Diocesan News
Christmas Day Sermon from Bishop of Meath & Kildare
There is a lot of talk going around at the moment on how the current economic recession may make people who had become entirely materialistic a little more spiritual, now that gross consumerism isn’t the option it used to be. I am not entirely convinced by this happy thought, but one thing is certain, and it is this: In the Ireland of 2008, it is far easier to talk today about what Christmas really means than it has been for more than ten years. The reasons are fairly obvious : The Gospel stories of the Nativity are about deprivation, hardship, danger and defencelessness (all of which have a topical ring to them) rather than about the apparently unstoppable rise of prosperity and good times for people who matter... But if we were to look closer still at the biblical stories of the Nativity, we see that they are saying startlingly contemporary things in the Ireland of now - to every community and to every individual.
The first is that we all matter, regardless of who or what we are, or what we have. The sheer insignificance of the holy family in Bethlehem on that first Christmas Day can hardly be over-exaggerated. They didn’t count (except in terms of a census), and they had no-one and nothing behind them, except perhaps a marginal kindness by one individual who was persuaded to find some corner of a crude caravanserai where Joseph and Mary might have at least a modicum of privacy for the birth of a child. Yet for all of the squalor and deprivation recounted, this pathetic little happening was of eternal and universal significance. This sad, muted and pitiable little episode was, in the theological language of Saint John’s Gospel, nothing less than the Word of God invading the world. And by the Word of God we mean that which is the real meaning of everything, that which is the underlying logic and reason behind all creation. As you and I seek to relate usefully - as we all must do - to those who are being crushed by what is happening to them in the Ireland of today, very possibly through no direct fault of their own, we can surely see the crucial linkage with an event in Bethlehem which, no matter how much we have tried to wrap it up in tinsel and pretty wrapping paper, was the epitome of real need and danger, and yet was the Word of God in its fullness. There have always been people who lived in abject poverty in this country; even through those days which were satisfying and prosperous for the many, there was never less than one-tenth of the population living in real, objectively quantifiable poverty. Today there are people who, a year ago, were giving generously to the work of Saint Vincent de Paul because they could, but who themselves are now in need of help from the Vincent de Paul. Perhaps we can indeed realise that there is no-one who doesn’t matter, when we reflect that God didn’t matter to many people, and didn’t expect to matter to many people, in the real Christmas we celebrate.
The second thing is that we all have choices to make. The stories of the Nativity are about people making choices. Mary makes a choice to accept God’s will. Joseph makes a choice to give her support and protection. The Magi make a choice to travel for hundreds of miles. The shepherds make a choice to go to Bethlehem in response to a message. Herod makes a choice to destroy and to murder rather than to worship. In recent weeks, a feature in a number of radio programmes has been the presence of counsellors and psychologists urging people not to sit back and simply blame everybody else for what is happening to them but to take responsibility for themselves, to decide that there are things that they can and should do. People can almost always make a difference to their own lives and to the lives of others. Yes, there are people in many parts of the world who are powerless –men, women and children who have now disappeared off our radar screen, because of our national concern with our own predicament, but who are still dying needlessly of famine and disease in their thousands. We still have choices to make as to whether instead of wallowing in our own self-obsessiveness, we will give them the opportunity of life itself.
The third factor is that we all have a purpose. The neat and slightly glib saying that “God doesn’t make rubbish” does not carry much weight in a culture where greed and corruption seems rampant, where crime and violence seem ever more visible and ever more horrifying, and where many people have no interest in life but themselves. But if we are to listen attentively to the authentic story of Christmas, we encounter - directly and unambiguously - God’s purpose for the whole of his creation, for every single aspect of his creation and therefore for every single person within that creation. There are no people on the inside, with others left outside. Those on whom society has given up are still part of a creation designed to glorify God. There are many whom we try to leave outside but with whom we actually need to relate fully if we ourselves are to become fully human.
A couple of years ago, I heard Jean Vanier, the founder of the l’Arche Community, speak at a conference in Italy. Here was a great man who had given up his adult life to being in community with those who were mentally disabled. I had heard him speak a number of times before, but on this occasion I thought he sounded rather old (which he is) and very tired (which he may well have been), but he also spoke with an extraordinarily powerful honesty. He admitted that at times he could become very impatient and even angry with some of those among whom he lived in community. They could indeed be very irritating and extremely trying. But again and again he came back to his central point : that you and I can only be made fully human - we can only be redeemed - by our relationship with those whom society has rejected. Taken in conjunction with his honesty about his own feelings and failings, this carried even more weight. It came over as no religious cliché but as straightforward truth. We have a purpose in life which is, like Christ himself, to permit no barriers between the insiders and the outsiders, between those we find it easy to like and those we find it all but impossible to like, between those who are useful to us and those who are - in human terms - useless to us and to everyone else. The birth of Christ at Bethlehem, as the death of Christ at Calvary, is to bring all things and all people together in one.
Yes, it will be a different Christmas this year for many people. Not all the reasons will have to do with the economy. Some will have to do with loss of other kinds - the loss of a loved one, the loss of health, the loss of confidence, the loss of a friendship... But the Christmas that is authentic, and not cosmetic or escapist, does carry a message to those on the crest of a financial or emotional wave and equally to those who may feel they that are drowning under personal pressures and fears.
The message is clear - the Word of God is to be found in all its power and love in the most ordinary and even the most pitiable of things, and so we must never doubt for one moment that we all matter infinitely to God and that we must matter infinitely to one another; that we each have choices to make for good or ill, each day of our lives, as responsible Christian disciples; and, above all, that we each have a unique purpose on earth - and always a purpose for good - given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ himself.