There is No Room at the Inn - The Pope's Christmas Message
The Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI delivered his Christmas Midnight Mass homily which was a message of hope but at the same time prophetic for our time and age.
There are at least two major recurring themes, though not wholly exhausted in them, that were present in the Holy Father's Christmas homily: (1) Alienation of Christ by the Secular World (2) Re-creation as central to the mystery of Incarnation.
1. Alienation of Christ by the Secular World
This theme seems to be repetitive in the first two encyclicals of the Holy Father, Deus Caritas Est and Spe Salvi. The major concern of this pontificate has been to call our attention to the consequences of eliminating Christian influence in different dimensions of human life and institutions. Pope Pius XI called this "secularization." In this homily, the Holy Father used the the episode of the absence of an inn for the Holy Family when the time of His birth arrived. He says:"He came to his own home, and his own people received him not” (Jn 1:11). This refers first and foremost to Bethlehem: the Son of David comes to his own city, but has to be born in a stable, because there is no room for him at the inn. Then it refers to Israel: the one who is sent comes among his own, but they do not want him. And truly, it refers to all mankind: he through whom the world was made, the primordial Creator-Word, enters into the world, but he is not listened to, he is not received."
The authentic spirit of Christmas and its effects in our lives remain inactive due to the lack of openness on the part of man to accept God. He shows the contrast of those who accepted God in the Incarnate Word in the person of Mary, Joseph, the shepherds and the Wise Men when he says:
"Thank God, this negative detail is not the only one, nor the last one that we find in the Gospel. Just as in Luke we encounter the maternal love of Mary and the fidelity of Saint Joseph, the vigilance of the shepherds and their great joy, just as in Matthew we encounter the visit of the wise men, come from afar, so too John says to us: “To all who received him, he gave power to become children of God” (Jn 1:12). There are those who receive him, and thus, beginning with the stable, with the outside, there grows silently the new house, the new city, the new world."
What is so beautiful was the Holy Father's hope that in spite of man's rejection, God still find His way into our lives through the stable as He will not man's rejection to "shut him off from coming to us:
"Yet it also tells us that God does not allow himself to be shut out. He finds a space, even if it means entering through the stable; there are people who see his light and pass it on. Through the word of the Gospel, the angel also speaks to us, and in the sacred liturgy the light of the Redeemer enters our lives. Whether we are shepherds or “wise men” – the light and its message call us to set out, to leave the narrow circle of our desires and interests, to go out to meet the Lord and worship him. We worship him by opening the world to truth, to good, to Christ, to the service of those who are marginalized and in whom he awaits us."
Christ still continues to come in simple and hidden many forms of "stable", that is humble hidden ways especially through the liturgy. Here is now the apparent connection between restoration of Christian culture in the secular world and the liturgy in the mind of the present Pope: Christ comes to us through the liturgy, like a stable, and from that, renewed evangelization and renewal of life takes place.
We do not know if the Holy Father had in mind the ancient interpretation of the Fathers of the Church for Bethlehem as the place of "bread" which alludes to our Lord's birth laying in the manger as food for us beasts so that we can be divinized. Most likely he had this in mind knowing of his fondness for Patristic writings and Sacred Scriptures. These areas of study are usually given in seminary studies as part of fundamental theology. The Holy Fathers as a professor in his early years taught Fundamental Theology.
Once Christ is accepted there is certainly a radical transformation in our lives as effected by the incarnation and this leads to second major theme of his homily.
2. Re-creation as Central to Incarnation
St. Ireneaus and the early Fathers who are know in their defense of the faith from the ancient heresies (e.g. Judaizers, Gnosticism) always invoke the central theme of "re-creation." The old creation was affected by the sin of our first parents and needs to be re-created. By the assumption of our human nature, Christ restore, re-create our nature.
Being consistent with Tradition, the Holy Father explicitate once again the cosmic effect Adam's sin. The many evils that are now manifesting in our world whether in the non-rational world of environment or that of the rational human being has some form of moral reference. It is because of sin and man's choice to disobey God that the whole creation seems to follow in the same path:
"He pitched his tent among us” (Jn 1:14). Gregory applies this passage about the tent to the tent of our body, which has become worn out and weak, exposed everywhere to pain and suffering. And he applies it to the whole universe, torn and disfigured by sin. What would he say if he could see the state of the world today, through the abuse of energy and its selfish and reckless exploitation? Anselm of Canterbury, in an almost prophetic way, once described a vision of what we witness today in a polluted world whose future is at risk: “Everything was as if dead, and had lost its dignity, having been made for the service of those who praise God. The elements of the world were oppressed, they had lost their splendour because of the abuse of those who enslaved them for their idols, for whom they had not been created” (PL 158, 955f.)."
The Christmas event is not just a mere external event that is oftentimes reduced by the world to consumerism and commercialism. It an event with cosmic effects which originates from the moral choice: "he was obedient unto death, death on the cross."
This in order to undo the first disobedience of Adam. St. Paul says, that "death enters into the world through the disobedience of one man; life enters through the obedience of Christ."
This restoration/re-creation wrought about by Christ he spoke of in language that is imbued with lyricism and poetry when he says:
"The Earth is restored to good order by virtue of the fact that it is opened up to God, it obtains its true light anew, and in the harmony between human will and divine will, in the unification of height and depth, it regains its beauty and dignity. Thus Christmas is a feast of restored creation. It is in this context that the Fathers interpret the song of the angels on that holy night: it is an expression of joy over the fact that the height and the depth, Heaven and Earth, are once more united; that man is again united to God."
Here, the Holy Father alludes to an important principle that would form as the basis of true order: "..the Earth is restored to good order by virtue of the fact that it is opened up to God, it obtains its true light anew, and in the harmony between human will and divine will." The reference of the Holy Father to the restoration of earth has nothing to do with cultic nor a "new age" pantheism, not even in a narrow form of ecologism. He refers to the universal consequence of his theology of the Incarnation, his Christology which envisions Christ as the "first born of creation and first born from the dead." Although that priority can be said to mean "temporal", it is essentially ontological priority, that is, a primary principle through which other beings are restored.
His Christology and soteriology are utterly Franciscan in character with ramification of the Franciscan thesis, the Primacy of Christ and which has a social dimension in Christ's kingship of all mankind.
Let us be thankful to the Holy Father for this wonderful and yet easy to read homily which brings us once again to the true meaning and spirit of Christmas.
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