Last night, in Rome, the Holy Father opened the bronze door to St Peter’s Basilica, and so opened the Jubilee Year of 2025. “Dear sister, dear brother, he said, on this night the ‘holy door’ of God’s heart lies open before you. Jesus, God-with-us, is born for you, for us, for every man and woman. With Him, joy flourishes; with Him, life changes; with Him, hope does not disappoint.”
Brothers and Sisters, the tormented Middle East was the cradle of Christianity and was a land full of saints. We can just think of our Lady, of Ss Martha and Mary, of the apostles. But in later centuries too many others arose, until that part of the world fell to the warriors of another religion and Christianity went underground. Now I think it is a land of saints again, but often martyrs at the hand of Islamic terrorists.
This is not a history lesson, though we know how much we need to pray for this part of the world.
I just want to mention one saint – from the 4th century – St Ephrem of Edessa. We would call him a Syrian now. He was a monk and a deacon and a poet. He wrote 28 poems on the Birth of Christ alone. And there’s one phrase of his I want to share: “listen to this wonder”. “Listen to this wonder that God has come to be born.”
Brothers and Sisters, this is what Christmas is: a wonder to be listened to. This is why we are here this morning.
We are faced with a wonder, with a threefold wonder: a virgin giving birth, Mary, our blessed Lady; God, the Son of God, becoming a human being: Jesus Christ, true God and true man; and ourselves in turn becoming in the Holy Spirit children of God, his sons and daughters.
A threefold wonder, Mary, Jesus and us. And a single wonder: the wonder of God’s self-giving love, which shapes it all.
Christianity can be watered down. Jesus can be reduced to a nice, generous person who wanted us to be nice and generous too and, of course, fell foul of the establishment. That’s a reduced, diminished faith, if it’s faith at all. Let’s not buy into it. Christianity is a wonder or nothing. Christ is the wonder of the Word made flesh, the Son of God made man, divinity and humanity in one, or he’s not worth bothering with. And our salvation is eternal joy as God’s sons and daughters, or it’s just a tweaking of what we are already, or an effort of self-improvement. If so we may just as well eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, or if you prefer hand ourselves over to AI.
“Listen to this wonder”.
Listen to the prophets who predict it: joy to Jerusalem, God with us. Listen to the apostles who proclaim it: “he has spoken to us by his Son”. Listen to the great apostle John: “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”. Listen and wonder.
The Jubilee Year, 2025, is also the anniversary of the Council of Nicea. 325, Iznik, western Turkey, about 56 miles from Istanbul on the eastern side of the Bosphorus. A Council means a gathering of bishops, and out of that Council came the Creed. Listen to the wonder.
Listen to Christmas with a silent heart. We are so assaulted by noise. “Save your effort, frail being, by being silent”. Let’s give ourselves a break! Take time over Christmas just to ponder, to be alone, to visit a church perhaps. Every church is a Bethlehem, a house of bread, take time to sit before the Blessed Sacrament, take time to look at a crib. Let’s silence our irritations and frustrations, silence our anxieties, give up worrying. Let’s listen to the still small voice of a Christian conscience.
Listen to the silence of the child. Discover the wonder and be amazed.
Here’s a 12th c monk preaching at Christmas to his brothers. “If anyone here finds it tedious to listen to this second-rate sermon far be it from me to weary him with my poor words. Let him go over to Bethlehem, and there let him contemplate that Word on which the angels long to gaze, that Word which the Lord has shown us…as he lay in the manger… [This Word leaped in silence from the throne of the Father] into the cattle stall and speaks to us the better for its silence. Let anyone, who has ears to hear listen to what this holy and loving silence of the eternal Word is saying to us, for if I have heard aright, peace is one of the words he speaks [to us].”
Listen to the wonder. Listen for the sake of the world. Listen and let the peace of Christ come in. Amen.
