HOMILY OF THE NATIVITY OF OUR LORD YEAR B

HOMILY OF THE NATIVITY OF OUR LORD YEAR B

BY: Happy Christmas; Fr Cyril Unachukwu CCE

Our joy knows no bounds for God has made manifest in our midst the immensity of His love for humanity; the love He has for us right from the foundation of the world. We are individually and collectively beneficiaries of this love beyond all telling which He has shown in full in our times; that the Creator took the form of creatures in order to lead creatures back to their Creator. This is the mystery of love made manifest in the Most Holy Child Jesus, whose birth we are celebrating today all over the world. May this incomprehensible act of God make us positively responsive to God’s gift of love; Amen.

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Every year at Christmas, we have the opportunity to celebrate and rejoice for the wonders God has worked in our midst by coming to us in a way that is visible and accessible to us, in the person of His only Begotten Son Jesus Christ. His birth over 2000 years ago remains a point in history that can never be underestimated. The celebration of the Birth of Christ brings us to contemplate on the consummation of the past, the present and the future in the love of God the Father and by the power of the Holy Spirit. In fact, at Christmas, we are celebrating that moment when the whole of history was definitely redirected towards God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the very reason for the joy that fills our hearts today; the joy that is felt all over the whole world irrespective of the unimaginable hardships and difficulties caused by the present Pandemic. It was a moment of joy that was prefigured in the History of Salvation and spoken about by all of the Prophets; “for there is a child born for us, a son given to us and dominion is laid on his shoulders” (Is 9:1-7). This prophetic announcement of the birth of Christ remained a source of great joy for the people of God; “break into shouts of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem; for the Lord is consoling His people, redeeming Jerusalem” (Is 52:7-10). Even in the midst of setbacks and fear, the birth of Christ breeds joy, progress and upliftment in the lives of all, because the person of Christ is “full of grace and truth… and from His fullness we have, all of us, received, yes, grace in return for grace” (Jn 1:1-18). Certainly, the Christmas feast is a feast of grace, which was already announced at the moment of the Conception of the Child Jesus in the womb of His Virgin Mother Mary; “hail Mary full of grace.” To celebrate Christmas is to acknowledge the reality of grace, to profess the power of grace, to open our hearts and homes to receive this fullness of grace and to share this same grace with all those we encounter. The grace of God made present in Christ cannot be caged or bottled. It is a reality that must be shared; hence, a joy that must be carried to others.

This irresistible grace of the Baby Jesus was the force behind the response of the shepherds when they heard the news from the Angels. These shepherds said to themselves; “let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us” (Luke 2:15-20). The splendour of this glorious and gracious presence of Grace in the Baby Jesus inflames our hearts with the fire of God’s love that nothing earthly counts anymore, just like the shepherds abandoned their sheep to behold the fragile but grace-filled face of the fullness of divinity. The mystery of Christmas has its centre in the fact that God, in the fullness of His majesty and glory, made Himself visible in the fragility of a crying Baby. This gives us the indication of the simplicity of grace. The grace of God is never complicated. The fullness of grace in human form is not complicated either. This simplicity was also revealed by God to us in the manner of the birth of Christ; “Mary gave birth to a son, her first born. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them at the inn” (Luke 2:1-14). To be made partakers of this Fullness of grace, we must also take on His style of simplicity. The Christmas Feast is a feast of the most simple. Materialism and consumerism have found their way to make this feast seem very complicated and a form of burden. Whenever the celebration of Christmas begins to present itself like a burden to you, be sure that you are celebrating a burden that you have created for yourself and not the birth of Jesus Christ the Emmanuel our Saviour; Son of God and the Son of David and the Son of Abraham (Mt 1:1-25), through whom God speaks to us in the most eloquent, comprehensible and noble way (Heb 1:1-6).

Oh Most Holy Baby Jesus, may the simplicity of your birth at Bethlehem teach us to be simple in our way of life, so that aided by the power of the Holy Spirit, we may reign with You in the Kingdom of our common Father in Heaven; Amen.

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