Father Ralph's Christmas Homily
The text below is an edited version based on the homilies he gave at the family mass and the midnight mass on Christmas Eve 2005.
I'm so glad to be able to wish you all a "Merry Christmas!"
Now you can have a happy holiday too, if you'd like, but I'm glad to wish you a Merry Christmas! In all the recent debate over "Merry Christmas" versus "Happy Holidays", let me assure you that the opposite of Merry Christmas is not "Happy Holidays", rather the opposite is "Crabby Christmas"...as in the song (sings) "We wish you a crabby Christmas and an angry Near Year!"
I think a "Crabby
Christmas" could happen even in the best of families. For example,
the
presents
have been unwrapped and there's a general mess of toy parts and crumpled
wrappings across the floor and mom says, "Ok kids, it's time to help
clean up this mess."
But there's no response from the kids. It seems
that their eyes are glazed over as they stare ahead at a video screen,
their fingers frantically thumbing buttons. So mom says again. "Time
to put the video game down and help clean up the place." Still no
answer. And fearing that she'll be relegated to the role of family slave,
mom starts to have a crabby Christmas.
And when she insists that the game be stopped, the kids become crabby and tell her that they only need 472 more points to reach 'level 5' and that this is what they have waited their whole lives for.
Should mom dare pull the plug on the game, then there are crabby
children.
Or perhaps the crabbiness started earlier when the gift you had been hoping
for never materialized. In fact the gift you got was rather insensitive
(you thought). "We've been married for fifteen years and THIS is
what he (she) gives me???" Crabbiness abounds.
Listen, if YOU think YOU have something to be crabby
about, think about that first Christmas. There were so many reasons for
crabbiness on that first Christmas night:
1st. I don't know how many of you ever traveled for days walking or riding a donkey while you were in the last days of your pregnancy, but might not THAT be a reason for being crabby?
2nd.
The reason and the timing for your trip in the first place is a bit odd.
If you lived in those days wouldn't you rather give birth at home surrounded
by the women in your family and the trusted women in the town who were
best skilled in helping to give birth? Caesar in Rome wasn't going to
know if you even existed, much less if you showed up in time for a Census.
(Speaking of the Census, if you're a parishioner of St. Brigid's and haven't
filled in your Census booklet yet, click here
for more info -- or keep reading and I'll remind you at the end.) I'm
sure the timing was reason for crabbiness.
3rd.
There were no internet reservations or phones in those days so when Joseph
and Mary arrive in Bethlehem they find themselves OUT at Holiday "Inn",
the Sheraton is shuttered, and at Motel 6 nobody left the light on. No
room. Reason for being crabby.
4th.
The stable. My friends when you go home, look at the beautiful
pictures of the stable on 
your
Christmas cards. There is a often warm rosy light emanating from the stable
and the animals lo in rapt attention. Hey! It's an ANIMAL STABLE, for
God's sake! (get it? for "God's sake??") The
smells of that first Christmas were far from the fresh cut pine of a tannenbaum,
the smoke from a yule log, or the scent of cookies baking. We sing such
sweet songs about that stable too....(sings)
"The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay...." Did you ever try
to sleep on hay? What a beginning for the Son of God -- let him first
experience earth outside of his mother's womb by putting him on animal
hay! Reason for being crabby.
5th. Shepherds. Now which of you, who ever gave birth, would have welcomed a bunch of shepherds into your maternity room, a short time after giving birth? And the DRUM?? Well scriptures (thankfully) don't make mention of a drummer boy but the song suggests that the best they can do for the newborn and his mother is to bang on a drum??? I assure you that if "Mary nodded", it would NOT have been in the vertical direction. How's a post-partum room full of shepherds to bring you to the understanding of a crabby Christmas?
6th. Herod. Shortly after your child is born, you hear that the crazed King Herod intends to slaughter all the children who were recently born. So you head for Egypt. You don't speak the language, you don't enjoy the food and while pyramids are a delight to see if you were vacationing, you're not getting the best reception from the locals who don't care that you're there because of fears back home. The political situation back home should have nothing to do with the fact that you're taking away their jobs, you're using their services, and that you're, well, foreign! I imagine that the flight into Egypt must have been a reason for being crabby.
And yet....
And yet the two people I'd have expected to be crabby and forever angry, weren't so.
God the Father: He could have looked down and seen how his Son was treated from the very moment of birth, and let his anger fly against the world. No room for his Son? Destruction of the lives of innocent babies? Prejudice against his Son and his mother and Joseph? Yet somehow, God the Father found it in his heart not to dwell on the anger.
Mary. She too could have been angry at the whole situation --firsdt she says "yes" to God and then she's mistrusted by her husband who starts to divorce her...he then takes her from her family to a distant and foreign city...he can only provide an animal stable....well any mother here would feel anger. Yet somehow Mary does not dwell on anger throughout her life.
How can I be so sure that God the Father and Mary let their angers go? Look at how Jesus turned out! He did not walk through the towns and villages screaming out in anger against all that was wrong. In fact when the greatest sin was being enacted he said, "Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing."
I
have spent a lot of time thinking about why Jesus said that. I've come
to the conclusion that he chose to forgive because he learned it from
his Father and his mother and because he did not want to die a bitter
man. Who of us would be here worshiping him tonight if he had cursed instead
of forgiven all that killed him?
So I see Christmas as a choice each of us has to be merry or crabby, forgiving
or ever-angry.
Now I'm not suggesting that we ought not be angry or that nothing in life
will bother us. Perhaps tonight's reading from Isaiah
will help. Isaiah, who has seen people murdered in the streets because
of war [think of Iraq] says this:
For every boot that tramped in battle,
every cloak rolled in blood,
will be burned as fuel for flames.
You see? Even the worst ravages of war can be gathered up and transformed when God's kingdom comes.
So tonight I invite you to consider what you'll get this Christmas
if you get to know Jesus, the Son of God and the son of Mary.
And that depends on whether you'll get to know him as a 
shepherd
or a 
disciple.
Let's see...