Christmas Eve Homily 2003
Tonight we celebrating at least three miracles.
The first miracle is that a God who is larger, stronger, wiser, more loving,
that we can ever imagine, absolutely beyond us
was willing to become small.
There is a web site tutorial called "powers of ten."
On this website it is possible to view the Milky Way
at 10 million light years from the Earth.
Then you can move through space towards the Earth
in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree on earth.
Then you begin to move from the actual size of a leaf
into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls,
the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA
and finally, into the subatomic level of a carbon atom, to quarks.
One travels from the very large to the very small
in stepwise powers of ten in 50 steps.
By analogy, this is the miracle we celebrate with our God,
who is greater than the created universe
and yet became small, became a little child.
The love, the energy of compassion, the prophetic vision of God
is fully present in this child who is born to us.
The second miracle is that the gospel writers
balance the humanity and divinity of Jesus almost perfectly.
Matthew, Luke, and John give us three snapshots,
each from a different perspective.
Each gives us a glimpse into the significance of the Word made flesh.
But they don't collapse the meaning of this night.
Rather they open it, perhaps because the symbols they use are so powerful.
We can certainly gather that Jesus had to be toilet trained,
that he had to be taught how to pray.
Like any twelve year old,
he scares the living daylights out of Mary and Joseph,
"Oh, you were looking for me?"
The Gospel writers also address the issue of the divinity of Jesus.
We also see a Jesus who is deeply united to the Father,
whose teaching, preaching and healing are spellbinding and life-giving.
We see a Jesus who makes a completely new path to God,
a path out of darkness into light,
a path that is through his cross and resurrection.
Truly in Jesus heaven and earth are bound together.
The third miracle is that Jesus did not come
for some kind of generalized problem solving.
He came for you and for me.
God so loved the world, so loves you and me,
that he came to find place in your heart, in my heart,
a place where there can be true communion.
In the child Jesus,
Divine Compassion becomes personal, for you, for me.
We need to make sure that the door of our heart is unlocked.
Our heart doesn't have to be house beautiful,
everything zipped up and presentable.
Never forget this miracle of the Incarnation:
Jesus comes to find a place in your and my heart and mind,
to be in communion with us.
For these three miracles:
the God beyond our imagining becoming an infant;
the Gospel narratives that almost perfectly balance the humanity and divinity of Jesus,
and the fact that this love is for us, together we give thanks and praise,
we sing — "Glory to God in the highest and peace to all people on earth."
Abbot John Klassen, OSB
December 25, 2003
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