Christmas Day - Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
Christmas Day - Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Isaiah 9:2-7
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14(15-20)

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

The year 2017 saw the passing, at far too young an age, of a wonderful novelist, essayist, poet and story teller, Brian Doyle. Doyle was never a major public literary figure, but he had a following. He was known as a “Catholic writer,” but that title fits him fully only if we understand catholic in its broadest and most primitive sense of universal, for his topics covered the spectrum of human relations, the natural world, humor with an Irish tinge, and yes, religion.

I want to share with you part of an essay he wrote some years ago:

I’ll tell you a story. Some years ago I sat at the end of my bed at three in the morning, in tears, furious, frightened, exhausted, as drained and hopeless as I have ever been in this bruised and blessed world, at the very end of the end of my rope, and She spoke to me. I know it was Her. I have no words with which to tell you how sure I am that it was the Mother. Trust me.

Let it go, She said.

The words were clear, unambiguous, crisp, unadorned. They appeared whole and gentle and adamant in my mind, more clearly than if they had somehow been spoken in the dark salt of the room. I have never had words delivered to me so clearly and powerfully and yet so gently and patiently, never.

Let it go.

I did all the things you would do in that situation. I sat bolt upright. I looked around me. I listened for more words. I looked out the window to see if someone was standing in the garden talking to me through the window. I wondered for a second if my wife or children had spoken in their sleep. I waited for Her to say something more. She didn’t speak again. The words hung sizzling in my mind for a long time and then faded. It’s hard to explain. It’s like they were lit and then the power slowly ebbed.

Let it go.

She knew how close I was to absolute utter despair, to a sort of madness, to a country in which many sweet and holy things would be broken, and She reached for me and cupped me in Her hand and spoke into the me of me and I will never forget Her voice until the day I die. I think about it every day. I hold those words close and turn them over and over and look at them in every light and from every angle.

Doyle told no one of his experience for more than a year, until finally he shared it with two friends who had themselves been, as he puts it, “Spoken to in moments of great darkness.”

I've been Spoken to as well, four times as I reckon it, though only once were there actual words involved. And that experience was much more dramatic than even Doyle's, involving as it did a crucifix with its head turning and speaking...a little like something out of The Exorcist. But the words—all seven of them—were words of gentle invitation. I won't share them with you, but I can tell you that I was totally surprised by my response. “Yes” I said. “Of course.” Where did that come from? And like Doyle, I've pondered those seven words for now over twenty years.

I want to propose two suggestions this Christmas Day.

The first is that many people—billions perhaps—have been Spoken to. But many of us have forgotten the words or suppressed them or shared them with no one else, lest we be considered odd or weird or crazy. Or even worse, religious fanatics. But dear people, it happens all the time. The Mother speaks words of wisdom. The crucifix moves. The sun dances. The bird on the wing exalts the soul. The cry of a baby opens up worlds unseen and unknown.

The 16th century German radical reformer Thomas Muntzer once said: “I will not pray to a mute god.” And neither should we. But, in point of fact, God is not mute. God speaks and continues to speak through the ages and nations and cultures and religions of the world and through the astonishing and now endangered structures of this created order. And to and through people just like you and me.

Where have you been Spoken to? Where has the Holy One—blessed be He—where has the Holy One touched your heart? Because you know He has. And He will touch it again. Are you being Spoken to, addressed, summoned, called today, perhaps right now? People, we must listen up. We must pay attention.

The second thing I want to suggest—no, more than simply suggest, but rather proclaim—is that God has spoken powerfully and in a most unique and astounding way in and through Jesus Christ, whose coming among us we celebrate today. And this not simply through Jesus the great moral teacher, or the spiritual guide, or healer and prophet or social critic. And not just through the Jesus of the Cross and Passion and Resurrection. Not even through that Jesus whose power to transform our dying world into something new and revolutionary is already happening. Though to be sure, all that is real Speaking, living and life-giving. But God speaks perhaps most powerfully through the simple and mind-boggling affirmation that in a child, in this Christmas Child, God draws us toward Love and to love.

Hear what Austin Farrer, the great Anglican theologian of the last century, has to say:

Mary holds her finger out, and a divine hand closes on it. The maker of the world is born a begging child; he begs for milk and does not know that it is for milk that he begs. We will not lift our hands to pull the love of God down to us, but he lifts his hands to pull human compassion down upon his cradle. So the weakness of God proves stronger than men, and the folly of God proves wiser than men.

God speaks to us through this Child, mewing for milk and not even knowing it. And in this Child's neediness, vulnerability and profound lowliness, the eternal God stoops to become one of us, one with us, dwelling among us, drawing love out of us. And at the same time transforming us and all creation. We are raised—all of us—to divine life. And we take with us everything: animals, plants, waters, earth itself. For this is, as St. Basil says, a festival of all creation. “And heaven and nature sing!”

Individual messages can be powerful and transformational. I am grateful for those times when the veil has been pulled aside for a moment, and I was graced with a glimpse of eternity. But in his humble, indeed mute, Speaking, this Child in a manager says more. And we have yet, after two thousand years, to wrap our minds and our hearts around it.

But there is, I believe, Good News, and that is that we needn't worry too much. In the fullness of time for you and me, sooner or later, the Mother will come speaking words of wisdom. The crucifix will turn its head. The sun will rise. The bird will soar. The partner or friend will laugh. A stranger will startle us with an unexpected act of kindness. A baby's cry will split the night. And suddenly, suddenly, new worlds will open before us.

Because Christmas is always happening. Always.

And as I might say once again: “Yes, of course.”

Merry Christmas.