After the passage of countless centuries from the creation of the world, when in the beginning God created heaven and earth and formed man and woman in his own image, and very many centuries from the time when after the flood the Almighty had set his bow in the clouds, a sign of the covenant and of peace; in the twenty-first century from the migration of Abraham, our father in faith, from Ur of the Chaldees; in the thirteenth century from the departure of the people of Israel from Egypt under the leadership of Moses; in about the thousandth year from the anointing of David as king according to the prophecy of Daniel; in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad; in the seven hundred and fifty-second year from the foundation of the City of Rome; in the forty-second year of the rule of Caesar Octavian Augustus; while the whole world was at peace, Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the Eternal Father, desiring to consecrate the world by his most gracious coming, having been conceived of the Holy Spirit, and when nine months had passed after his conception, is born as man in Bethlehem of Judah from the Virgin Mary: the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.[1]
There are many ways in which we could try to date the event we celebrate this evening. The Ancient Greeks counted out the years between one Olympic Games and another, putting the birth of Christ in the 194th Olympiad. The Romans counted from the year their own great city was founded, and marked out time according to the reigns of their emperors. St Luke, when he was writing the history of Christ pinned down that first Christmas by reference to the fact that Quirnus was governor of Syria. Since then, empires have fallen and risen, and all those ways of marking time have fallen into disuse. We now count our years as AD and BC. AD –in the year of our Lord, BC – before Christ.
Christ was born into a world where dates were marked by reference to the great men of the time, or some historical event. Now, however, every time we read a date or talk about an event in history, we mark the time by reference to what happened on that holy night in Bethlehem. The death of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, the fall of the Roman empire in 476 AD, the great Fire of London in 1666, the 1916 Easter Rising, September the 11th 2001. The way we number our years reminds us that all of human history can be divided into a before and an after… the preparation for the coming of Christ, and the new era which began with His birth. Cardinal Newman once wrote, “Christ … came to make a new and better beginning of all things than Adam had been, and to be a fountain-head from which all good henceforth might flow.”[2] Tonight we celebrate that new and better beginning, when God himself was born into this world as a little baby.
Look at the crib. Step back from the romance of it for a moment, and it does not look like a promising beginning. A family, forced to leave their home so that they might be taxed, a mother who finds no place to give birth to her baby, but a stable. A baby, wrapped up tight in swaddling clothes, unable even to lift his arm. And yet, this baby, this little child is not only the King promised to the Israelites, but is the Son of God Himself.
It is a scene of love, and of joy too, no doubt. Mary and Joseph rejoice in the birth of his child, but to human eyes it seems an unpromising and poor beginning for a child's life, and not at all like God's new beginning for us all.
The angels know better, they sing, “ Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace to men who enjoy his favour.” They see what we now know by faith. They see in that little child God’s favour, God’s generosity to us all. They see what we struggle to understand – that God made himself weak so that all men and women might know Him, love Him and receive His peace, His salvation. The angels see that God does not want to gather his straying children by a show of force, but wants to share our human life so that He can transform it from within. He wants to walk with us, so that we can learn from one like ourselves, He wants to suffer for us, so that He will never be far away when we suffer, He wants to die for us, so that we might no longer have anything to fear from sin and death.
That is what we celebrate tonight. Our ancestors knew how to celebrate this feast, even when they lived in a hardship we can’t imagine. There is the old custom of lighting a candle in the window each Christmas so that Mary and Joseph might have light to guide them on their journey. There was also the custom of setting food out on the table so that the Holy Family might have something to sustain them in their travels. The light of that candle also promised safety to the priest in times of persecution and a welcome to the wanderer in times of hardship. The food was not only for the Holy Family, but was to be shared with anyone who had need.
These customs show that those who went before us realised two things. In their concern for the Holy Family they realised that when Christmas is celebrated, the events which happened in Bethlehem are not trapped in the past… The birth of Christ still matters today, still has effects for us today, and if we celebrate Christmas well, we can, in a sense, be brought back to that stable, to gaze on the Child Jesus and welcome Him with joy!
The second thing they realised is that the celebration of this feast should lead us into a greater love and generosity for those around us. The new and better beginning must take hold in our hearts… If we welcome Christ at Christmas, and if we welcome him in the Eucharist, then we must give birth to Christ ourselves, by having a more Christ-like heart. We must not be afraid to be more generous, more forgiving, more loving, more prayerful, more humble. We must not be afraid to let the idealism and the joy of Christmas touch our hearts. Christ came into the world poor so that our souls might be made rich through him.
“Mary treasured all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” May her prayers help us to give Christ a true welcome this Christmas.
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