Nativity of the Lord, Mass during the Day

Readings: Isaiah 52:7-10; Psalm 98:1-6; Hebrews 1:1-6; John 1:1-18

Unlike Easter, when the main liturgy is the Easter Vigil, which is the main liturgy of the entire liturgical year, the main Mass of Christmas is Mass During the Day, this Mass. Apart from preparing for Christmas by observing Advent, I can think of no better way to “keep Christ in Christmas” than by assisting at Mass on the Nativity of the Lord.

Jesus Christ is the full revelation of God. As the Christian singer-songwriter, Michael Card sang:

He spoke the Incarnation and so was born the Son
His final word was Jesus, he needed no other one
He spoke flesh and blood, so he could bleed and make a way divine
And so was born the baby who would die to make it mine¹

This is really the message of the Church’s readings for this main Christmas liturgy taken as they are from Isaiah, the Psalms, Hebrews, and John’s Gospel.

“And the Word became flesh…” For us and for our salvation, God became human through the Virgin Mary. It has been noted that the Incarnation of the Son of God is an event “so earth-shattering that it enacts something akin to the psychoanalytic concept of trauma” on the world.²

This traumatic impact isn’t only the result of God becoming human in the person of Jesus, but the manner in which he did it. To wit: the Son of God was not born into the world as the emperor of Rome, who were thought by the Romans to be divine, sons of God. Rather, the Lord was born a marginal person to a marginal people in an out-of-the-way but troublesome part of the lands conquered and occupied by Rome.

As to why God became incarnate in the manner he did, Saint Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians provides a convincing answer: “God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something.”³ Jesus himself is chief among “the lowly and despised of the world.”

The Word becoming flesh is not static, merely an historical event. It is the dynamic of the whole of reality, of God’s creative and redemptive work. It is the Spirit-driven dynamic of what occurs in the Mass. Hence, every Mass is a Christ-Mass.

Of necessity, the Liturgy of the Word precedes the Liturgy of the Eucharist. The culmination of the Liturgy of the Eucharist and, indeed, of the whole Mass, is the Communion Rite. What happens or what is supposed to happen in and through this sacrament is that the Word is made flesh in us and, as we are sent forth, through us.

Toward the end of the offertory, the deacon pours a few drops of water into the wine. As he does so, he quietly says words almost identical to those found in our Collect, or opening prayer, for this Mass: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”⁴

This happens after we listen to the proclamation of God’s word, the scriptures. We make a huge mistake when we conceive of Christmas only or mainly as something that happened a long time ago in a land far away. We also miss out when we reduce Christmas to a sentimental journey, trying to create or recreate something we never had but wanted, or something we feel we’ve lost, or, worse yet, a scene out of slick advertising.

While looking back can be useful for looking ahead, you can’t live life in reverse. Christ beckons you ever forward, forward to the realization of your destiny, which is “to become children of God,” born, “not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God.”⁵ For this to happen, Christ must be born in you.

Hence, like the Blessed Virgin Mary, you must give your own fiat to God, saying, in effect, “May it be done to me according to your word.”⁶ Those born of God are those who experience that the mystery of life in Christ is that Christ can live you.⁷ This is the message of Christmas, which comes in so many layers of cultural and commercial wrapping and packing. I don’t know about you, but I find Santa Claus to be pretty thin gruel.

When you are born of God, as the Word becomes flesh in you, you become one who bears the glad tidings we heard about in our reading from Isaiah. Our birth as children of God, like natural birth, involves pain and travail. Sanctification, being ever more conformed to the image of Christ, takes time and unfolds, unevenly, in and through the circumstances of your everyday life.

The life of grace into which we are born through the waters of baptism is nourished by the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. It was Saint Augustine who preached

that the Eucharist gives us is unity. This means that after we have received Christ’s body and become his members, we are what we have received. Only then does the Eucharist really become our daily bread⁸

Augustine continued, noting the link between word and sacrament,

what I preach to you is also your daily bread. The same holds true for the hymns that you hear and pray… When, however, we have reached our destination… we will see the Word himself, eat, hear and drink him⁹

And so, my dear friends, the Word made flesh still seeks to make his dwelling not only among us but in and through us. The Spirit of Christmas is the Spirit of Christ, that is, the Holy Spirit, who, in a few moments on this altar will transform our humble gifts of bread and wine (not quite gold, frankincense, and myrrh) into the body and blood of Christ. “May we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”¹⁰

A Happy Christmas to all!

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1 Michael Card. The Final Word (album). “The Final Word” (song).^↩
2 John Milbank, Slavoj Žižek, Creston Davis, Paul’s New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology, 7.^↩
3 1 Corinthians 1:28.^↩
4 Roman Missal. The Nativity of the Lord, Mass during the Day. Order of Mass, sec. 24.^↩
5 John 1:13.^↩
6 Luke 1:38.^↩
7 Colossians 1:27.^↩
8 Saint Augustine. Sermon 57,7,7.^↩
9 Ibid.^↩
10 Roman Missal. The Nativity of the Lord, Mass during the Day. Order of Mass, sec. 24.^↩