Homily of the Holy Father during the Christmas Vigil Mass
Dear Brothers and Sisters! “You are my son, this day I have begotten you” – with
this passage from Psalm 2 the Church begins the liturgy of this holy night. She knows
that this passage originally formed part of the coronation rite of the kings of Israel.
The king, who in himself is a man like others, becomes the “Son of God” through being
called and installed in his office. It is a kind of adoption by God, a decisive act
by which he grants a new existence to this man, drawing him into his own being. The
reading from the prophet Isaiah that we have just heard presents the same process
even more clearly in a situation of hardship and danger for Israel: “To us a child
is born, to us a son is given. The government will be upon his shoulder” (Is
9:6). Installation in the office of king is like a second birth. As one newly born
through God’s personal choice, as a child born of God, the king embodies hope. On
his shoulders the future rests. He is the bearer of the promise of peace. On that
night in Bethlehem this prophetic saying came true in a way that would still have
been unimaginable at the time of Isaiah. Yes indeed, now it really is a child on
whose shoulders government is laid. In him the new kingship appears that God establishes
in the world. This child is truly born of God. It is God’s eternal Word that unites
humanity with divinity. To this child belong those titles of honour which Isaiah’s
coronation song attributes to him: Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace (Is 9:6). Yes, this king does not need counsellors drawn from
the wise of this world. He bears in himself God’s wisdom and God’s counsel. In the
weakness of infancy, he is the mighty God and he shows us God’s own might in contrast
to the self-asserting powers of this world. Truly, the words of Israel’s coronation
rite were only ever rites of hope which looked ahead to a distant future that God
would bestow. None of the kings who were greeted in this way lived up to the sublime
content of these words. In all of them, those words about divine sonship, about installation
into the heritage of the peoples, about making the ends of the earth their possession
(Ps 2:8) were only pointers towards what was to come – as it were signposts
of hope indicating a future that at that moment was still beyond comprehension. Thus
the fulfilment of the prophecy, which began that night in Bethlehem, is both infinitely
greater and in worldly terms smaller than the prophecy itself might lead one to imagine.
It is greater in the sense that this child is truly the Son of God, truly “God from
God, light from light, begotten not made, of one being with the Father”. The infinite
distance between God and man is overcome. God has not only bent down, as we read
in the Psalms; he has truly “come down”, he has come into the world, he has become
one of us, in order to draw all of us to himself. This child is truly Emmanuel –
God-with-us. His kingdom truly stretches to the ends of the earth. He has truly
built islands of peace in the world-encompassing breadth of the holy Eucharist. Wherever
it is celebrated, an island of peace arises, of God’s own peace. This child has ignited
the light of goodness in men and has given them strength to overcome the tyranny of
might. This child builds his kingdom in every generation from within, from the heart.
But at the same time it is true that the “rod of his oppressor” is not yet broken,
the boots of warriors continue to tramp and the “garment rolled in blood” (Is
9:4f) still remains. So part of this night is simply joy at God’s closeness. We
are grateful that God gives himself into our hands as a child, begging as it were
for our love, implanting his peace in our hearts. But this joy is also a prayer:
Lord, make your promise come fully true. Break the rods of the oppressors. Burn
the tramping boots. Let the time of the garments rolled in blood come to an end.
Fulfil the prophecy that “of peace there will be no end” (Is9:7).
We thank you for your goodness, but we also ask you to show forth your power. Establish
the dominion of your truth and your love in the world – the “kingdom of righteousness,
love and peace”. “Mary gave birth to her first-born son” (Lk 2:7). In
this sentence Saint Luke recounts quite soberly the great event to which the prophecies
from Israel’s history had pointed. Luke calls the child the “first-born”. In the
language which developed within the sacred Scripture of the Old Covenant, “first-born”
does not mean the first of a series of children. The word “first-born” is a title
of honour, quite independently of whether other brothers and sisters follow or not.
So Israel is designated by God in the Book of Exodus (4:22) as “my first-born
Son”, and this expresses Israel’s election, its singular dignity, the particular love
of God the Father. The early Church knew that in Jesus this saying had acquired a
new depth, that the promises made to Israel were summed up in him. Thus the Letter
to the Hebrews calls Jesus “the first-born”, simply in order to designate him
as the Son sent into the world by God (cf. 1:5-7) after the ground had been prepared
by Old Testament prophecy. The first-born belongs to God in a special way – and therefore
he had to be handed over to God in a special way – as in many religions – and he had
to be ransomed through a vicarious sacrifice, as Saint Luke recounts in the episode
of the Presentation in the Temple. The first-born belongs to God in a special way,
and is as it were destined for sacrifice. In Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross this destiny
of the first-born is fulfilled in a unique way. In his person he brings humanity
before God and unites man with God in such a way that God becomes all in all. Saint
Paul amplified and deepened the idea of Jesus as first-born in the Letters to the
Colossians and to the Ephesians: Jesus, we read in these letters, is the
first-born of all creation – the true prototype of man, according to which God formed
the human creature. Man can be the image of God because Jesus is both God and man,
the true image of God and of man. Furthermore, as these letters tell us, he is the
first-born from the dead. In the resurrection he has broken down the wall of death
for all of us. He has opened up to man the dimension of eternal life in fellowship
with God. Finally, it is said to us that he is the first-born of many brothers.
Yes indeed, now he really is the first of a series of brothers and sisters: the first,
that is, who opens up for us the possibility of communing with God. He creates true
brotherhood – not the kind defiled by sin as in the case of Cain and Abel, or Romulus
and Remus, but the new brotherhood in which we are God’s own family. This new family
of God begins at the moment when Mary wraps her first-born in swaddling clothes and
lays him in a manger. Let us pray to him: Lord Jesus, who wanted to be born as the
first of many brothers and sisters, grant us the grace of true brotherhood. Help
us to become like you. Help us to recognize your face in others who need our assistance,
in those who are suffering or forsaken, in all people, and help us to live together
with you as brothers and sisters, so as to become one family, your family. At the
end of the Christmas Gospel, we are told that a great heavenly host of angels praised
God and said: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among men with whom
he is pleased!” (Lk 2:14). The Church has extended this song of praise, which
the angels sang in response to the event of the holy night, into a hymn of joy at
God’s glory – “we praise you for your glory”. We praise you for the beauty, for the
greatness, for the goodness of God, which becomes visible to us this night. The appearing
of beauty, of the beautiful, makes us happy without our having to ask what use it
can serve. God’s glory, from which all beauty derives, causes us to break out in
astonishment and joy. Anyone who catches a glimpse of God experiences joy, and on
this night we see something of his light. But the angels’ message on that holy night
also spoke of men: “Peace among men with whom he is pleased”. The Latin translation
of the angels’ song that we use in the liturgy, taken from Saint Jerome, is slightly
different: “peace to men of good will”. The expression “men of good will” has become
an important part of the Church’s vocabulary in recent decades. But which is the
correct translation? We must read both texts together; only in this way do we truly
understand the angels’ song. It would be a false interpretation to see this exclusively
as the action of God, as if he had not called man to a free response of love. But
it would be equally mistaken to adopt a moralizing interpretation as if man were so
to speak able to redeem himself by his good will. Both elements belong together:
grace and freedom, God’s prior love for us, without which we could not love him, and
the response that he awaits from us, the response that he asks for so palpably through
the birth of his son. We cannot divide up into independent entities the interplay
of grace and freedom, or the interplay of call and response. The two are inseparably
woven together. So this part of the angels’ message is both promise and call at the
same time. God has anticipated us with the gift of his Son. God anticipates us again
and again in unexpected ways. He does not cease to search for us, to raise us up
as often as we might need. He does not abandon the lost sheep in the wilderness into
which it had strayed. God does not allow himself to be confounded by our sin. Again
and again he begins afresh with us. But he is still waiting for us to join him in
love. He loves us, so that we too may become people who love, so that there may be
peace on earth. Saint Luke does not say that the angels sang. He states quite
soberly: the heavenly host praised God and said: “Glory to God in the highest” (Lk
2:13f.). But men have always known that the speech of angels is different from human
speech, and that above all on this night of joyful proclamation it was in song that
they extolled God’s heavenly glory. So this angelic song has been recognized from
the earliest days as music proceeding from God, indeed, as an invitation to join in
the singing with hearts filled with joy at the fact that we are loved by God. Cantare
amantis est, says Saint Augustine: singing belongs to one who loves. Thus, down
the centuries, the angels’ song has again and again become a song of love and joy,
a song of those who love. At this hour, full of thankfulness, we join in the singing
of all the centuries, singing that unites heaven and earth, angels and men. Yes,
indeed, we praise you for your glory. We praise you for your love. Grant that we
may join with you in love more and more and thus become people of peace. Amen.