Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 7
Sunday within the Octave of Christmas
Nazareth and Bethlehem.
"When the fulness of time was come, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that He might redeem those who were under the law." — Gal. iv. 4, 5.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex. : Christmas, the children's festival.
I. Thoughts at crib: 1. The Fall and Promise. 2. Plan of Redemption. 3. Effect on woman's life.
II. Mary: 1. Her family. 2. Elizabeth. 3. The Annunciation.
III. Nativity: 1. Visitation and return. 2. Bethlehem. 3. The Shepherds.
Per. : 1. Angels' hymn. 2. Christmas long ago. 3. Prayer for happy death.
SERMON.
The central figure of these festive Christmas days is a little child. It is preeminently the children's festival; and only children, and those who, despite their years, are in mind and heart but children still, can enter fully into the hallowed, gracious spirit of this time. I lately heard a little prattler tell the story of Nazareth and of Bethlehem, and sure am I, that could I reproduce her artless manner and the simple tale she told, I would touch, for once at least, your very hearts. The simple pathos of that story, simply told, has charmed the world for nineteen hundred years, and more than aught besides, has served to batter down the barriers of unbelief. Perhaps we could not better spend the time to-day than by recalling once again the tenderly pathetic — the oft-told — tale of Christ's nativity.
Brethren, there is no more salutary exercise than just to kneel a while beside the crib, with its attendant figures, and suffer the tongue to utter whatever thoughts arise. In that tiny Babe we see with the eye of faith the divine and the human blended into one — reunited, as it were, and yet united as they had never been before. The thought carries us back to the opening chapter of this wondrous history, back to the lamentable fall of our first parents through pride and disobedience, and the consequent alienation of God and humanity. In the dark storm of God's wrath that then burst upon the world, there was just one rift in the cloud, one slender ray of light and hope, viz.: God's words to the serpent: " I will put enmities between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed, and she shall crush thy head." Here in the cave before us is the woman; there in the manger, her seed — her Son. Pride and disobedience wrought our ruin; humility and obedience repaired it; for here is she who humbly answered: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord," and there is He of whom it is written in the head of the Book: " Behold, I come."
Brethren, St. Paul to the Romans (chap, v.) says: " By one man sin entered into the world and by sin, death; and so sin and death passed upon all men from Adam unto Moses, even upon those who had not sinned." From Adam to Moses, and from Moses to Christ human nature bore irremediably its hereditary taint of original sin, and its consequent proneness to actual transgressions. So mortally offended had God been, that not even all the efforts of all men and angels for all time could make sufficient reparation. Man is more potent for evil than for good. He can offend God infinitely, but make amends as best he may, they are but finite — limited. Yet man had sinned and man, not angels, must atone, and could not; nor could God's mercy freely pardon all until His justice had been satisfied. In this dilemma it was that God the Son, humbly obedient to His Father's will, exclaimed: " Behold, I come. I come to take upon Me man's nature and man's sins. As man, I will make atonement such as man should make; as God, the value of My reparation will be infinite. I will merit such a boundless treasury of grace for man, that all men, past, present, and to come, may draw therefrom by acts of faith and hope, love and contrition, and through the sacraments of holy Church, sufficient of that heavenly coin to pay the entrance fee into the kingdom of My Father." " Thus," concludes St. Paul, " as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners, so also by the obedience of one many were made just, that as sin hath reigned to death, so also grace might reign by justice unto life everlasting through Christ Jesus our Lord."
Brethren, this then is the Child in whom the Deity and humanity met and kissed and were reconciled. Looking forward— on His feeble heart-beat hangs the salvation of a world; looking backward — He is the fulfilment of four thousand years of figure and of prophecy. However vague and worldly their ideas of the future Messias, and the kingdom He was to found, the Israelites and Jews never lost faith and hope in His ultimate arrival. This expectancy influenced largely woman's life. Celibacy was practically unknown; fruitfulness was woman's choicest blessing and barrenness her direst curse, for every mother of Israel fondly hoped to discover some day the divine nature of the Messias beaming on her through the bright eyes and loving smile of her little one. To one alone — Mary— came a light from God to know the higher value of virginity. She alone of all, by vow of chastity, forfeited, humanly speaking, her claim to be the mother of the coming Saviour; and, wondrous providence of God! she alone of all was chosen for that honor.
Mary was the daughter of Joachim and Anna of Nazareth, humble folk enough it is true, and yet descendants of a priestly and a royal line. They had but two children, Mary, the humble virgin, and her younger sister, Salome, of a more ambitious and worldly turn of mind. Their relatives were few, comprising Cleophas and Joseph, bachelor brothers of Joachim, living in Nazareth, and cousin Elizabeth, Zachary's wife, in the hill country of Judea. Mary being heiress to all her folks possessed, she was obliged by Jewish law to take for husband the man nearest of kin, for these two reasons: first, lest the line of David should be broken, and secondly, that the property might not pass from out the family. Thus Mary, notwithstanding her chaste vow and natural repugnance, became engaged to Joseph. Meanwhile Salome married Zebedee of Capharnaum, and had for sons the Apostles James and John. Cleophas, too, was married, to whom we know not, except that her name was Mary and that their sons were the Apostles James and Judas — not the traitor — and Simon Zelotes. We may remark in passing that Jesus and John the Baptist were second cousins, and that of the twelve Apostles, five were, humanly speaking, first cousins to the Lord. While Mary, therefore, was engaged to Joseph, there came to her news of the wondrous apparition of the angel to Zachary in the Temple, and the miraculous conception whereby her cousin Elizabeth was to be the mother of the Lord's precursor, — the Baptist. What must the Virgin's thoughts have been when hearing the Messias was at hand, and her own family the instrument of His coming! Did she covet the honor every daughter of Israel coveted? No doubt in her humility she never deemed it possible. Anyhow, had she not consecrated herself to God? and dearer even than the honor of being His Mother was the happiness of being His virgin spouse. Six months had passed, and once again the angel of Zachary's vision, Gabriel, came and hailed the Virgin as the Mother of God. Mary's astonishment was not so much that such a message should be sent to a woman of Israel, but that she should be the one — she, a lowly maid, not married yet, and bound by solemn vow never to be known of man. How did her gentle heart flutter and her spirit glow with love and thankfulness when from the angel's lips she heard that virginity and motherhood are not things incompatible in her whose offspring is a God; that He who made the barren Elizabeth conceive, could of Mary's flesh and blood alone build Him a body for His indwelling. " Behold," she says, " the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy word," and in that very instant the hopes of ages were fulfilled; the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.
Brethren, Mary's first impulse was to be away from Nazareth, to open her overflowing heart to some sympathetic woman, and so with haste she sped to whisper her secret to her cousin Elizabeth. Supposing even that some vague doubts still haunted Mary's mind, they must have been utterly dispelled by Elizabeth's greeting of her as the Mother of her God, and the bound the Baptist gave at the approach of his unborn Saviour. There Mary spent three happy months, and then the sword began to pierce her gentle heart. The Baptist's birth was nigh, and soon the friends and neighbors would gather round to congratulate his parents and celebrate his circumcision. What would they think of Mary? With the sublimest faith and trust in God she had bowed her will to His, but now there stared her in the face suspicion, calumny and death. Back to Nazareth she fled, and instinctively sought protection from Joseph, her intended husband, only to have her worst fears realized, for Joseph, being a just man, immediately sought to sever their engagement. But God did not abandon her. An angel came to Joseph, enlightening him as to the true state of affairs, and Joseph, like the good and true man he was, immediately made Mary his lawful wedded wife. Six months of peace ensued, and then we find them on the road to Bethlehem, the town of David's line, where they and all his other lineal descendants had to present themselves that a general census of the people might be taken. The way was long — some eighty miles — and wearisome, and the season being winter, the journey must have been a downright hardship, especially for Mary, so soon to be a mother. The wintry day was closing in as they passed through Jerusalem and came in sight of Bethlehem, a few miles farther on. To them it seemed like coming to their own, and the brightly illumined homes and the sounds of mirth and joy from many a family reunion gave to the weary travellers a sense of peace and rest. But alas! their own received them not. First, from the village inn and then from door after door they were turned away, either because there was no room to give, or else because there was no will to give what room there was. Poor Mary! we make way for, and salute, a priest who bears the Blessed Sacrament, but not even these small courtesies were offered thee. Poor Mary! they could even refuse respect and help to one who showed the outward signs of youthful motherhood. Aye, women, mothers themselves, came to their doors and looked and answered, no! Ah! when the tramp of Herod's soldiers and the clash of their arms are heard in the streets of Bethlehem — when the innocents are torn from their mothers' arms and slaughtered before their eyes — let these mothers not wonder if the pale, beseeching face of a would-be lodger flit across their remembrance. Poor Mary! in a vain attempt to retrace her steps to Jerusalem, she sinks down by the way, and then, assisted by her husband, by one last effort she totters to a cave where cattle and sheep are stalled. How natural it all is, and how pitiful! The young wife utterly exhausted and alone; her husband gone to fetch a cup of water and assistance; one instant of semi-conscious ecstasy, and she clasps to her breast her newborn babe — born without the pains of child-birth — as miraculously born as was the newly risen Saviour transferred when He appeared in the midst of His Apostles, the doors being closed. There, then, in the crib before us is the group, Jesus, Mary, Joseph. Who does not love to ponder on that picture of which the utter simplicity is the chief est charm? The scanty swaddling-clothes, the stable, the manger, His dire poverty — these do not repel, but rather seem most fitting, for round Him earthly splendor would be as tawdry tinsel, while these are like the clothing of the lily that rivals Solomon's garb. No fear that in the contemplation of the intensely human in Christ we lose sight of His divinity, for already outside the cave the night is all aglow and the air filled with heavenly melody. Midway between Jerusalem and Bethlehem a company of shepherds guarded the flocks intended for sacrificial purposes in the Temple; suddenly in their midst appeared an angel, dazzling bright, and higher hovered hundreds of bright spirits. One moment's silence while the heavenly messenger announced his tidings of great joy, and then, as chorus follows solo, so the entire band burst forth and swelled the glad refrain: " Glory to God in the highest, and on earth to men of good will peace." Gradually it died away and the light faded from the sky, as when the grand Cathedral functions close and the music ceases and the myriad tapers are one by one extinguished. But like the incense odor in the vacant aisles, like the whispering echoes of music long since played, comes the sound of that hymn played round the shepherds on their way to Bethlehem, and in the cave, and ever afterwards; and down the ages reechoing from heart to heart and from soul to soul, gathering all like children round the crib of Bethlehem, rolls on that heavenly chorus: " Glory to God in the highest, and on earth to men of good will peace."
Brethren, there is a deep significance in the fact that the first announcement of the Messias' birth was made to the shepherds of the flock intended for the Temple and for God, that through them the tidings of great joy should come to all mankind. Very appropriately, too, the angel while delivering his message, pointed to Bethlehem, for Jesus is the model for us all and the angelic hymn of " Glory to God, good will on earth to men, and peace," embodies in itself the chief characteristics of an ideal Christian life. It is only when we are fulfilling the two great precepts of love for God and our neighbors, that the peace of heaven inundates our souls; or possibly the meaning is, that peace must be established in us by conquest of ourselves ere we are truly fit to give God glory and good will to men. Brethren, how does this description of a Christian tally with our lives? We bow our heads beside the crib of Jesus and think alas! what Christmas used to mean, and what its meaning now is. The happy Christmases of boyhood days are but a memory fondly cherished. In later years the peace we then knew fled. We thrust the Saviour from our souls, and though He often came and knocked and begged a lodging there, we answered, " No! " We even slew Him. As Herod would have done, we did — we snatched that Infant from His Mother's breast, and nailed Him, scourged and thorn-crowned, upon a cruel cross. We did it by our sins. And then again sweet peace came back when we by tears and sighs and moans did penance for those sins — when we went back to Him, as did the shepherds, in simple, humble adoration; when we offered Him the richest treasures of our hearts and souls, as did the Eastern kings. God grant our final hour be like that! God grant that, holding Jesus to our breasts as holy Simeon did, we may as confidently beg to be dismissed in peace! God grant in that dread hour we may look back and see: " Glory to God, good will on earth to men," written on every page of our life's history, and, looking forward, hear from our Judge's lips that our eternal lot is " Peace."