St. John the Baptist Catholic Church

Christmas, 2008, Mass during the day

Homily

Scripture: Is. 52: 7 – 10, Ps 98, Heb. 1: 1 – 6, John 1: 1 – 5, 9 – 14

Call: The “Authorities” of God, Nature, and Community unite today in the child Jesus. Let our children show us the way into the future, and let us pass on to them the good Tradition about God’s love!

Summary: Prophet Isaiah announces salvation and the restoration of the sanctuary of God. The psalm proclaims victory and mighty works of God who comes to rule and guide his people. The letter to the Hebrews talks of communication from God through a mighty Word, a Unique Person who embodies the mind of God, the Son whom angels adore, “begotten today”. And the Gospel introduces us to the long expected Word who has been with God, divine Himself, now visible as “full of grace and truth”. Today, all these wonderful visions are realized in a baby. Just a baby, born in the cold night of Bethlehem:  It is Jesus, Christ, the Lord. We shall reflect on the revelation we find in a child, the saving truth manifest in a child and re-discover that faith is born and faith grows when we pay generous attention to God who gives meaning to events, and who gives us Jesus as “God-with-us”.

Question:  Have I ever learned a significant life-saving truth from my (biological or else) son or daughter? What is it that I have learned?

Christmas is the feast of simplicity, the feast of childhood. We already know that we do not have to return to our mother’s womb in order to be born again, as Jesus instructed Nicodemus, a wise elder of his time in Israel. Christmas speaks of a certain kind of truth, the truth of infancy, the truth of littleness. Since my initial question is a search for a life-saving truth learned from “a child of mine”, we may want to understand truth. What is truth? Our Gospel ends with the sentence, “we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.”

*Factual truth (objective facts than have evidence)

*Historical truth, truth of link and internal relations (It makes senses to link up this to that)

*Scientific truth, truth of causality (at a certain temperature water is ice, invariably)

*Logical truth, way-and-destination truth (If I take 101 South, I will surely cross all the cities along the way)

*Social truth, cultural truth, the way a people conceives or does things (“decency and respect introduce people to each other in our culture”)

*Sub-servient truth, ideological truth (“whatever will make me more popular for votes is true”)

*Spiritual truth or salvational truth (“In his smile, I saw the honesty of his soul” – all else being true of him…)

This last category of truth considers all the above-mentioned truths with respect, but it gives them their proper perspective; it perfects them with the Spirit of God. To the truth of facts, it gives interpretation: this is what happened, and this is what is meant. To the historical truth, it provides quality: this tie is godly, and this other is detrimental. To the scientific truth, it provides the frame of the primary Causality and indicates potential dangers in the usage of knowledge. To the logical truth, it adds the logic of love whose ultimate destination cannot be calculated mathematically. To social truth, it brings in the power of dynamic growth that becomes a critical principle. And to mere ideological truth, it opposes the truth of God, the only One to be served, worshipped and loved above all.

Spiritual truth is a knowing that has more unknowing to it, a fantasy that is more real than ourselves experiencing reality, a dream that is more tangible than the ground on which we walk, a logic that is clearer than scientific logic yet inapplicable in identical sameness to two different realities, because it is excessively creative and constantly renewed. Spiritual truth is beautiful, yet a consuming fire of re-creation.

Spiritual truth is like a puzzle. We are told for instance that a student once asked her teacher:

S. “What is love?”

T. “The total absence of fear”

S. “What is it we fear?”

T. “Love”

Spiritual truth can also be traced in this personal experience of mine:  in 1996, I was teaching a catechism class to students of the seventh grade level, about Creation. One student asked how we knew about these original things since nobody was there. I answered that it was inspiration, and that this truth is different from the factual truth like: a man named George Washington actually existed in eyewitnesses’, testimony. He then said to me: “All these things are then just stories!?” He taught me a tremendous lesson that is obvious today. What is that lesson? Truth is not only a matter of eyewitness factual event. And, stories are vehicles of a truth deeper than the superficial comprehension of human reason. I began to appreciate more the power of narratives, the power of the story. I pray for blessings upon this boy (now grown up) who strengthened my understanding of story; that God will give him a future of happiness into eternal life! I have more stories of learning from “children”. This is just an example, to invite all to give thanks for the gift of parenthood, adoption and mentorship.

Today we have the story of Christmas, a story of a baby, a baby newly born to a humble family; the family of Mary and Joseph from Nazareth in Galilee. This is the story of Christmas. What has that to do with us here in El Cerrito, 2008 years later?

A baby is the pure truth of who we are. Jesus is the pure truth of who we are for God. I will abstain from explaining the riddle of our lives, which we all know too well for someone to add on anything new: “A baby is the pure truth of who we are!” Let us then listen to the baby cry and sing. Let us see it smile and sleep; let us see it enjoy being fed, bathed, clothed, taken care of and played with. Let us remember that we are here because someone took care of us too, and God is taking care of us in similar ways beyond our physical seeing. Let us see the wonders of loving care and allow our heart to express a deep gratitude to God and to the world of creatures that take care of us, teach us, and nurture us. Let us propagate the same music of loving care from our thoughts, and our kind words and our acts of outreach beyond family to the whole human family. Let us wish the good of all. Let us see baby Jesus in the eyes of our minds and allow Jesus to teach us about loving care. This is the message of Christmas. May we find life and salvation in this Word of truth, “God so loved the world that He gives his only Son, born of a woman,” today.

Concluding story (from Joan Chittister, O.S.B – on the importance of paying attention to our gifts, and on our theme of awareness increased thanks to little ones).

“Mother,” the little girl camel asked, “why do we have these big three-toed feet?”

And mother camel answered, “So we can walk through the desert without sinking into the sand, love.”

The little girl camel thought about that for a minute and then said, “Mother, why do we have these long, thick eyelashes?”

And mother camel answered, “So we can go through desert sandstorms without hurting our eyes, dear.”

The little girl camel thought a little more and asked again, “Mother, why do we have these humps on our back?”

And mother camel answered, “So we can walk all the way across the desert without being thirsty, sweetheart.”

And the little girl camel said, “Let me get this straight. Our feet are for the desert, our eyelashes are for the desert, and our humps are for the desert. Then will you please tell me what the devil we are doing in the San Diego Zoo?”

Each one should draw for himself or herself the lesson this girl-camel taught her mother in the zoo. Since Jesus’ birth brings around animals as well in the single act that reconciles the whole world to God and creatures to one another, let us pray for peace. Peace is the condition for a future for our children, as we celebrate our gratitude for having received from them a renewed grace of innocence and a light for the future in God’s kingdom. Let our communion today be a real pledge of our reconciliation in God to all other people whom God loves to the point of becoming one among them, just as he is with us in this Eucharist.