Homily of Christmas Eve Children’s Mass
A READING FROM THE BOOK OF REVELATION
A great sign appeared in the heavens, it was of a Woman who was clothed with the light of the sun, with the moon shining up to her, and over her was like a crown of stars. I noticed how she was with child, as pregnant to give birth. She was a mother……………..Then another sign appeared in the sky; it was a dragon that wanted to fight with her, and which stood before her as against this child to be born. Yet she had the victory over the dragon. This is the mother who gave birth to a son, a male Child, with a destiny to rule all the nations with an iron rod…..The Woman’s Son was caught up to God and his throne. It was God’s throne but it also was His throne. (For He would be the lion and the lamb.) The woman herself fled to a place prepared by God, that there she might be taken care of… (and) angels ministered to her. The Son, this One Who was both Lion and the Lamb directed His Archangel Michael to deal with the dragon…..Then the dragon had to fight against the Mighty Archangel Michael and his host. The dragon lost up there and was told he had no place in heaven. He was made to leave. He went down to earth…. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have salvation and power come, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Anointed, the Christ. There is victory in the Lamb and His Blood. Let there be rejoicing, you heavens! ………….The Woman gave birth to the Male Child/ Then I looked to the future times of Him, and there He was as the Lamb victorious standing on Mount Zion, leading an almost countless number with Him. They were singing a new hymn to He Who was The Lamb of God and The Lion of Judah. ( from Revelation chapters 12 & 14)
Christmas has three Gospel sources for its telling. Two gospels give details of the time of Mary and Joseph before the Birth of Jesus, and then tell the story of His Birth, The Lord’s Nativity, with a few accounts to be told of what happened next in Jesus’ infancy or youth. They are the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Then, in the Gospel of John, he gives a theological explanation of the Coming of Christ Jesus for the start of His Good News. Yet there is another account of Christmas, as given by St. John the apostle, as by him as the revelator. It comes from visions that St. John had of the heavenlies and involving the mystery of Christ. This New Testament reading is what we added to our Christmas Lectionary. Normally we read from another New Testament passage, but not today. We not only read from Revelation of the heavenly account of Christ’ Birth but we act it out with our teen’s performance of the major characters of the Bible story.
We have a teen portraying Mary, as the glorious Woman clothed with the sun. We have a teen portraying a dragon to oppose Mary and her offspring. We also have a teen portraying Christ the King who will be born a child (he holds the lion and the lamb figures). We also have a St. Michael Archangel figure as who is also told of in the Revelation Christmas account.
John was having visions on the island of Patmos in his latter years. It is long after his time of caring for Mary in the post-Resurrection, post-Pentecost assignment he had from Jesus. Mary has been assumed to Heaven. John is the last living original apostle. God grants him a series of apocalyptic visions, and he sees things out of time and told together as an Event. God had committed pre-hand to have a special woman of His making to bear a Child, Who was already the forever Word (and Blessed Son of the Trinity) yet who would be born in time and be enfleshed for a visitation to earth to visit its fallen peoples. An angel rebels (Lucifer, the dragon) and it leads to his being driven out of heaven, as the Woman and St. Michael are used to do so. The Son will go to the earth, as the Woman first goes to a place of safety and then will bear the child on earth.
If you read this Revelation chapter 12 account, then, like the apostles John, you would catch on how this vision is of Mary and her Son Jesus, and of the spiritual warfare going on. Some proud limited numbers of angels are upset that God would become a human. Yet God has it in His plans and nothing shall stop it.
We see this as a heavenly vision of the Christmas Birth of Messiah. It fits in to a larger story that is told in the Bible book, but it surely is about the Lord’s Coming. From Revelation 12 onto chapter 15 in the book, we hear more of the account of what happened. It reads how “the Woman gave birth to the Male Child. He would be the One Who’d be the Lamb Victorious seen in these same visions. He is the Victor on Mt. Zion in Heaven, and they are singing in full chorus to Him Who is the Lamb (reference John 1:29) and the Lion of Judah (see Revelation 5:5 or 11:15-19).
It is marvelous to see this OTHER Christmas story in Holy Scripture. Often it gets looked over.
I once enjoyed a book of illustrations done of these Revelation visions that gave some Christmas connection in how it all could be seen—apocalyptically. I had kept it for about 25 years, but I have lost it and I think now it is out of print. There are other versions of the same, in Jesus Surrealism artwork, but it’ll never be as good as that one.
Still, I have created some pictures in my mind of how one might imagine this Christmas telling from Revelation. It reminds me of the great spiritual reality going on even as the physical reality is witnessed on earth of Jesus’ Birth and His Life among us, onto His Rising and Ascension.
We celebrate a Lamb and a Lion in Jesus Christ, in His Birth and in His Reality Now at the Eternal Christ. Just consider it for your Christmas pondering this year.
Even in our Holy Mass, we call Him The Lamb of God. We know that He has united us to His saving passion, death and resurrection. We are living through Him, with Him and in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, with all glory to the Father Almighty. In every Mass we acknowledge it as so and give a great AMEN.
Homily of Dec. 29th Fr. J. Barry Holy Family Sunday of the Christmas Octave
LUKE 2:41-52 excerpts Each year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom. After they had completed its days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. (Seeing him not in caravan going home, Mary and Joseph) returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers…And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me?Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (They asked him to travel home with them, and) He went down (back) with them… to Nazareth,,, And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor (there in Nazareth).”
The Difference in Taking Luke’s Christmas Way or Matthew’s more disturbing Christmas Way
We are given a Gospel today in the end of Luke that jumps from the end of the Christmas scenes of Jesus’ infancy to a moment of his 12th year. This Gospel in chapter 2 shows how his family has been living for a dozen years and He has been in good care. Mary and Joseph have raised Jesus well up to this point. There are no major incidents to tell of, just a regular family life in Nazareth and, while occurring during the Roman occupation of Israel, nothing major is reported to have happened in Luke’s gospel view. Things are feeling safe enough, even that many of the Nazareth people (including Joseph Mary and Jesus) have taken the customary trip to Jerusalem’s Temple to be part of the Passover festival of the Faith, controlled by the Romans but not curbed. all its troubles—but the family has been away in Nazareth, much off the beaten path. The times that they do get on the radar a bit is when they travel to Jerusalem for the major Jewish feasts and a Temple visit. As is told today in the Gospel, the youth Jesus is accounted for in this festival visit, in the end, but is found only as on their third day of looking. It’s a literary peak by Luke the evangelist of the third day finding of Jesus of His Resurrection, later on. It closes the two chapter opening of his gospel. That is the last telling of the Christmas story by Luke.
It is interesting to see what Christmas things that the Gospel of Luke will not have included, which will get put into the Gospel of Matthew. There are two particular things I want to point out. There is the Bethlehem massacre of children and there is the Flight into Egypt of the Holy Family. Luke had not shown these, nor does he tell of the Magi’s visit, which is the cause of the Christmas disturbances to come next after their appearance. Only Matthew’s Gospel gives the Star and the Magi’s appearance.
If one were only to go by the Lukan Gospel, then you’d think that after a couple of months in Bethlehem, that the Holy Family went right back to Nazareth. Yet there is the added part of the story, making Matthew’s Gospel a more disturbing Christmas Way. The Magi come weeks or months after the 40th Day Presentation of Jesus. It had been a low-key visit of Mary and Joseph to present their child in the Jerusalem Temple on his 40th day of life. Then the Holy Family returned to Bethlehem.
The Magi come and asked puppet king Herod as to the exact location of the newborn king of the Jews. He does not know, but then his advisors figure that a prophecy said that Bethlehem would bring the new David or even Messiah, so he sends the magi off to nearby Bethlehem. It is to there that the magi see Jesus, even under the place where the Star shone.
Meanwhile, once Herod deduces that some special child might be born in Bethlehem to merit this visit to a new born future king, he makes plans to send his troops to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and nearby environs. This bad and false king Herod carries out his deadly plan to end all possible baby Jews of the place, and today’s Dec. 28th on the calendar is actually the Feast of the Holy Innocents. It marks the blood martyr deaths of these children of Bethlehem who die for the Christ, They die because of orders from the government.
Does that uncomfortable Christmas account in Matthew ring any modern bells of recognition? I would hope you’d connect it to all the modern abortions happening in our nation and world. We have the 2024 estimated taking of 620,000 US lives for some order or decree of these children’s termination. It’s 1 in 5 births in America that end in some type of abortion. (In DC it’s actually much higher-so much worse; it’s a dangerous place to get born.) The ratio of US abortions is also climbing, even if the number is now under 700,000 annually as it was thirteen years ago. Who are these children? We won’t know now. They are nameless and faceless, though many in number. Like the nameless and faceless of Bethlehem in Christ’ coming.
Herod ordered this Bethlehem massacre because of a perceived threat to his power. That was the reason for the perishing of the children to those Bethlehem families. Later in Jesus’ life, likely before his 12th year of life in today’s Gospel, he was informed of all the people who died in his place that gruesome time of his early childhood. I wonder what his reaction was to that information? It had to be profound sorrow.
Like the sorrow He feels for his aborted children today, and how the Church goes into sorrow with Him now over it.
Bethlehem’s was a one-time thing; ours in America and in the world is a daily things for decades with thumbs-up approval.
Well, I am chagrined to say, some in the Catholic and Christian church don’t want to acknowledge our Lord’s anger and profound sorrow over the deaths of children, nor see how He once was a babe and the target of a killing at that innocent age. Who’s side is Jesus on in this issue? Would be in favor of abortion? Really?! On Herod’s side?
Would Jesus like the story yesterday of some non- Catholic clergy who were blessing abortion clinics across America (yes, blessing them, and it’s mostly female clergy in some mixed political-religious thing)?! I was appalled at that. Yet no more that appalled by what goes on still annually in our land. 620,000 people who died in abortion in America last year are the equivalent of bombing-to-death all the inhabitants of Baltimore, Laurel and Burtonsville. Gone. It’s a real issue. Not bombs, but pills and scaples. And excuses.
The Bethlehem Massacre is the real uncomfortable story of Christmas that leads to its second resulting uncomfortable story of the 1st Christmas. It’s the Flight of the Holy Family into Egypt for hiding. They flee for their lives. An angelic warning and words from the Magi lead to a hasteful exit of Joseph leading Mary and Child out of town. To disappear somewhere. To leave home and have nowhere particular to go. Christmas has a refugee story of the Holy Family.
Matthew’s Gospel will mention that only when Herod dies was it safe for the Holy Family to move back to their nation and live in Nazareth. And come out of hiding.
South Sudan is a country with a major refugee dilemma. Hundreds of thousands pour in last year and 2023 to the country below Sudan. South Sundan is where most of the Catholics are—having fled there. The humanitarian crisis is unknown to many, and not much in the media or on the USA top responses to the world. According to Amnestry International, last year’s report, over 9 million people in Sudan have been displaced there, while a further 1.8 million had fled the country. The cries of the bishops of the Sudan and South Sudan Bishops’ Conference (SSSBC) are sent to the world to hear about.
It’s yet another refugee crisis in the world. Our Pope Francis has been the leading voice of outcry on this human problem of colossal scale. He just want to keep people upset by it, for a loving and prayerful interest in the lives of these others who suffer this Christmas again. He reminds us that the Holy Family was a displaced family, with the threat of death looming over them if they stayed. They had to go.
Jesus is in the refugee family, Francis says, and Jesus is in the St. Ann Infant Home as a child saved or in the Gabriel Network homes of a family helped in a crisis situation. You’ll recall that we added Gabriel Network to our ministry outreaches in 2024.
It’s been 8 Christmases with you at Resurrection and Riderwood. I have not given this homily here but for daily Masses when the Feast of the Bethlehem Innocents came on the calendar. Yet it fell on the weekend calendar in 2024, and it was time for me to show you the uncomfortable side of the Christmas story, as from Matthew’s view.
We do enjoy all the good things that Christmas brings, and we are meant to enjoy them. It’s just not at the expense of ignoring what is going on in our world today or what was similarly happening to Jesus in his coming to the planet. As Isaiah 1:17 reminds us: “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” We have work to do in this Church of Jesus, this Church of Christmas—because at the heart of the Christmas story, undeniably, is a family in need of shelter, hospitality, welcome.