Homilies

Homily For 20 December Simbang Gabi Dawn Mass

20 Dec 2018
  

HOMILY FOR 20 DECEMBER SIMBANG GABI DAWN MASS
St Joachim’s Parish, Lidcombe

 Why are we hearing about the Annunciation only five days out from the Nativity? Everyone knows there are nine months between a conception and a birth, and in Jesus’ case there was a great deal of activity in between, such as the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, the Dream of Joseph, the Marriage of Joseph and Mary, the Annunciation to Zechariah, the Birth and Naming of John the Baptist, the Journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and so on… So why jump back nine months only five days before Christmas?

Because the Annunciation and the Nativity are really inseparable. This double-feast celebrates the greatest mystery of the relationship between God and humanity – that the Creator became a creature, God became man, in order to raise man up to God, the made to the Maker. When the Virgin Mary brought forth Christ at the first Christmas, it was as if she were unveiling Him in Eucharistic exposition, for angels and shepherds, kings and priests to see and adore. But for the preceding nine months she already held the maturing embryonic Christ in the tabernacle of her womb, and when Elizabeth saw Mary at the Visitation the child leapt in her womb, leapt into kneeling position, as mother and unborn child adored the Saviour in the tabernacle. So the Incarnation is in a sense a single event stretching from the Annunciation to the Nativity calling u to worship as we would before the tabernacle open or shut.

Our beautiful Christian prayer, the Angelus, highlights a few distinct moments in that nine-months-long event. The angel declares and the Virgin consents, the Virgin consents and the Virgin conceives, the Word is made flesh and God dwells among us. So in Christ God takes upon Himself our humanity without in any way diminishing His divinity. In that process, several things are established or re-established: the inherent goodness of the material creation, of the body and bodily life, of marriage and family life – for God could not be joined to that which was other than good and will himself remain in a human body, from a human family, for all eternity. God reveals that healing is possible for damaged human beings: restoration of that image and likeness of God that we enjoyed before the fall; reintegration of personality, relationships and community that had been broken since the fall; return to that intimacy with God we knew in paradise. But God doesn’t just fix us, as if we were broken toys: He makes something even better of us that we were before the fall. By becoming one of us, Christ enables us to be ‘divinised’ as it were, to be adopted into the family of God, to be not only healed but elevated.

The ancient fathers imagined creation hushed at the moment of the Annunciation. Adam and Eve are there, and all humanity waiting in the Limbo of the Dead for their release. The patriarchs and prophets are there, wise women and men from of old, all stand around listening. So, too, the angels, the animals, all the natural order, the earth and the heavens. Even the sun and moon eavesdrop attentively. What will the woman say? Where the first Eve said No, I will not obey, I will not observe your divine commands, I will not serve, what will the New Eve say?

“Yes, I am God’s handmaid, I will obey, I will observe, I will serve.” Creation bursts with an excitement greater than the pleasure of the crowds as the newlyweds come forth from a church, greater than the cheering of the throngs at a countdown to rocket lift-off or to New Year, greater than the pleasure taken in the arrival of any other good news. For Mary’s Yes is not just the yes of a faithful, humble, holy young woman: it is given on behalf of all humanity. Mary stood as spokesperson for creation, and willingly accepted God’s offer of re-creation.

This is important, because it says something fundamental about the relationship between God and humanity: that God’s love, invitation, redemption will never be forced, will always be free. God could simply have possessed Mary’s body or directed her will. Or he could have taken human or other form without involving us at all. But He chose instead to invite our co-operation and to respect our freedom to say Yes or No. And so Pope St Paul VI dared to say that Mary did not become our Mother when Christ gave her to the Church from the cross; no, he thought, it had happened much earlier when she said her Yes. If the name Eve means mother of all the living, then this New Eve became mother of all those who would be brought to new life through the Incarnation.[1] Her yes restored the right relationship between God and humanity: God inviting and we accepting, God directing and we obeying, God befriending and we loving back, all done in perfect freedom. Mary’s Yes today is not just a private offer of herself: she offers all humanity, all bodily life, all creation, in a great Yes to salvation.

Join Mary, then, each one of you, in saying Yes to Christmas, and not just by eating puto bumbong, lechon and (worst of all) balut, but by offering your humanity, your bodily life, your corner of creation as the site for God to take flesh and dwell amongst us.

 

INTRODUCTION TO 20 DECEMBER SIMBANG GABI DAWN MASS
St. Joachim’s Church, Lidcombe

Dear friends, it is a great pleasure to be with you for this Simbang Gabi or cock-crow Mass as we prepare for Christ’s coming in just three days’ time. We give thanks to Almighty God for the gifts of the year past and we pray that 2019 will be a year filled with the grace of God. And so let us repent of our sins and so make of our hearts a manger in which to lay the Christ-child.

 

[1] Paul VI, Marialis Cultus, 6