Christmas Midnight Mass 2004

A rose sprang up unheeded...
When half-spent was the night.

Celebration of the Midnight Mass is one of the most cherished of Catholic traditions and so much so, that it has lent its name for the day itself: Christmas having come from “Christ-Mass.” The exceptional midnight hour for the first Mass of Christmas is an especially wondrous thing. The stillness of the time–its silence–agrees well with the mystery of an obscure prophecy found in the Book of Wisdom:

While all things were in quiet silence,
and the night was in the midst of her course,
Thy almighty Word leapt down from heaven, from Thy royal throne. (18:14-15)

It was generally believed that Christ, the almighty Word, was born a man “upon a midnight clear” for it was while the world slept that Mary, under the cover of darkness and in a manner wholly miraculous, delivered her Child. This Christmas midnight hour marks the mid-point, the turning point, not only of the clock, but of the year as well, when the sun, at its farthest winter’s reach from the earth, begins to draw near to it again.

If the assignment of the Lord’s birth on December 25th, at the time of the winter solstice, cannot be historically verified, it is not at all inappropriately celebrated on this day. Some pious commentators on the Lord’s nativity speak of the infant God as coming forth from the virginal chamber of His Mother in a marvelously luminous manner, in a condition like that of His Transfiguration so many years in the future, being born with a radiance that testified to His divinity. While this conjecture is not part of Catholic doctrine (nor the witness of the NT), it conveys one nevertheless: Christ, the Light of the Father’s Light, in being born a human child, communicates the light of His truth, goodness, glory and beauty to humanity. This radiance of Christ at His birth is symbolized in the canonical scripture by the celebrated Star which emitted its guiding light to the magi.

The contrasting darkness of the midnight sky with the first pure streams of light from the newborn Christ dramatizes for us the antitheses of sin and grace. The Gospel of Saint John, in phrases of his own, repeats the message announced by angels to the shepherds:

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. We have beheld His glory. The light has come into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.

The hour of midnight, ordinarily the dread hour that so naturally suggests evil, was, on this night, transformed into the holiest time of all.

Christmas is a marvelous play of many contrasts: of mankind’s Liberator shackled in swaddling clothes; of a birthing Mother who remains all the while a Virgin; of a royal birth in the squalor of a cave; and of the emergence of the world’s true Light flashing against the backdrop of the black of night.

These, and many similar contraries, have parallels in the present day with regard to the Church and to the disposition of so many men. How many are the number of those who–after having enjoyed the benefit of so many centuries of civilizing Christian influence, evident miracles, the lives of innumerable holy men and women saints, the most exquisite masterworks of Christian-inspired art, music, and architecture; the staggering accomplishments of faith-filled men as philosophers, scientists and theologians; the untold volumes of writings of historians and poets; of the numberless institutions of learning, and of charity for the sick, orphaned, homeless and poor–after all these prodigious fruits of Christian ‘inculturation’ (as they say), how many yet remain unconverted and impervious to the influences of Christ’s grace? Yet our Lord was born as one of our kind not to inspire this imposing profusion of human culture, but to be man’s eternal enlightenment and Savior.

“His name will be called Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins;”
and
“God sent his Son into the world..that the world might be saved through Him.” (1 Jn).

The Church exists, despite what her ardent critics obstinately assert to the contrary, for the sole purpose of availing men of the grace of eternal salvation–which means, in common parlance, of getting them to heaven. By the standards of the world, this may be an inconsequential project, affecting only the unimportant business of religion. But the effects of slighting and eliminating the salutary influence of Christ and His grace in the world is having the dire consequences we are made to witness ever greater frequency. For, the decline of faith produces also the decline of truth and, in its wake, the near collapse of the moral order.

Isaiah the Prophet, anticipated the manger scene when he wrote that “the ox knows its owner, and the ass its master’s crib, but my people do not understand.” Midnight Mass is a reminder of the night when dumb animals acknowledged Christ while so many rational animals outside shunned His offer of truth, goodness and everlasting happiness.

The salutary will of God was manifest to all the earth on Christmas at midnight when the Word become flesh dwelt among us. But this Rose sprang up–as the song says–“unheeded” and so He remains by many to this day. ‘But to all who receive Him, who believe in His name, He gives power to become sons of God.’

The Lord Christ this holy night desires to shine upon you all the richness of His grace. You need not fear the terror of the night (cf. Psalm 91), for it has been overcome by Christ’s radiant light. See it, “heed” it, and allow its warmth to slacken the resistence of your unyielding hearts.