Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1st reading: Isaiah 9, 1-6

Psalm: 95 (96), 1-2a, 2b-3, 11-12a, 12b-13a, 13bc

2rd reading: Titus 2, 11-14

Gospel: Luke 2, 1-14

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So what is dangerous about this event of Jesus’ birth? So what is so dangerous or scandalous or obscene that it is now inappropriate to represent this event in the public square?

What’s dangerous about this newborn lying in a manger?

This great mystery of the Incarnation of the God who became man, this great mystery, for 2000 years, has dazzled those who stop in front of the nativity scene. Thérèse expresses it in one of her theatrical creations. She says :

Who will understand this mystery?

A God becomes a little child?…

He comes to exile on earth

He the Eternal… The Almighty! (RP2,1)

Mystery of God's abasement: the Almighty becomes all-powerless.

I often repeat, because I find it fascinating, that the human cub is the only one among all mammals that cannot go to the breast on its own. Everyone else doesn't need any help. From the little mouse to the whale, it happens all by itself. The human child needs someone to take him and bring him to his mother's breast. This shows the total helplessness of the newborn. When Jesus speaks about Son of Man delivered into the hands of men, it is not only about him that he will speak, it is deep within each of us and even more particularly about each newborn totally delivered into the hands of men. This is how, when God fulfills 2000 years of promises, he presents himself to us. Some sometimes say: But if God appeared to me, then yes, perhaps I would believe in him. But how must God appear to you so that you are sure that it is Him? And when God truly manifests himself — for this child is true God and true man, he is truly the second person of the Trinity whom Mary brought into the world; this is why Mary is called “Mother of God”, and not only “Mother of Jesus”: she gives birth to the second person of the Trinity who becomes man - when God presents himself in this way, how can we recognize him?

A first lesson that we can draw is that in every newborn, something is told to us about the Mystery of God. In every newborn, it is always revealed to us again how the omnipotence of God manifests itself in great weakness.

But the one we come to contemplate today in the manger is the eternal Word who bears all things. It is this powerful word by which God generates everything, creates everything. And Thérèse is fascinated by this. When she contemplates the manger, she contemplates this child, this newborn, this toddler, but she recognizes that he is the one by whom everything is created. And not only does she recognize that he is the one by whom everything is created, but she recognizes that he is also the one who created her. Which means that in another poem, Thérèse writes: “You supported the world and gave it life” while contemplating the child in the nursery. This is a passage that Pope Francis cites in his Apostolic Exhortation “It is Trust” (no. 33). I will read you the entire stanza, a long poem where Thérèse remembers everything that Jesus did by addressing Jesus and saying to him: Remember...

Remember that on other shores

The golden stars and the silver moon

That I contemplate in the cloudless azure

Have delighted, charmed your childish eyes.

When Thérèse contemplates the sky of Lisieux, she says to herself: “But deep down, in Bethlehem, Jesus saw this same sky, He also contemplated it, he of whom he is the Creator.”

With your little hand that caressed Marie

You supported the world and gave it life.

And you thought of me

Jesus, my little King

Remember… (PN 24,6)

You supported the world and gave it life, and you thought of me...

When we come to the nursery, quite spontaneously, we come to watch an event which is external to us. Thérèse does not see an external event, she sees an event that primarily concerns her. We can seek, in the Christmas season which begins today, to have this same experience by contemplating the child in the manger: to address him. It is not first of all we who look at him, it is first of all he who looks at us, who contemplates us. He came for us. We will sing it later in the Credo : It was for us that he became man, for us men and for our salvation. For each of us. And this mystery of Christmas touches us because of this fragility of the child which tells us something of the mystery of God, but also because it is for each of us that God became man, and that we are therefore all affected by this event.

Finally Thérèse, in this famous Christmas night of 1886 which will be a determining moment of her path, a moment that she will even call his complete conversion, when she was barely fourteen years old, she said this — until then she was a very sensitive child who cried easily as soon as she had done something wrong, even something very slight, and then she cried for crying and she couldn't, she says it herself: My reason couldn't stop it. She therefore writes:

The Good Lord had to do a little miracle to make me grow up in a moment and this miracle he did on the unforgettable day of Christmas; in this luminous night which illuminates the delights of the Holy Trinity, Jesus, the sweet little Child of an hour, changed the night of my soul into torrents of light... In this night when He became weak and suffering for my love, He made me strong and courageous, He clothed me with his weapons and since that blessed night, I was not defeated in any combat, but on the contrary I marched from victory to victory and began, so to speak, "a giant's race!..." ( Ms A 44v°)

The Word became flesh. God became man in weakness and suffering to make us strong and courageous. As if there were this admirable exchange where the Lord lives his omnipotence by making himself weak, to make us powerful, not with a proud and violent human power, but to make us powerful with the power of God, who is a creative power and not a predatory power.

The power that God shares with us by giving himself to us is the power of his love which conquers sin and death. It is the power of his love that no sin repels. It is the power of his mercy which continues to love the greatest sinners to the end so that they may convert.

On this Christmas night, we are called in our turn to enter into this omnipotence of God which is the omnipotence of merciful love. This is what Paul is trying to tell us in these few words he writes to Titus: “Our great God and Savior Jesus Christ gave himself for us to redeem us from all our faults, and to purify us to make us his people, a people eager to do good.”

When we come to the manger to contemplate the Child Jesus, may we place there all that is in us arrogance, spirit of superiority, pride, vanity... May we bury all of this in the straw of the manger, and receive from the Lord who made himself so small, the power of his love; and start again in this determination of the heart, strong and courageous, this determination to be part of this people eager to do good. This is the gift that God wants to give us: to make us men and women who find their joy in the merciful love they give, in the good they do, who find their joy in letting power of this merciful Love of God to be deployed in their own weakness.

May Saint Thérèse teach us to live this conversion.

Amen