Pax Christi

[This homily refers to the readings for the Mass During the Night for The Nativity of Our Lord. They can be found here.]

In a museum in the middle of Rome stands a 2000-year-old marble monument known as the Altar of Peace. Despite its name, it’s really more of a temple than an altar: it has four walls, a staircase leading up from the outside, and ornate sculptures on the inside and out. It was built in honor of the emperor of the time: Octavian, better known as Caesar Augustus, or Caesar “the Exalted One.” When he came to power, he went about defeating the last of Rome’s enemies and so ushered a period of relative peace and tranquility throughout the Mediterranean. This period of tranquility, the so-called “Pax Romana,” lasted for some two hundred years, a length previously unimaginable in the ancient world.

I mention this not just because it may be interesting historically, but because it is clear that St. Luke, the author of the Gospel passage we just heard, wants us to have it in mind as well. We heard from the beginning of St. Luke’s tale of a king, a king about whom Isaiah had said “his dominion is vast and forever peaceful,” the one who would rule “with judgment and justice.” If you were living in the first century – right smack in the middle of that era of peace and prosperity, the “Pax Romana,” – the only king who fit that description was Caesar, “the Exalted One,” the one who made a show of his absolute power by decreeing that all the world be numbered. But it is not Caesar who is the focus of Luke’s story - not the emperor, not the governor Quirinius either, and not any other secular power or authority that one might have guessed. Instead, Luke’s story centers upon the backwater province of Judea, in the humble town of Bethlehem, where in a cave or grotto a young woman gave birth to a child.

Matthias Stomer, Adoration of the Shepherds (c. 1640)

The birth of any child is something wondrous. For all of our human sophistication and technocratic mastery, life is still something we cannot create, and so there is always a sense of the miraculous when a child is born. But as special as every birth is, very few are remembered two millennia later, and none have been celebrated up and down the centuries as this one is tonight. In every birth we see the power of the divine but that birth in Bethlehem was something more — not just the power but the Presence of the Divine, not just touching our reality but entering into it, becoming part of our existence. In Mary’s child, born in manger, Emmanuel has come, “God-with-us.”

The celebration of the birth of Christ is the reason for our worship this evening, but nonetheless we each need to ask ourselves, “Yes, but why have *I* come here?” Our answers will surely vary. Maybe we came tonight out of habit – we show up every week, rain or shine, so there’s no way we would miss out on this most special of feast days. Maybe some of us came because of a sense of obligation – we don’t make it to church as often as we’d like, perhaps only once or twice a year, but to not come on Christmas would be unthinkable. Others among us might say that we wanted to come back to visit the church we grew up in, or because we are accompanying family, or because we just wanted to hear the prayers and the songs and be a part of a worship service.

These ostensible reasons for our presence here are fine in themselves, but I think there is something more. If we searched our hearts, if we looked deeply within our souls, I think each of us would find that there is a deeper reason as well. Something about that birth resonates with us; it is not just an event to be recalled, or commemorated. It is a revelation to be rejoiced in – a manifestation of God, for us! That birth, so obscure at its happening as to almost go unnoticed, is for us and millions upon millions of other Christians like us around the world a gift that we cannot help but pause, for a moment at least, to remember and celebrate and give thanks for. I think the true reason that we have come this evening is that we long for the peace of God – a deep and abiding peace, not merely stability or tranquility or prosperity, not merely the end to conflict, but peace. We yearn for peace in our world, in our families, in our hearts; we long for a cessation of the woes that plague us and those we care for. We hunger for a peace that no Caesar can decree, that no treaty can enact – a peace that unites all peoples, all lands, a peace between earth and heaven, a peace to heal all time and all sorrow. And so we come, almost in spite of ourselves, I think, because we glimpse in this birth – this event 2000 years ago – the dawning of a peace that impacts us now. The birth of any child reawakens in us the awe of our existence, but in Mary’s son this awe reaches new heights, previously unimaginable. This newborn babe is “Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace,” as Isaiah says. He is the true “Exalted One,” the Son of God who has humbled himself to share in our existence. In doing so, he has done what no earthly ruler could – he has remade the friendship between us and God. He has enrolled us among the company of heaven.

The Christ Child has been born to give us the gift of his peace, if we will receive it. How do we do so? By entering into the mysteries of his life – by letting our lives become oriented toward him and redefined in relationship to him. The peace of Christ is not like the “Pax Romana,” a mere absence of conflict, nor like any other peace the world can give. No, it is the peace of relationship, of friendship with the divine, through the One who is both God and Man. To receive the “Pax Christi,” then, we must be friends with Christ. We must walk together with him, accompanying him in his path, and he in ours. We must learn to think with thoughts, speak with his words, love with his heart. We must strive continuously to encounter his Presence, in prayer, in works of charity and service, and especially in the sacraments. We must turn to him in every need and difficulty, even in joys and blessings as well – we must see in him the constant point of contact with the divine, not just for one night but always: the very meaning of our lives in the here and now. We must seek to become Christ ourselves – to take up our place as active members of his Body, the Church, present in the world – so that the peace that he has communicated to us, we can communicate to others.

The Stable of the Inn (1912) by N.C. Wyeth

My friends, like all earthly rulers, the reign of Caesar eventually came to an end, and his “Pax Romana” ended with him. Earthly peace is fleeting in that way. But heavenly peace – the peace of Christ, “Pax Christi” – is still present with us, if we seek it out. You know, there is in the middle of Rome another altar, a smaller one, not in a museum but in a church. And behind it is another relic from the ancient past: a few fragments, not of marble, but of wood. According to tradition, they are from the manger in which the Christ Child once lay. You might say that that Holy Crib is the true “altar of peace” because the One who lay upon it has established an everlasting peace – between heaven and earth, between this reality and the one to come, between you and me and the Lord God.

It is this peace that we celebrate tonight, and that have come to receive anew, in adoration, in rejoicing, and with the angelic choir say: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”