CHRISTMAS DAY, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N. J.

At the Christmas Eve Mass yesterday, we heard the familiar account of our Lord’s Nativity, complete with angels and shepherds, as told in Saint Luke’s Gospel. Today, however, at the Mass of Christmas Day, the readings take us deeper into the mystery of our Lord’s Incarnation.

The Christian tradition speaks not of just one birth but of three births of Christ. The first birth takes place not in Bethlehem but in eternity, before the beginning of time. Today’s Gospel comes from what’s known as the Prologue to Saint John. The Fourth Gospel, Saint John’s Gospel, gives us no Nativity story. Rather, echoing the Book of Genesis, John starts “in the beginning.” 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”

Here it’s crucial to understand that “the Word” is another name for the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. The Greek word Logos, translated here as “the Word,” actually means something more like thought, reason, purpose, plan, or self-expression. When God the Father expresses himself, he does so by means of his Word. Through his Word he creates the world. Yet before God ever created the universe the Word already existed. The Nicene Creed, which we recite every Sunday, says that he was “eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.” 

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity thus teaches us that God the Father begets the God the Son, who is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, sharing fully and completely along with the Holy Spirit in the fullness of the Godhead’s life and being. So, to return to this image of the three births of Christ, this is the first birth: the Father’s begetting of his eternal Son before all ages. 

The second birth of Christ is the familiar one of the Christmas story: the bringing forth of the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. John’s Gospel sums it up in one sentence: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father.” 

The eternal Son came down from heaven and took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary to assume our human nature and share in our human existence. The doctrine of the Incarnation teaches us that Jesus Christ is one Person, fully divine and fully human, true God and true man. He’s divine on account of his having been begotten from the Father in eternity; he’s human on account of his birth from the Virgin Mary in time and space.

Thus stated, the Incarnation of Christ is not so much a proposition to be understood, or a puzzle to be solved, as a mystery to be worshipped and adored. The fourth century church father Gregory of Nazianzus describes this mystery in a series of wonderful paradoxes: “He who has no mother in heaven is now born without father on earth. . . He who is without flesh becomes incarnate; the Word puts on a body; the Invisible is seen; he whom no hand can touch is handled; the Timeless has a beginning; the Son of God becomes Son of Man—Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

This second birth of Christ took place at a specific time and place two thousand years ago in Bethlehem of Judea so that a third birth may take place even today: namely, the birth of Christ in our hearts. Here the Blessed Virgin Mary stands as a model for us all: just as she literally conceived and brought the Christ child into the world, so we’re called to let Christ be conceived in our hearts so that we may bring him forth into the world in our own day.

This birth of Christ in our hearts is the beginning of the process by which the Holy Spirit makes us like him. He’s the Son of God by nature; in him we become sons and daughters of God by adoption and grace. Again, as Saint John says in today’s Gospel: “To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God . . .” 

The early Church fathers expressed this mystery using the image of a divine exchange. Christ comes down from heaven that he might raise us up to heaven. He shares in our human life that we might share in his divine life. Or, as Saint Athanasius put it most boldly of all: He becomes what we are that we might become what he is.

So, in our celebration of Christmas we contemplate the three births of Christ: the eternal generation of the Son of God from the Father before the beginning of time; his coming down from heaven to take flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary who gives him birth as the human being Jesus of Nazareth; and his birth in our hearts, which is in turn the beginning of our rebirth in his image and likeness.

There’s indeed a sense in which Christ’s birth in Bethlehem remains incomplete until he’s born in each of us. One of the greatest preachers of the nineteenth century was Phillips Brooks, successively rector of Trinity Church, Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia; then rector of Trinity Church, Copley Square in Boston, and finally Bishop of Massachusetts (the diocese where I live). Visiting the Holy Land himself, Brooks wrote in his well-known Christmas hymn the lines: “O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray; cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.” 

We can do no better than to make those lines our prayer this Christmas morning. May the joy of Christ’s birth in our hearts be ours, both now and in the days and weeks to come.