Christmas, Mass at Midnight

The shepherds are told something rather amazing tonight. They are told that in a town called Bethlehem, in a manger, no less, to rather ordinary seeming parents, the savior of the world is born. God’s generosity has been poured on all of humanity. The might God has come into history in the form of an infant, or to borrow from St. Paul’s mode of description, though he was in the form of God, Christ did not count equality with God something to be grasped, rather he emptied himself, and took the form of a slave, being found in the likeness of men.

The shepherds are alerted to this divine condescension tonight, and they go and see the Christ child. They behold the poverty that God took to himself, a poverty that is fully confirmed on Good Friday, when we see that this tender scene of God’s vulnerability in the manger at Bethlehem is no sentimental display. God truly takes the fullness of human weakness to himself in the incarnation.

And as this message of divine condescension comes to the shepherds a small phrase is repeated gently, as easily missed as the incarnation itself, but which is as profound as the incarnation. Without this phrase, the real meaning might be missed altogether: “for you.” The angels declare to the shepherd that all this is “for you.” “Today a savior is born for you who is Christ and Lord. And this will be a sign for you.” This is the good news that the angels bear “for all.”

All of this is for us. The incarnation, God’s gift of self, God’s endurance of a weakness that was ours rather than his, bearing this burden is all “for us.” Jesus does not exist for himself. He exists first for the Father. It is characteristic in John’s Gospel for Jesus to say that, “I came not to do his own will, but the will of my heavenly Father.” Jesus whole identity is wrapped up in the mission given to him by his Father. He is the “sent one,” as when he says “I came not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me.” His whole existence is “for us” and “for the Father.”

Christ is sent to us for us. He came to be the light in our darkness. He came to save us. What is this, though? Is it really a message of divine generosity and grace? Or is it wishful thinking? Is it an egoism that imagines an all powerful God would really care enough to make one of his creatures the center of his concern?

Nothing could be further from the truth. Christ’s “for us” has nothing to do with human egoism. First of all the human imagination is not capable of imagining this sort of divine generosity. It represents a mystery of love beyond human conceiving, and can be known to us only be revelation. Second, the light that Christ gives is that we too must live “for all.”

Just as Christ takes his identity and dignity not from himself but from all that the Father gave him, the challenge for us is to do the same. We are made in God’s image, and now in Christ the full nature of that image is made clear to us. We are to live for others.

St. Paul explains that this sort of existence will consist of peace, patience, kindness, mercy. As we grow in charity we will be free of resentment, not counting up the wrongs committed against us, eager to forgive and bear the faults of others. Then the tender mercy of the scene before us will be ours. Then we too will be bearers into the world of the light of Christ.