A Christmas Story

I would like to share with you a Christmas story. 

A few hours before midnight on Christmas Eve, 1993, unexpected visitors arrived at a monastery in the village of Tibhirine in the mountains of northern Algeria. The seven monks of the Abbey of Our Lady of Atlas might have expected well-wishers from the neighborhood, come to bring them early Christmas greetings. Instead, their sanctuary was invaded by armed militants, demanding medical supplies, and threatening to kidnap their physician. The monks of Tibhirine were able to turn away the militants that night, but they knew they would return. Conflict throughout the region had been increasing: skirmishes between rebels and regular army, innocent villagers wounded and killed, kidnappings for ransom, executions. The increasingly precarious position of the monastery had convinced many, including some of the monks, that it would be best for them to leave. They had received death threats, and they knew that spurning the militants once would not turn them away forever. It was simply a matter of time before they too would face death. As it turns out, they were right. A little over two years later, the seven fathers and brothers were abducted, held hostage for a time, and eventually assassinated.

This story may seem a little grim for a Christmas homily. In many ways though it is the story of the Christian experience – all the way back to the Christmas story itself. There is a tendency these days to treat Christmas as a momentary respite from the storm around us, as if to say, “The world is dark and terrible, but here for a moment, let’s have a little light and peace and joy.” But just what is the story that we are remembering? What is the context of the Christmas event?

In the Gospel we just heard [at the Vigil Mass, Mt 1:1-25], St. Matthew tells us precisely. He recounts for us the genealogy of Jesus Christ, listing his ancestors according to the flesh all the way back to Abraham. The names may be unfamiliar to us, but the lineage is full of people who did some pretty unsavory things – prostitution, incest, adultery, murder, blasphemy, idolatry. It is from this line of sinners that the Son of God takes upon himself our humanity. Today we celebrate the feast of his birth – and yet even that birth has a kind of brutality that cannot be overlooked. Christ is born in a dirty, smelly stable, because the hardness of men’s hearts found no room for his mother in the inn. Soon, his family will be forced to flee to another country because of the jealousy of a mad king, and innocent children will meet their deaths as a result. And finally this child, laid upon the wood of the manger in the cave of Bethlehem, will be crucified upon on the wood of a Cross and laid out in a cave outside of Jerusalem. Viewed in a worldly way, the Christmas story can seem as grim as the story of the monks at Tibhirine.

Kazimierz Sichulski, 3 Works: The Birth of Jesus, Light of the World (c. 1915)

There is, of course, one thing that I have left out – and it is the one thing that makes all the difference, in both stories: “‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means "God is with us" (Mt 1:23).” My friends, those few words are why we celebrate tonight, despite all of the unsavory externals and brutal outcomes that I mentioned before. It is why we celebrate at all, it is why we are truly a people of light and peace and joy. The world around us harbors much darkness; our Church is riddled with moral decay and dysfunction; our personal lives are full of brokenness and suffering. And yet, still we rejoice – tonight, and every night, in this season and in every season – not because those things are untrue, but because what is also true and real and enduring is that “God is with us.”

If we reduce Christmas to the story of one night, to the birth of a babe in a manger, then there is the danger that it becomes for us little more than a fairytale, a child’s bedtime story. Instead, we must remember Who this babe is – He is the God-Made-Man, the Lord of heaven and earth, who has assumed our human nature precisely so that he may redeem it, who has become part of humanity precisely so that he may die for it. The God that we worship, the God that we praise, is not a god who shies away from our wickedness, who tosses us aside or hold’s us at arm’s length because of our evil tendencies. No, our God is “the God-with-us”, whose love for us is so great that he entered into our midst, into the very heart of our darkness so as to illuminate us with his light. And he still does so, and nothing can keep him from doing so – not the sins of Old Testament fathers and forefathers, not the woes of the world, not the scandalous depravities of priests and bishops, not our own half-hearted affections. God enters into the ugliness of all of it in order to transform it anew.

The great 20th century writer J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’– though it contains some samples or glimpses of final victory.” Surely, we know what he means by the “long defeat;” but do we also know just as truly the “final victory”? No matter how long the losing streak might feel, we see those previews, those glimpses of triumph through the gift of faith. Faith in what? Faith in the Christian story – faith in the Christmas story: in Emmanuel, “the God-with-us.” If we come to believe in that Story as our essential reality, as our fundamental truth, then every other darkness and suffering and sadness is transformed by his Presence, by his being-with-us. The birth of Christ is not a respite from the storm of sin that is the human story, that is our story – it is the onslaught against it, it is the rewriting of the world by the light of God in such a way that no darkness can obscure it.

In many ways, we face a choice about how to proceed from this night forward. This Christmas can be for us as it is for so many: a pause from the squalls around us, with a joy and peace that is temporary at best and contrived at worst. Or – it can be a chance to discover again our place in the true story of the world, the Story of the love of a God-Made-Man, to be reawakened to the deep joy and abiding peace whose source is Emmanuel, “the God-with-us,” who brings light to every darkness: in our world, in our Church, in every aspect of our lives. To celebrate Christmas must be for us more than happy memories and sentimental merrymaking – it must be to renew our belief in the long and unfolding victory of Jesus, oft obscured perhaps, but never undone.

The Trappist monks and martyrs of Tibhirine were beatified on December 8, 2018.

The seven monks at Tibhirine, whom I mentioned at the beginning, faced a choice twenty-five years ago tonight. They could have fled from the darkness, from the threat of violence, but they decided to stay, to remain with the people to whom they ministered. No doubt they did so because of their faith in Emmanuel, “the God-with-us,” who never flees from our darkness but enters into it, who shared not only our life but even our death in order to save us. That faith helped those monks understand their own place in the great Story of the world, and they suffered death for it, but no doubt they did so with a glimpse of that final victory to come. A few weeks ago, they were beatified, declared “blessed” by the Church, and now they see, not in glimpses but with full face, the glory of the God-Made-Man.

My friends, may the Christmas story – as it truly was, and as it truly is – touch our hearts as it touched theirs. May we be reawakened to its power and its mystery and find again our place in it, for it is, after all, our story too: “because a Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1:5).