And Joseph went up from Galilee…into Judea to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary his espoused wife, who was with child (Lk. 2).
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My very dear sons,
It seems that the custom of celebrating three Masses at Christmas originated in Palestine, in the very country where the Holy Family lived. In the fourth century a first Mass was said at Bethlehem, in the very early hours; a second Mass was then celebrated around dawn in the greater church of Jerusalem; finally, a third holy Mass was celebrated about midday in the famous church of the Resurrection, the Anastasis. In Rome, a similar custom prevailed: the first Mass was said at midnight before the relic of the Crib in the church of St. Mary Major; the second at dawn in the church of St. Anastasia; and the third at the hour of Terce at St. Peter’s basilica.
Each of the three Masses celebrates the birth of Christ, but under different aspects. The Mass of midnight celebrates the birth according to the flesh; the Mass of the Aurora or of Dawn commemorates the birth of Christ in the hearts of the shepherds who came to adore Him; finally, the Mass of the day celebrates the eternal birth of the Word of God, the Son, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity.
Thus the theme for this Midnight Mass, the subject placed before the eyes of our soul, is the temporal birth of Christ in the Stable of Bethlehem. The holy liturgy offers here for our meditation, among other things, the mystery of the Holy Family and its real-life drama. This birth, although of an entirely different order in its supernatural origin and purpose, is not so unlike other births in the humble reality of its circumstances.
What in the down-to-earth reality of human existence could be more important than birth and of the family that is its setting? This is the precious and providential means God employs to bring human beings into this world. For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, we are all in some way the product of our respective families. In the end, we must be infinitely thankful to have been given thus our human existence and to have had a family: it is all truly a source of deep wonder and calls for reverence for our Creator.
In our day there is much talk about the family—or perhaps it would be better to say that talk is about everything except the family, the true family composed of a man and a woman joined in wedlock and open to receiving the children God may send. It seems that our decadent and overly sophisticated societies, especially in Europe and in North America, have infinite resources for promoting any and every possible substitution for the family as God created it. But what these pathetic attempts to replace the true family show in the end is that there simply is no possible substitution. These new forms of family life are in fact a sham, and an immense disaster, the consequences of which society will have to pay for in years to come. The further our society wades into the mire of such a disorder, the deeper it sinks into the quicksand of violence and every form of unhappiness.
So, as Catholics the challenge we face is not that of having to define the family, since this has already been done—and since the dawn of History. The challenge is rather to survive and thrive in a world where the facts of life and life itself are often denied, because of mistaken ideologies and—simply enough—because of sin.
But tonight we do not have to dwell on the dire state of the world around us, except as a somber background that allows us better to appreciate the beauty of Christmas, the true object of our contemplative gaze. Without “escapism,” we can and should allow ourselves to be caught up in the beauty of Noël, which is, in any case, the real solution for all the problems relating to the family and for most of the problems in the world. All here in Bethlehem is simple, but noble: poor, but rich in grace; supernatural, but very natural at the same time; cold as to the weather, but full of human and divine warmth. In his homily for Midnight Mass in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI shared this meditation that opens up for us the mystery of this night.
God truly comes down. He becomes a child and puts himself in the state of complete dependence typical of a newborn child. The Creator who holds all things in his hands, on whom we all depend, makes himself small and in need of human love. God is in the stable. In the Old Testament the Temple was considered almost as God’s footstool… Above the temple, hidden, stood the cloud of God’s glory. Now it stands above the stable. God is in the cloud of the poverty of a homeless child: an impenetrable cloud, and yet–a cloud of glory! How, indeed, could his love for humanity, his solicitude for us, have appeared greater and more pure? The cloud of hiddenness, the cloud of the poverty of a child totally in need of love, is at the same time the cloud of glory. For nothing can be more sublime, nothing greater than the love which thus stoops down, descends, becomes dependent. The glory of the true God becomes visible when the eyes of our hearts are opened before the stable of Bethlehem.
As one Dominican theologian, P. de Blignières, put it: “[At Christmas] the smile of this newborn babe comes to speak to us of the Trinity: an ocean of tranquility that pacifies all things.” May we all enter into this smile in order to see the world, the family and ourselves in the radiance of God-Made-Man. Amen. Alleluia.
