December 25, 2023

Bishop Byrne: ‘Christmas is not a day. It’s a way of being’

REGIONAL
Staff report

SPRINGFIELD — On Christmas Eve, Springfield Bishop William D. Byrne celebrated the 4 p.m. Mass at St. Michael’s Cathedral. The Mass will be broadcast on Christmas Day at 11 a.m. on WWLP-22NEWS.

The following is the text of the bishop’s homily at this Christmas Eve Mass:

It was the winter of 1223. Brother Francis was returning from Rome back to Assisi. The religious community he had founded was now officially approved by the Pope. He was weary because the community of brothers that he had founded on simplicity and poverty was now an institution. With that came more complications. It is said his skill was inspiration not administration.

Brother Francis stopped to rest in the town of Greccio, about halfway between Rome and Assisi. He had many friends in this joyful and devout community.  Among them were Giovanni and Alticama Velita, a wealthy yet humble couple who loved their little holy man.

They had given Brother Francis a little hermitage, a cave like structure, on their property where he would go for solitude and prayer with our Lord to new renew himself along the way. It was there that Brother Francis came up with an idea that endures even to this day.  He told Giovanni the idea and Giovanni, a man who could get things done, put the idea into action.

That Christmas Eve, the villagers were invited at night to come up to the little cave where Francis would stay. As they arrived with their candles and torches lighting up the night, what they found filled the evening air with “oohs and ahhs,” with and laughs and wonder.  With Brother Francis, Giovanni and Alticama had orchestrated a living reenactment of the very first Christmas.

That night the very first nativity scene greeted the townspeople as their special Christmas gift. There was an ox and a donkey, a manger and a young couple with a baby. The Christmas gift that Brother Francis gave them was that the birth of our Savior was real.

As they gathered in the firelight that evening the people witnessed that Jesus, the king of kings, had been born into poverty. His parents were homeless. God who became man so that we could become like God, did not have a throne of gold, but of straw.  When the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us” his attendants we’re not knights in armor or ladies in silk, but an ox and an ass.

When we look upon the manger and the nativity scenes which adorn our homes and our churches, they seem quaint and cozy. What the people of Greccio saw that night was that the first Christmas was noisier with the braying of animals and a certainly grittier. Jesus was not born into a fantasy. Jesus was born into reality.

GK Chesterton in his poem “The House of Christmas” writes:

“There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.”

In the place were Jesus was homeless, we are all at home.  As Jesus enters into our poverty, it is no longer emptiness but our means of finding God.  Herein lies the mystery of Christmas, there are empty places in our hearts for sure, but we are never alone.  Those places which seem a void are actually Jesus sized places that only he can fill.  When Jesus enters into the sting of suffering, it is transformed into a means of holiness and joy.

Francis of Assisi was not a priest. He didn’t feel that he was worthy. He was a Deacon. He asked that the Mass of Christmas that night be celebrated there. The altar was the Manger. As a Deacon, he sang the Gospel announcing the birth of Jesus. Then the Eucharist was celebrated on the manger. In the place that recalled where Jesus first laid his head was placed the consecrated Eucharist.

The message is clear. Christmas it’s not something we celebrate as a memory. Jesus comes anew at every Mass truly present in the Eucharist, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity. A manger is the place where the animals are fed.  The town of Bethlehem literally is translated as the “house of bread.”  God is not being subtle.  He is showing us that the way of fulfillment begins for us around the altar where Jesus comes every day to fill us and renew us and strengthen us. We come with our poverty and are neediness so that he can fill that space in our hearts that was made for him and him alone.  This year find him not in a manger but in the Mass each week. Christmas is not a day.  It’s a way of being.

Merry Christmas!

Praised be Jesus Christ!