; Mass during the Night). God, the Father Almighty, through Mary, places His Child in a manger – Emmanuel, God with us. This Child begins (archē in Greek) a new Kingdom, a new History of Salvation: a kingdom of justice and of peace, of love and of truth.

“She laid him in a manger”. The Greek verb refers to the position people assumed at that time when they would eat. But Baby Jesus is lying in a food trough for animals, a receptable that attracted insects, animal burrs. It is a beginning that suggests what Jesus’ entire life will be like: angels sing in heaven and a king persecutes Him; one day He will be acclaimed by the people and the next day He will be condemned by the same crowd. One day they wanted to make Him king and another He is nailed to a cross as an evildoer. Rejection and glory were the contrasting signs that would distinguish this Child.

But there is also another detail that is often depicted on icons. This Child is placed where animals feed. This Baby, who needs to be nourished in order to grow, from His beginning He is celebrated as the “bread” that nourishes: “Do this in memory of me”. Through these details, this Child reveals who He is to us, and at the same time, reveals the way for our lives to be beautiful. At a time in which people are slaves to their own superficial desires, Jesus shows us a new life that can order so many disordered passions that do not satisfy anything except our own longing to deceive ourselves that “we are like God”, our self-affirmation and emancipation from God, the consequence of original sin: “The woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband” (Gn. 3:6). From the manger, Jesus teaches us to nourish ourselves with what matters so that from being compulsive eaters, we might become “bread that gives itself”. It is enough to remember that the first of Jesus’ temptations in the desert concerned the very concept of “food”: “Command that these stones become loaves of bread…One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God” (Mt. 4:3-4), thus showing us the style we should adopt.

Swaddling clothes

Mary “wrapped” the child “in swaddling clothes”: Even though Mary finds herself in a precarious situation, she is organized. This tells us that we need to learn to be “organized” so that the Child that asks to be born in our hearts and lives might find a welcome, care and protection. In other words, we could say that the memory of the birth of our Lord illuminates the “daily births” where faith – that is, our friendship with Baby Jesus – asks to be welcomed and protected in the “swaddling clothes” of our attention and care so that it might not be debased. In that “baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a manger”, we are invited to see the divine logic He uses when He acts “like God”. We are invited to invert our logic, our strategy: He asks that we change our mentality and perspective. What matters is not what is big, but what is little and apparently insignificant. A change of perspective from big to small, from strength to weakness, from power to gift, because this is how God acts!

As Christians, we too are called to be discreet “signs” of the power of God’s love, humble instruments of the Lord’s Kingdom, certain that “God’s weakness is more powerful than human strength” (see 1 Cor. 1:25). The term “sign” should not be understood as weakness or surrender because if “salt loses its taste…it is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out” (cf. Mt. 5:13). As Christians we should become living and credible reminders of the grain of wheat that bears fruit, a “sign” here and now of the Baby of Bethlehem, Jesus. Our lives and how we act should be capable of manifesting “Christmas” joy, of a Life given from on High, capable of being “broken” for others out of love.

The shepherds

God’s entrance into human history happens through “back doors” and other unconventional methods. Instead of announcing Jesus’ birth to the temple priests, the angels announce it to shepherds who were poor guardians paid to watch over sheep. They were excluded from the people because they were nomadic, which meant they were in contact with outsiders, foreigners. This made them ritually impure according to the law. The angels bring them the news first and thus they were the first to adore and then go in haste to proclaim the news: “ ‘Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger…. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God...” (cf. Lk. 2:15-20; Mass at Dawn).

Nomadic like Jesus who had nowhere to lay His head (cf. Mt. 8:20), in these shepherds we can see the nomadic guardians of our hearts, that restless part inside us that keeps watch, that seeks, that waits for Someone, but which often feeds itself on the wrong nourishment that does not satisfy what we are really hungry and thirsty for. After all, each one of us is that shepherd seeking after poor things, and when it finds what it has been looking for, becomes aware that the search is not over.

The Birth

The Birth of Our Lord Jesus reminds us that God is present in every situation in which we believe He is absent or in which we think He could never be. This faith drives us to view this time with greater serenity and hope. God is here. He is so present that perhaps, or rather He is certainly asking us to reconsider how we live. He is inviting us to remember that just as He came to save us, so too, we can be saved only if we walk together with Him, if we learn to take care of each other. We are invited to become “mangers” where others can nourish themselves on the bread of friendship, love, mercy, hope. The Lord offers Himself to us so we might bear Him through the witness of our lives. As Christians, we are called to be filled with the hope of this humanity, so disoriented and isolated, to become sentinels of a new dawn…so that the darkness of this time might be shattered by the Light that comes from the Lord Jesus, that is the Lord Jesus.

Jesus, the decisive reality

He is the decisive reality of our existence. In the Lord Jesus who drew near to us, we learn how to become brothers and sisters all to share an interior solidarity and proximity that is the most precious thing, allowing us to praise God together with the angels, and say: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests”.