Christmas Mass of Dawn (25 Dec)
by the Revd Dr Robert Wilson PhD (Cantab), Old Roman Apostolate UK
For this second Mass of Christmas we continue to hear from St. Luke’s Gospel. “The shepherds said one to another: Let us go over to Bethlehem, and let us see this word that is come to pass, which the Lord hath showed to us. And they came with haste: and they found Mary and Joseph and the infant lying in the manger.” After bring visited by the shepherds “Mary kept these words, pondering them in her heart”, while the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen.
It was a foretaste of things to come that the first visitors after the birth of the Saviour were shepherds. The pious and respectable tended to look down on them, but Jesus had come to be the saviour of all, and in his subsequent ministry he reached out to all Israel. After all, the prophets had foretold that the coming deliverer would gather the outcasts of Israel, for only in so doing could the people be redeemed. When Jesus proclaimed that the Kingdom of God was now breaking in to history in his own person and ministry he said that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him to proclaim the good news to the poor. He blessed the merciful, the peacemakers, the pure in heart and those who mourn. In his ministry the eyes of the blind were opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped, for he had come to gather the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Those who exalted themselves and looked down on the “lesser breeds without the law” would be humbled, but the humble would be exalted, for the first would be last and the last first.
At the time we are simply told by St. Luke that Mary kept these words, pondering them in her heart. Whereas the world of Greek philosophy prized the intellect and disparaged emotion, the Jews saw the heart as the centre of the personality. Faith involved the whole person. It was more than simply a bare intellectual assent or a superficial emotionalism. The Torah, the Law of Moses, was addressed to all, not just those with a taste for mystical or philosophical speculation. The prophets who spoke truth to power said that the people must rend their hearts and not their garments, for they knew that the heart of man was deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt. They looked forward to a new covenant, when the law would be written not on tablets of stone, but in the hearts of men. In the coming of the Saviour into the world the new age was now dawning in which sins were forgiven. Since all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, all needed to repent and believe the gospel, the good news of salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
As St. Paul put it to Titus, “the goodness and kindness of God our Saviour appeared: not by the works of justice which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us by the laver of regeneration and renovation of the Holy Ghost, whom he hath poured forth upon us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour: that, being justified by his grace, we may be heirs according to the hope of life everlasting.”
Pope Leo the Great states:
“Let us rejoice. It would be unlawful to be sad today, for today is Life’s birthday: the birthday of that Life, which, for dying creatures, taketh away the sting of death, and bringeth the bright promise of the eternal gladness hereafter. It would be unlawful for any man to refuse to partake in our rejoicing. All men have an equal share in the great cause of our joy, for, since our Lord, who is the destroyer of sin and death, findeth that all are bound under the condemnation, he is come to make all free. Rejoice, o thou that art holy, thou drawest near to thy crown! Rejoice, o thou that art sinful, thy Saviour offereth thee pardon! Rejoice also, O thou Gentile, God calleth thee to life! For the Son of God, when the fullness of time was come, which had been fixed by the unsearchable counsels of God, took upon him the nature of man, that he might reconcile that nature to him who made it and so the devil, the inventor of death, is met and beaten in that very flesh which hath been the field of his victory.
When our Lord entered the field of battle against the devil, he did so with a great and wonderful fairness. Being himself the Almighty, he laid aside his uncreated majesty to fight with our cruel enemy in our weak flesh. He bought against him the very shape, the very nature of our mortality, yet without sin. His birth however was not like other births- for no other is born pure, nay, not the little child whose life endureth but a day on the earth. To his birth alone the throes of human passion had not contributed, in him alone no consequence of sin had had-part. For his mother was chosen a virgin of the kingly lineage of David, and when she was to grow heavy with the sacred child, her soul had already conceived him before her body. She knew the counsel of God announced to her by the angel, lest the unwanted events should alarm her. The future Mother of God knew what was to be wrought in her by the Holy Ghost, and that her modesty was absolutely safe.
Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us give thanks to God the Father, through his Son in the Holy Ghost; Who, for his great love wherewith he loved us, hath had mercy on us, and, even when we were dead in sins hath quickened us together with Christ, that in him we might be a new creature and a new workmanship. Let us then put off the old man with his deeds; and having, obtained a share in the sonship of Christ, let us renounce the deeds of the flesh. Learn, O Christian, how great thou art, who hast been made partaker of the divine nature, and fall not again by corrupt conversation into the beggarly elements above which thou art lifted. Remember whose body it is whereof thou art made a member, and who is its head. Remember that it is he that hath delivered thee from the power of darkness, and hath translated thee into God’s light and into God’s kingdom.”
Let us make our own the words of the Collect for this Mass:
Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that, we, upon whom is poured the new light of the Word made flesh, may show forth in our actions that which by faith shineth in our minds.
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