Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 6
Christmas Day.
The Threefold Birth of Christ.
" Who shall declare His generation?" — Isa. liii. 8.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex.: Masses signify: I. Carnal. II. Spiritual. III. Eternal birth.
I. Eternal birth : i. Ineffable. 2. Pagans, and St. Paul. 3. St. John, chap. i.
II. Carnal birth: 1. Prodigies, paradoxes, and Eliseus. 2. God born of a Virgin. 3. Man's methods and God's.
III. Spiritual birth : 1. Grace appeared. 2. To all. 3. Signs of its presence.
Per. : Exhortation to go over (from world) to Bethlehem.
SERMON.
Brethren, why is it that on Christmas day, and on Christmas day only, the Church permits each priest to celebrate three Masses? She wishes, thereby, to fittingly honor Christ's threefold birth; His birth in eternity from the bosom of the Father; His birth in time from the womb of His Mother; His subsequent births innumerable, without intervention of Father or Mother, in regenerated and converted souls. The first, the midnight Mass, typifies His birth in Bethlehem, when spiritual darkness enveloped all and men slept the sleep of sin. The Mass of the aurora glorifies His first spiritual birth — the dawn of Christian truth in the minds and hearts of the shepherds; and His divine birth, though first in order, yet known to us only through His temporal and spiritual coming — His eternal birth is celebrated last, with brilliant pomp and splendor and elaborate music as worthy as may be of the Divinity. St. John, in the first chapter of his Gospel, commemorates all three, saying: " In the beginning was the Word; and the Word was made flesh; and we saw His glory, the glory of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."
Brethren, so ineffable is the birth of the Word of God in the bosom of the Divinity, that even Isaias stands aghast and exclaims: "Who shall declare His generation? " A fitter subject for angels' meditation than for human speech. That a son should be equal in all things to his father; that a father should communicate to his son his entire nature and yet lose nothing thereby; that a son should be born without a mother; that an infinitely perfect being should be the product of a single intellectual act; these are truths indeed, but beyond human ken — discernible only with the eye of faith. In the birth of Venus from the waves, or of armed Minerva from Jupiter's head, we find the pagan straining after the truth — the rise of the all-beautiful from the illimitable Divinity and the birth of a God from a God. St. Paul's address to the Hebrews (chap, i.) speaks of the Word as: "The brightness of His Father's glory and the figure of His substance." That is to say " as the light from the sun, so the Word from the Father." Proceeding by a continuous process of generation from an undivided source, coexistent therewith, emanating from it, but leaving behind no void, and everywhere bearing and imprinting an image of its source. But why seek to examine with the naked eye the midday sun? Let us rather turn the eye of faith to that sublime first chapter of St. John and learn that " In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God. By Him all things were made. In Him was life, and He is the light of men." In every act of the intelligence, an image of the thing comprehended is produced on the retina of the mind's eye. In us this Word is a mere shadow, as unsubstantial as a mirrored image, but in God, whatever falls within the radius of the Divinity, however distinct from God it may be, must still be substantially God Himself. Hence, the Father, gazing on His own infinitely perfect nature, produces within Himself an image thereof, a being substantially identical with Himself, but personally distinct— the Word of God; the second person of the Trinity. His existence, His essence is to reflect the perfections of the divine nature, its possibilities of imitation, and hence, in Him as in an exemplar, all things had their first ideal life; by Him as a model, all things were made; and He enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world, for He is the way and the truth unto life everlasting.
Brethren, Christ's second birth was that of Bethlehem. Looking back now on the prodigies of that time, one is led to exclaim once again: " Who shall declare His generation! " What a contrast of events, what an upset of all our preconceived ideas! Solomon asserted there was nothing new under the sun, but here, at last, is something new. Almighty God becomes a helpless babe; a Son born of a virgin without a father; two natures in a single person; the King of kings and the Lord of lords a despised outcast in the direst poverty! The oldest of all in the order of being — the ancient of days — is just born. What prodigies these! Again, what a contrast of events. Hitherto it was the rule for infants to be born and the aged to die, but to-day the contrary; the aged of days is born and death claims the youthful Stephen and the Holy Innocents. How singular, that in the order of events and in the Church's calendar, the birth of life should be so soon followed by the triumph of death. The fact is pregnant with meaning. It aptly explains away all of the many apparent contradictions and inconsistencies of the Redeemer's personality and career. The pagan idea, that it was necessary, from time to time, for one man to die for the people, though false in its application, was fundamentally true. Humility alone exalteth. Adam's pride is not to be cured but by Christ's humiliation, and no sooner does the Word of God undergo what must have been for Him like voluntary death — no sooner is He become incarnate, than the pure souls of Stephen and the Innocents wing their flight heavenward. The Father takes off His royal robe and places it on the shoulders of the prodigal. Christ lays aside His divinity and His life only to infuse them into us, for His debasement is our exaltation. In the sixth chapter of the fourth Book of Kings, all this is beautifully typified. We see the son of Eliseus the prophet on the river bank hewing logs for house-building; and presently the axe-head flies from the handle and sinks in the stream. Moved by his son's lamentations, Eliseus seizes a log and casts it in and lo! down it sinks to the bottom, while the metal rises to the surface and is restored. Brethren, such metal is human nature, prone of itself, as the sixty-eighth Psalm says, to stick fast in the mire of the deep, unable to do anything of itself, and able to construct a mansion for itself in heaven only when wielded by the Son of God. And in the words of the same Psalm, it cried: " Father, draw me out of the mire that I may not stick fast." And into the muddy stream of this world the Father cast the Saviour — the Wood of the root of Jesse — and lo! the original condition of human nature was restored. Thus it was and for this reason that the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us. What thoughts arise as we kneel before the humble little crib! What questions! First is wonder; here is that new thing which Jeremias promised God would effect upon the earth, in that a woman should compass a man. With every faculty of his soul fully developed, a man is born, the most venerable of men; and born for the second time. When Christ spoke to him of Baptism, Nicodemus exclaimed: "Born again! How am I, an old man, to return to the womb of my mother and be born again? " But here is impossibility become a fact. And not a new thing only, but a new man, such as the world hitherto has never known; a mere man apparently, but evidently possessing a divine nature; a divine person and still endowed with our humanity. A King, this, from the first moment of His conception — aye, the King of kings, in whose power it was to say even of whom and how and when and where He should be born. For the first and last time in the history of the universe a child chooses His Mother, and the creature gives life to the Creator. Where now is the philosophic axiom " no one gives what he has not "? Here the ocean rises from a little fountain, and the sun receives its light from a tiny star, — God born of a Virgin! Though the light goes out from it, the sun's lustre remains undimmed; a wondrous plant is Mary, sprung from the root of Jesse which bore its precious fruit, indeed, but never shed its virginal blossoms. In her, once again, the newly created earth, unploughed, unsown, sent forth at the command of God the herb and tree. God born of the humblest of God's creatures, in a manger of a stable, of a village whose very obscurity was a byword and a reproach! Born in the midst of winter, without means and without friends — and at a time when His spiritual and temporal enemies had reached the zenith of their power! Surely no one but a God could have afforded to undertake and accomplish in the face of such obstacles, the mission of the Saviour. Ah! how short-sighted we are and how little conformed to the spirit of Christ! Give me but the power to choose, and I would elect to have been born of a royal queen, heir to unlimited power, surrounded with every comfort and luxury; my virtues glorified, my very faults interpreted as virtues by cunning flattery. Alas and alas! how different from Christ, who, God as He was, took upon Himself the form of a servant; whose one aim was to shun praise and court persecution; who hid the glories of His birth in the stable of Bethlehem, but exhibited His ignominious death to the whole world on the summit of Calvary. Oh let me, ere the Christmas season ends, kneel a while before the crib and listen to the wordless wisdom that falls from that little preacher in that little pulpit. I may have tears in my eyes but I will have unspeakable consolation in my heart. I will lay before Him my proud heart and stubborn will, and ask Him in mercy to pity and forgive. I will, like holy Simeon, hold Him in my arms an4 as confidently ask the Father: " Now dismiss Thy servant in peace, O Lord, for my eyes have seen Thy salvation."
Brethren, Christ's third birth is His spiritual coming by grace into the souls of men. Often, alas! is He persecuted and recrucified by the modern Herod, — sin. But happily, too, He is born again and again in every soul that is regenerated or converted to God. " And we saw His glory," says St. John; and St. Paul says of Christ's spiritual births — " The grace of God our Saviour hath appeared to all men, instructing us that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly and justly and godly in this world." Just prior to the Christian era, God had apparently abandoned the world and men ceased to turn to Him in spirit and in truth. They doubted His knowledge of human ills and despaired of His aid. Hence, the grace of God appeared in the person of Jesus, and appeared to representatives of all nations, collected for the Passover — came, actually experiencing our every infirmity, and so binding men to God with a sympathetic bond, and discovering to them the precious pearl of salvation, to purchase which they would sell their every possession and their lives. He appeared to all, I repeat, for it is a remarkable fact that Christ's birth was made known to every condition of men and women, from John in his mother's womb to the aged Simeon; from the royal Magi to the simple shepherds; to Mary the Virgin; to Anna the widow; to Elizabeth the espoused; at His death every nation was represented; and since then, through the Church, the light of Gospel truths has suffused the world, even the spiritually blind and the slumbering. Such is the audience the infant orator of Bethlehem addresses. On Sinai of old His majestic presence terrified the people, but who can now resist the simple pathos of His childish eloquence? Ah, He has held the world spellbound for nineteen hundred years and been born again in the souls of men, times innumerable. Brethren, how shall you and I know whether or not Christ is born in us? Whether or not now live, not we, but Christ in us? This shall be a sign unto you. Do you deny your ungodly and worldly desires; do you live soberly and justly and godly in this world? Soberly; do you, more wisely than the banqueters of Cana, partake moderately of the cup of pleasure, that you may, like Lazarus, enjoy the greater delights to come? Justly; do you try in every relation of life to do to others as you would like to be done by? Godly; are you faithful in your duties to religion and to God? Ah, how true it is that Christ was set for the ruin of many and a sign that shall be contradicted; for alas! there are many temples into which He has not entered, nor cast thence them that buy and sell therein. Again, this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. Is your soul a proud, obtrusive mansion, or a humble stable in the background, warmed by the spirit of love as was that of Bethlehem by the breath of the kine? Ah, Brethren, it is all very well to receive Christ in communion, but He will not be born in us unless we permanently amend our lives. Nay, such communions lead to final impenitence. Christ said to the adulterous woman : " Go, and sin no more, lest something worse befall thee.,, And Judas, you know, had scarcely received holy communion when he rushed off to betray the Lord.
Brethren, no man can serve two masters, God and the world. The world reminds me of an obsequious innkeeper; you put up at his place for a while and he effusively gives you the freedom of his house and encourages you to eat, drink and make merry; but the time of reckoning comes, and the landlord, with a sterner face, declares you shall not go hence until you pay the last farthing. Let us turn from such an artful deceiver to the lovely Babe of Bethlehem; let us learn well the truths that object lesson teaches, that Christ's first and second birth may not be for us wholly in vain, and that He may be, once again, born spiritually in our souls unto life everlasting. Amen.