CHRISTMAS VIGIL 2007

Blessed Christmas, my brothers and sisters. Blessed Christmas from the monastic community to each one of you who have come to celebrate the birth of our Savior among us in this year of our Lord, 2007.

You know it is my wont to reflect with you at this time on the great mystery that has brought us to this monastic church in the dead of a South Carolina winter (such as it is) and in the middle of the night (at least for us monks). That mystery is captured so poignantly in the five words of the Gospel of John we have just heard: “And the Word became flesh.” God has become human. The impenetrable, transcendent reality we call God, whom no one has seen or can see, has clothed himself with our flesh, has become one of us. And not just any one of us, but the lowliest of us. Born of a woman who was poor, laid in an animal's feed trough, a tiny, helpless, vulnerable baby, whose first word, like the first words of all babies, was a Cry: a cry for warmth, a cry for food, a cry for love and affection. He was little, weak and helpless, tears and smiles like us he knew. And he feels for all our sadness, and he shares in all our gladness.

The Word became flesh. God became human. According to the stock cliché: Jesus is the reason for the season. That is the vantage point I have learned over the years to focus on. That has been the food I have tried to digest these many years of monastic life, Christian life. And for sure it will be the same in years to come.

But tonight I would like to reflect with you briefly on another aspect of this incredible mystery.

The Gospel Homilies of St Gregory the Great make good spiritual reading. Gregory flourished around the turn of the 7 th century. He was a Benedictine monk who wrote the Life of our Father, Saint Benedict. He became Pope in 590 and is the man credited with the improvement of the singing in the Church of his day; chant has borne his name ever since that time. He is a man who has suffered much and the words of Job are like a leitmotif running through his life: “Is not the life of humans on earth one continual hardship?” Through his writings he helped form countless generations of monks over the next six centuries.

And so, what does Gregory have to share with us on this Christmas Eve, 2007?

At the end of a homily on Matthew's Gospel, describing the birth of Christ, a Gospel we have heard this evening, Gregory has these words to say to his people: “Protect the dignity of God that is yours because for your sake, God became a human being.”

In this passage and in this homily, Gregory is looking at our mystery from God's side, not our side. He is filled with wonder, not at the inscrutable God becoming human, but on what that means for our own humanity. Human nature itself is filled with a new and immeasurable dignity because God has shared it with us. Instead of focusing on God coming down to us, he puts the spotlight on us being drawn up into God. And that is what I suggest that each of us does this evening as the Spirit of God inspires you.

What a grace it is, my brothers and sisters, to be a human person! We are called to be hearers of the Word, in an intimate personal relationship with our Creator. But by the mystery of the flesh-taking of the Son of God, our humanity has received an even more profound dignity: the very Son of God shares the humanity we experience, the nature we are. Our lowliness has been taken up into the Godhead. What we are, he is – sin alone excepted. What he is, we now are – raised even higher than the angels. They now see us as fellow servants and come to the lowly shepherds and proclaim glory and peace and joy to all on earth. In Gregory's words: “The angels no longer dared to reject as weak and beneath them what they honored as above themselves in heaven's king.”

But every gift brings with it a task and a responsibility. If we share our nature with the Son of God, we are called upon to live this dignity by the way we conduct ourselves. Envy, sloth, lust, anger, pride, vainglory must not take hold in us.

That is why we gather here this evening – to understand more fully our dignity and to praise God for the loving-kindness he has brought to us in becoming one of us. Protect that dignity I beg you, my brothers and sisters. Give to God, to the Child we kneel and adore, a life lived in purity and compassion, a life lived in respect for one another and for all of God's creation. Then will we be able to say in all sincerity:

Blessed Christmas!

Amen.