I’m always struck by how different Christmas Day is from Christmas Eve. It’s like the difference between an introvert and an extrovert. 

Last evening/night was exciting, noisy, and crowded. This morning is calm, quiet, and there aren’t as many of us here as compared to last evening. Christmas Eve pageantry has given way to Christmas Day simplicity. The candlelight of last night has given way to the Son-light of this morning. The singing and proclamation of last night have given way to this morning’s treasuring and pondering. Last night we came with anticipation. This morning fulfilment has come to us.

This morning no one is childless. There are no empty mangers. The child has been laid in the manger of your life and “joined heaven to earth and earth to heaven.” It is, as the angel says, in Luke’s gospel, “Good news of great joy for all the people.”

Christmas doesn’t end with the birth of Jesus any more than having a child ends when you get home from the hospital. That’s when our work of tending to the child laid in our manger begins. 

Babies have a way of changing everything without really doing anything. They’re just there and everything is different.  Both parent and new born are learning to live and grow up. Babies offer us more than we can imagine and ask of us more than we often feel capable of.

This child (Jesus) is no different. He offers us his all and asks of us our all. 

So what does it mean and look like for you to tend to this child? 

How will you welcome him into your life? How will you hold and carry him? In what ways will you nurture and feed his life? What are you willing to do for and give him? And how can you best love him?

This morning, we come alongside the child lying in a manger to treasure and ponder. He will spend the rest of his life coming alongside you and me; coming alongside us on our best days and our worst days, coming alongside us in our joys and our sorrows; coming alongside us in our living and our dying.

The child has been born. Take a deep breath. Breathe in the goodness of his “alongsideness.” The child has been born, and so the ‘work of Christmas begins’.

That’s what Howard Thurman (African-American poet d.1981) writes in his poem entitled “The Work of Christmas.”

When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and the princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flocks,

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoner,

To rebuild the nations,

To bring peace among people,

To make music in the heart.

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Merry Christmas!

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The Solemnity of Christmas

CCC 456-460, 466: "Why did the Word become flesh?"
CCC 461-463, 470-478: the Incarnation
CCC 437, 525-526: the Christmas mystery
CCC 439, 496, 559, 2616: Jesus is the Son of David
CCC 65, 102: God has said everything in his Word
CCC 333: the incarnate Christ worshipped by the angels
CCC 1159-1162, 2131, 2502: the Incarnation and images of Christ

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The Nativity of the Lord (Mass during the Day)

During the celebration of the eucharist, water is poured into the chalice containing wine and a prayer is said either by the presider or deacon – “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.” This speaks about the heart of the celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord – a holy exchange. The Nativity of Our Lord recalls that the Son of God become man, shared our common humanity, in order to elevate it and reconcile it. In the Collect for the Mass during the Day, we recall that God wonderfully created the dignity of human nature, but restored it through the Paschal Mystery of Christ, which consists in the Nativity of Jesus Christ. In sharing in our humanity, God enters relationship with each and every one of us. We believe in a God who is not distant but is involved in all of the universe and in our lives. In becoming man, Jesus also shared in our human experiences of joy, sorrow, hope, anxiety and suffering. Through the Nativity of Jesus Christ, he raises up in himself all that is cast down, that he might restore unity to all creation, and call straying humanity back to the heavenly Kingdom (cf. Preface II of the Nativity of the Lord). This has been brought about by the ‘holy exchange’, in Jesus Christ taking on a human nature, that it restores life, that our frailty is assumed by him, that our mortality realises unending honour and we are made eternal (cf. Preface II of the Nativity of the Lord). In his work On the Incarnation, St Athanasius reminds us, “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” This is the holy exchange. This holy exchange is renewed every time we gather to celebrate the liturgy, in which we share in the divinity of Christ. On this Nativity of Our Lord, we may ask ourselves, do we allow God to enter into relationship with us? Are we open to allow God to encounter us in the celebration of the liturgy?

Bidding Prayers

For the Church gathered on this festive day – that she may witness to the Word with joy and proclaim the saving love of God to ends of the earth.             

For our parish – that the light God’s love and justice may dispel the darkness of hatred and separation and unite the hearts of all humanity.        

For all whose pain is more acute at Christmas – that the lonely, the bereaved and the needy may receive the gifts of comfort, community, and support. 

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Note: These hymns have been chosen from different sources.

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Hark! the herald angels sing (CFE244, L155, LHON317, TCH121)

Jesus the word has lived among us (CFE331, L161, LHON401)

Let all mortal flesh (CFE355, L607, LHON418, TCH120)

See amid the winter's snow (CFE610, L151)

O come all ye faithful (CFE520, L159, LHON501, TCH13)

Key

CFE - Celebration Hymnal for Everyone

L – Laudate

LHON – Liturgical Hymns Old and New (Mayhew, 1999)

TCH – The Catholic Hymnbook (Gracewing)