TEXT: The Nativity of the Lord, December 25, 2024

December 25, 2024 Father De Celles Homily

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The Nativity of the Lord

December 25, 2024

Homily by Fr. John De Celles

St. Raymond of Peñafort Catholic Church

Springfield, VA

Merry Christmas!

Good to see all of you here on this glorious day.

2,024 or so years ago today, God the Son descended from heaven

to bring us salvation.

The Creator of the Universe became one of His lowly creatures,

taking on our flesh so that He could die on the Cross

to pay for our sins against Him.

All because He loved us.

Amazing. Magnificent. Glorious.

But if you had visited the stable in Bethlehem that night, you might never have known it.

All you would have seen was

just a poor, tiny newborn baby boy, lying in a food trough,

surrounded by smelly barn animals,

and being fussed over by his young parents.

Nothing apparently amazing, nor magnificent, nor glorious.

Unless, you were one of the shepherds we read about (at midnight Mass),

            who visited the stable that night.

Then you would have seen something much more.

As the Gospel tells us, just a few minutes before they came to the stable,

those same shepherds had been tending their flocks outside of town.

There, something happened that they would never forget.

As the Gospel relates,

“The angel of the Lord appeared to them,

and the glory of the Lord shone around them,

and they were struck with great fear.”

Now, we all have some idea of what an angel is,

but how many people know exactly what it means that,

“the glory of the Lord shone around them”?

To understand this, we need to go back to the Old Testament,

to the book of Exodus.

There, in the passage about Moses going up Mount Sinai

to receive the Ten Commandments from God, it tells us:

                        “When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it,

and the glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai…

To the Israelites the glory of the LORD

looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain…

There was thunder and lightning…

and a very loud trumpet blast…

The Lord descended…in fire…

and the whole mountain trembled violently…

[and] everyone in the camp trembled.”

THAT’S “the glory of the Lord,”

like thunder and lighting and clouds of consuming fire.

And something pretty much like that is

what the shepherds saw as the angel appeared to them,

so that, as St. Luke tells us, when they saw it,

like the ancient Israelites who “trembled” at the sight,

the shepherds too, “were struck with great fear.”

And then, seeing all this amazing, glorious spectacle

of something like fire and lightning in the sky,

and hearing the angel tell them,

“Today…a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.”

Scripture tells us that,

“Suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel.”

Now, artistic renderings of this scene normally show lots of angels in the sky,

maybe tens or even hundreds of angels floating around;

usually they’re little smiling cherubs.

But the word “host” here is another word for “army,”

so we’re talking an angelic army here that we can imagine in full battle array.

This is what the prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament

says about the number of angels that denotes:

“The host of heaven cannot be numbered

and the sands of the sea cannot be measured.”

And the prophet Daniel tells us,

“A thousand thousands served Him,

and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him.”

So we’re talking about a sky filled with so many angels,

no one could count them—hundreds of millions.

And that, my friends, is amazing, magnificent and glorious.

But then the shepherds go to Bethlehem

and find this tiny baby in its mother’s arms.

Where are the angels? Where is the lightning and thunder and clouds and fire?

Where is the “glory of God”?

It’s there, but you just can’t see it.

All of that is hidden in the flesh of the Baby Jesus.

And the glory of God no longer frightens them

—now they can only be amazed by the All-Powerful and All-Glorious God’s

humility and tenderness.

And all they can feel is awe and love.

____

Nowadays, it seems to me, consciously or not,

we try to replicate the glory the shepherds saw in the sky.

All the lights and candles on the trees and houses and in the churches.

All the bright wrapping paper and colorful bows.

Even all the candles around the altar

and the glorious music of our choir,

organ, trumpets, and strings today.

All the sights and sounds we associate with Christmas

find their roots and origins in this amazing manifestation of heavenly glory.

And rightly so.

But all those are merely symbols. As beautiful and enchanting as they are,

they are nothing in comparison to the real thing–

what the shepherds saw in the sky that night.

And they are even less in comparison to what they saw in that manger

—the God who radiates that glory, the Baby Jesus.

In a few weeks, all those symbols will be gone,

in the trash or packed away for next year.

But the glory of God remains.

As the Baby would later promise us, “Behold, I am with you always.”

And so He is—always here in His full glory and power to love us and to save us.

Although, He is often hidden.

He is here, hidden in His Word, the Scripture and Tradition,

the wealth of teaching handed down from the Apostles to the Fathers

to us today.

He is here, hidden in His Sacraments,

the outward signs instituted by Christ Himself

to manifest and pass on His graces.

And He is here, hidden in His faithful people—you!

In the sacrament of baptism, and renewed in the sacrament of penance,

He has come to live in you,

where nothing but our own gravely sinful choices can drive Him away.

And He is here, hidden in His Church.

Oh, I understand better than most that this seems a strange thing to say,

amidst all the scandals

and confusing teachings we hear from bishops and cardinals.

But the fact is, hidden amidst all the sinners and saints,

the Church is still the instrument Christ Himself established and sustains

to proclaim and protect and His word, dispense His sacraments,

and nurture His people.

But of course, the most wonderful way He remains with us

is in what we’re here for today:

He is hidden in the Mass, or more specifically, the Eucharist.

Nowhere, do we capture more fittingly the presence of the Savior,

who was born in Bethlehem, than in this Blessed Sacrament.

In Bethlehem, He literally entered into the world to save us and remain with us;

            in the Eucharist, He literally enters into each of us to save us,

and He remains hidden within us as we go out into the world.

In Bethlehem, He humbled Himself by hiding Himself in human flesh;

            in the Eucharist, He comes again in human flesh,

humbling Himself even more, by hiding in the impoverished appearance

of bread and wine.

In Bethlehem, He hid His divine glory so that we could approach Him without fear

and receive Him with love;

            in the Eucharist, He does the exact same thing.

And yet, that divine glory is there, in the Baby and in the Eucharist.

And just as that glory and power would ultimately shine forth in the life of Jesus,

in His life-changing preaching and His mighty miracles,

            that same divine glory will shine forth in us,

as the Eucharist can miraculously transform us

to live according to His preaching if we let it.

This connection between Bethlehem and the Mass is actually foretold

in the Gospel narrative of the Nativity.

Let’s go back to those shepherds.

Many scholars believe that these were the shepherds

that Jewish law required to tend flocks of sheep year-round,

even in winter,

within the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem,

to provide for the year-round sacrifices of the Temple.

For example, somewhere near Bethlehem, just five miles from Jerusalem.

These shepherds would often separate a new lamb from the other sheep,

then wrap it tightly in linen

to protect it from injuring itself,

because only spotless lambs could be sacrificed in the Temple.

These same shepherds would go and find a newborn baby

wrapped similarly in swaddling clothes,

            and remember that the prophet Isaiah foretold that the Savior

would be sacrificed for His people “like a lamb led to the slaughter.”

They found the babe laying in a manger,

a food trough for animals, as if He Himself were food.

And that manger is made of wood, like the wood of the cross.

And that manger was located in a town called “Bethlehem,”

which is Hebrew for “House of Bread.”

So, as we celebrate this holy Mass today,

            and it looks like all we see is a little piece of bread,

            remember the shepherds seeing that little baby

            and knowing that truly present, though hidden,

            were countless angels and lightning and thunder and clouds of fire

—truly the glory of the Lord.

And know that that same thing, that same glory,

is hidden, but surely here, not only at this Mass today,

which tradition calls “Christ’s Mass,” or Christmas,

but also at every single Mass throughout the year.

____

If we’re paying attention, Christmas can be a powerful time of discovering Jesus

and His presence and His love.

It’s a time of truly experiencing the glory of the Lord.

I hope and pray that is the case for all of us today.

And as the season passes, and the lights and trees come down,

and all the bright wrapping paper goes into the trash,

and we return to our normal daily routine,

it will be so easy to forget about the glory of the Lord that we have seen.

But it doesn’t have to be that way;

that glory remains in the Church until the end of time.

And it can remain in you if only you will recognize it, hidden in the many graces

            He offers to you throughout the year,

and not be afraid of that grace, but accept it, eagerly and joyfully,

as we do today from the humble, tender, and glorious Baby Jesus.