Bishop Conley delivered the following homily during Midnight Mass at the Cathedral of the Risen Christ in Lincoln, Neb. It was his first Midnight Mass as bishop of the Diocese of Lincoln.
"The people who walked in Darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone."
It is with these prophetic words from the book of the prophet Isaiah, we begin our Christmas Liturgy. It was this ninth chapter of Isaiah that inspired the great English composer Handel to write his epic composition - The Messiah.
Isaiah goes on to say - some 800 years before the birth of Jesus - let us not forget: "For a child is born to us, a son is given us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They name him Wonder-Counselor, God hero, Father forever, Prince of Peace."
Prophetic words if ever they were spoken. And so tonight once again, we celebrate the Birth of that "great light" into the world. We celebrate the birth of Jesus, our Savior.
It is with great joy in my heart that I celebrate with you and your families this midnight Mass. My first midnight Mass here in the Cathedral of the Risen Christ - as the Bishop of Lincoln.
I offer this Mass for you and your families and all the flock of the Diocese of Lincoln. I welcome my brother priests who have joined us tonight to concelebrate this midnight Mass, particularly Msgr. Robert Tucker, the Rector of the Cathedral and all the priests who serve here at the Cathedral, as well as the priests who join us from the Seminary.
I always enjoy hearing the Christmas proclamation read at the midnight Mass each year because it roots the event we celebrate tonight firmly in an historical context - in a place and a time. And I think this is extremely important because it reminds us once again that our Catholic religion is much more than an idea or a philosophy or even way of life - it is all three of these things. Our Catholic faith however is based in the truth of history, it is founded on an historical event.
And the Christmas proclamation coupled with the genealogies of both Matthew and Luke drive this point home to us. Time and place are important to us.
For almighty God, in his providential love and mercy for us and on the whole world, chose a time and a place and a woman to manifest his glory. The proclamation reads:
"In the forty second year of the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus, the whole world being at peace - "Pax Romana" - Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father, desiring to consecrate the whole world by his most loving presence, was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and when nine months had passed since his conception, was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem of Judah and was made man: the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh."
And the World has never been the same since. And that's why we are here in this Cathedral in the middle of the night - when most of the world is asleep - to mark this event, to celebrate this historical birth and to thank God for looking down on us with such mercy and compassion.
Fulfilling what the prophet Isaiah promised 800 years before his birth: "His Dominion will be vast and forever peaceful, form David’s throne, and over his kingdom, which he confirms and sustains by judgment and justice, both now and forever. The zeal of The Lord of hosts will do this!"
Today is born our Savior, Christ The Lord!
And this historical aspect of our faith which is so important, perhaps more important than ever before, given our highly skeptical and secular culture in which we live - is so beautifully illustrated by our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, in the third and final volume of his epic biography of Jesus of Nazareth. In this 3rd panal, if you will, of his tryptic on the life of Jesus, Pope Benedict, fully versed in all the modern methods and scholarship of the historical/critical schools of biblical criticism which came of age in the 20th century, drives home the point that the story of the incarnation and birth of Jesus Christ and his subsequent life, death - Resurrection, is anchored in history and geography, not in an abstracted mythology.
Listen to what our Holy Father says: "It is not with the timelessness of myth that Jesus came to be born among us. He belongs to a time that can be precisely dated and a geographical area that is precisely defined: here the universal and the concrete converge. It was in him that the Logos, the logic behind all things, entered the world. The eternal logos became man: the context of place and time is part of this. Faith attaches itself to the concrete reality, even if the Resurrection then bursts open the categories of time and space, as the Risen Lord, going before the disciples into Galilee, opens up a pathway into the vast expanse of humanity."
Now that's Ratzinger at his best, showing us and all the skeptics our faith is real, tangible and incarnational.
However, faith is still a gift, and not a mathematical equation or a scientific experiment. It cannot be proven in a laboratory. And for those who truly have the gift of faith, no proof is necessary, but for those who do not, no proof is sufficient. Unless we have the eyes and hearts of children we will not see God.
For in the end, Christmas is all about children and child-like faith.
George Weigel recently quoted the great British convert to the Catholic faith, Ronald Knox, the son of the Anglican Archbishop of Manchester, who once observed in a sermon on Christmas Day 1950 - broadcast on the BBC: "we make a holiday of Christmas only if we have the strength of mind to creep up the nursery stairs again, and pretend that we never came down them."
We need to recover the innocence of Christmas and that may well mean returning to the nursery. To return to the nursery is not childish or infantile. To return to the nursery is to re-experience the wonder and awe of God - reaches out and searches for us in history.
We must learn once again to approach these mysteries of our faith with what the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur once called a "second naivete," - not the naivete of an uniformed or a backward people, but with the openness to wonder and mystery.
Only then can we discover true love and joy. The love and joy that comes to us today wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. A love that created the farthest galaxies and stars, and reaches out to us with the hand of a newborn child! Amen.
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