The following is an excerpt of a homily by Alfred Delp, S.J., priest and martyr. A link to the full sermon is below. Written almost eighty years ago, nothing much has changed with regard to the state of mankind. For Christians and all people of goodwill reflect on the words of Fr. Delp to help you focus on what truly makes Christmas merry for us!
The meaning of our Christian holy days is not primarily our external holiday celebration, but that particular mysteries of God happen to us, and that we respond. Something in the deepest center of our being is meant here, more than the exterior symbols can even indicate. Anyone who lacks spiritual eyes, and whose soul has not become open and watchful, will not understand the reason we are so often festive in the cycle of the liturgical year. The Church stands before us with great gestures and great pomp and ceremonial rites. This is only an attempt to indicate something that reaches much deeper and must be taken much more seriously.
The Christmas celebration is the birth of the Lord. It is verifiable that Christ was born on this night. The great mystery behind this is the marriage covenant of God with mankind; that mankind is fulfilled only insofar as it has grown into this covenant. Concretely, it is meaningful to establish what this covenant, which began between divinity and humanity on that Holy Night, signifies as a challenge and message for each one of us.
The world is hostile and rejects everything. But we are experiencing the other side of Christmas. All of these blessings have already been taken away, and the night has descended again.
The first message is that the Kyrios, the Lord, is coming. The Lord does not stand in the center anymore. He is replaced by the power brokers. How man keeps lapsing into heresy! The power brokers, under whose power man has gone astray, stand in the center. One no longer sees God as the center of the world, as the foundational support. And what has developed out of this? We are standing without any foundation–we have nothing permanent anymore.
There is no more talk of man’s life being dependent upon mercy. Therefore the world has become so unmerciful. When has anyone taken away more from man than this? This is a time in which “apparuit benignitas et humanitas [the goodness and loving-kindness of God our Savior appearing]” is no longer acknowledged.
What has become of man, that he does not want to be human in relation to God anymore? Beforehand, the Christmas words were sent packing. This is a world in which it no longer can be said that “we await the great revelation of the Lord”, a world that must cling to each day because it already knows that, in mere seconds, everything can be over. There is nothing left of peace and security. This is a world that no longer knows of the Holy Night, of the Consecration-Night, the Christ-Mass.
That is the one thing that we honestly have to see. The world in which we stand is un-Christmaslike, not because God is unmerciful, but rather because man has outlawed the message, and there is no room anymore for the promise.
Nevertheless, we must also look at this in a positive way. For us personally, this message of the Holy Night still does contain its great meaning and content. There are two things we need to have in terms of consciousness and attitude, and we should take possession of them today: we should not come to Midnight Mass as if we do not live in the year 1942. The year must be redeemed along with everything else. And from the Gloria, we have to take with us the peace and faith in the glory of God. There is nothing else that surpasses this night, and nothing that should be taken as more important than this event.
Whatever may happen around us, let us not break down, for then we would not be taking the Lord seriously, or what we know about consecrated people seriously, or what we know about these messages. Therefore, deep down, we are the people who are comforted; and we are the last refuge for the homeless people who do not know anything about the Lord anymore.
May we know about the indisputable fact of this Child and not let ourselves be disconcerted, not even by our own great un-freedom. “Apparuit benignitas et humanitas [the goodness and lovingkindness of God our Savior appearing]” (Tit 3:4). That should find its expression in the positive attitudes we take with us from this experience of the Holy Night. May we impart the goodness.
May we attend to humanity again, and witness to the Lordship of God again, and know of His grace and mercy, and have gentle hands for other people again. And may we go away from Christmas Eve with the consolation that we mean so much to God that no external distress can rob us of this ultimate consolation. Our hearts must become strong, to make the divine heartbeat into the law of life again. God’s readiness is established, but our gates are locked.
These should be the meaning of our wartime Christmas:
— that we petition Him,
— that He redeems us through the mystery,
— that we are rich and capable enough through God’s comfort to give mankind the comfort that it needs so much,
— that we go away from this celebration as the great comforters, as the great knowers, the great blessed ones who know what it means to be consoled by God.
The full homily by Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J. | Pre-Christmas Reflection Preached in Munich, December 22, 1942 can be found here: http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2006/fradelp_mystery_dec06.asp
