The Timeless into Time

NB: This homily refers to the Gospel for the "Mass During the Night" (Lk 2:1-14)

This past Thursday, I went to another parish not far from here to help with the last of our deanery’s Advent penance services. Afterward, the pastor invited me and the other priests over to the rectory for a bite to eat. I got there a little earlier than everyone else, and so I spent a few minutes marveling at the beautiful Christmas decorations that filled the living room. Most impressive to me were the various representations of the Nativity scene. They came in all shapes and sizes, classic and modern, lifelike and abstract. I asked the pastor about his collection later, and he told me it's been formed over time from the different places where he has traveled.

Thinking about how our Lord’s birth has been depicted through the centuries, I remembered that this year marks the 800th anniversary of the first Nativity scene. Saint Francis of Assisi made the very first one in a cave in Greccio, Italy, for some of the people of that town, and ever since then, the tradition has continued in every country and culture in the world. As a famous painter once wrote, “Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions” (Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art). In other words, that which we fashion with our hands comes from our lived experiences, but it also is often the key to unlocking those experiences. In every Nativity scene, for example, there is something timeless and eternal that speaks to us, no matter how much the individual details may vary.

Tonight we gather to celebrate an event in time but one which has a timeless, eternal quality – the birth of the Child who is God. The image of that Nativity scene has been visualized and represented countless times in human history, and yet each time, in every scene, it says something important to us. It shows us the presence of the God who has come to dwell with us, the Lord who comes to save his people. In the Gospel we just heard, the image of that birth, the idea was evoked for the very first time, in the minds of the shepherds. As they heard the words of the angel, they visualized the Child’s birth even before they saw it, because we know they go on to say to each other, “Let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place.”

The first Nativity scene, therefore, was not made of human hands, but of human thoughts – of human hopes and dreams that were directed toward the true reality. And so too, it is still for us. Like the shepherds in the field, the Good News of the Lord’s birth first reaches our ears, and there it enters our minds and resonates with our hearts, with all of our lived experiences, good and bad, joyful and sorrowful. Wherever this Christmas may find us, whether at the highest of highs or the lowest of lows, there the Lord comes to meet us. Into our own world, he is born for us anew.

Christ in the Rubble, Kelly Lattimore, 2023, © Kelly Lattimore Icons

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been especially conscious of our Christian brothers and sisters who are in the Holy Land. Imagine what this Christmas must be like for them, amid the devastation of war, separation from loved ones and friends, perhaps even displacement from their homes. So much darkness that we are tempted to not even believe the Light is there. And yet precisely in that darkness, the angel’s words are spoken and the heavenly host sings in highest praise. I assure you that, in a certain sense, for our brothers and sisters in the Lord’s land, this year’s celebration of Christmas means all the more for them – not because everything is okay, but because everything isn’t. In the dysfunction and darkness, the Nativity scene, and the reality behind it, mean all the more.

Like the shepherds who heard the angel’s words and believed, like Saint Francis and his faithful in the cold cave of Greccio, may that birth in Bethlehem be evoked within us, newly this night. Whether our present moment be one of joy or sorrow, may the celebration of the Nativity of our Lord awaken within us a deepened faith in He who comes to save us – and a renewed love for the timeless God born into time.