More important than keeping Christ in Christmas is keeping
the Mass in Christmass. This is the real defining character between those that
believe and those who don’t, because anyone can say Christ and it can mean
whatever they want. The way words are twisted around, I bet someone could even
say, “Christ is Lord” and get away with not meaning what it literally means.
The reason its better to keep the Mass in Christmas is
because it is in the Mass, the Divine service, where the Christmas rubber hits
the road. We can bring Christmas trees in church and prove we don’t worship
them by communing with Jesus instead. We can prove we don’t worship images or
idols or commercialism by placing these things along side the Service and
having Service dominate.
For in the Service the True Light is offered, not just
thought about. In the Mass, Christ comes to and communes with His people.
It is not a birthday party, but a death and life giving party each and every
time we gather.
I tell you the Church was in mind from the beginning and we
can say that in this way. Today you heard Jesus speak you the words, “In the
beginning”, meaning since the creation of time. Then He went on to say that
Life is inside Him and that Life is the light of men.
Strange, you would think Life would be the light of Jesus,
He is the Light after all. But not this time. This time this life is our light.
That is because this life is our mother, for in the beginning, as St. John has told us, was
life and she was married.
The Greek word for life is Zoe, like the name, and though
you may not recognize it Zoe was the first woman, created from the side of
Adam, her husband. You know her by her Hebrew name, Eve.
Thus, Adam, the prophet, priest, and king he was, gave his
wife a very prophetic name, Zoe, Life, for she is the mother of all the living.
At Christmas, Zoe’s namesake is now transferred to Mary, not just because Zoe
failed, but because St. Mary now becomes the mother of the Lord of Life, i.e.
all life.
This is because “All
things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was
made.” Where Zoe was the first mother of all the living, St. Mary is the
first Mother of God. But the title does not stop with St. Mary. She then hands
it over to the rightful owner, of whom Zoe and Mary were only copies, that is
the one, true Bride of Christ: the Church.
Now in water, Word, and bread and wine our true mother
births us, keeps us, and feeds us that we too might grow and become strong in
the faith, increasing in wisdom. In Christ, Zoe, life, lives and has its being.
And this Zoe, this church which births Christians, is our light. Not that we are
the source of that light, but that the light shines in and through us, because
we dwell with and commune with the light.
The true light of the Church is the Eternal Life Jesus gives
only in His Sacraments. This light shines in the darkness of a decaying culture
and a decaying earth, calling sinners to repentance. Through her the true Light
comes into the world and lightens all men.
In this Church we are not born of blood, nor of the will of
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God by His Word and sacraments. The Word
became flesh to dwell among us, not in our heads or dreams, but in the flesh
Whose glory is on the cross.
And that crucifixion is all over the Mass that is offered here for you, as often as you desire it. So we keep the Mass in Christmas and joy remains in the world, as the angels sing with us, even on this holy Christmass Day.
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