On Pain and Christmas Peace
The Nativity of the Lord
We gather this Christmas night recalling events that happened two thousand years ago in Bethlehem when at this very hour that same City of David where the Prince of Peace was born now fears violence. Where shepherds once kept flocks and angels once sang glad tidings, the nearby war in Gaza in which tens of thousands have been killed and millions have been displaced has all but extinguished the light that once shone high above in Bethlehem’s sky. Those in Bethlehem this night, though relatively safe from the epicenter of the conflict, have chosen to stand in solidarity with their brothers and sisters and have canceled their Christmas celebrations to be in union with those in plight. The Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land have asked the world, in our Christmas celebrations, for prayers — prayers for peace, for an end to violence, for the release of captives, for justice and dialogue, and for harmony.1
We offer Mass on this Christmas night most especially for them and with them, united as we are as members of the Body of Christ and as brothers and sisters of the one human family. We do well to think of and pray for those in the Holy Land, but violence and fear live too upon our shores, reach our doorstep, and even enter under our roof. We need not equivocate our experience with Israelis’ or Palestinians’, but we may readily admit that there is no corner of the world, no household, and no human heart that is not touched by brokenness and wounded with pain. In light of this, we may ask if Christ was born in Bethlehem, not merely to be Bethlehem’s Savior, but the Savior of the very world, why does the world in every place and in every person still suffer? Has the Prince of Peace brought any peace at all? Or has the peace of Christ proved itself incapable of righting the wrongs of an irreparable world?
These questions, in one form or another, reach every person, and it would be less than human for us to go through life without asking them and without searching for answers. Indeed, living the Christmas mystery each year demands even believers to make sense of the birth of Christ the Light of the World while the world still walks in darkness. The perennial question for the Christian is to ask how God is present where his absence is felt, how the work of Christ’s redemption advances where sin seems to have the upper hand, and how the Holy Spirit breathes new life in the face of destruction and death. We believe most firmly that God does not abandon his creation, that his plan of salvation does not waver, that he never ceases bringing about good and filling his creatures with blessings. We must, as those to whom the gift of faith has been given, strive to see what others cannot and to proclaim to them the glad tidings that in this time and in this place, while the world is still wrapped in darkness, that Christ has indeed been born and that his birth is, in defiance of all assumptions to the contrary, the world’s salvation and peace.
But, for even as much as we may know and believe this in principle, it can be difficult, if not seemingly impossible, to believe it in the face of the particular evil before us, what we experience in ourselves or in the world around us. How quickly does the mystery of Christmas, the reality of God becoming human in Jesus Christ to save us from our sins, retreat into practical irrelevance, as we fail to see that mystery reach us in our condition of brokenness and pain. How can our faith in the incarnation be restored, that we will not allow this mystery to be meaningless to us in light of our daily grappling with evil and its effects?
What may help are the witnesses of those who believe in spite of their circumstances, those for whom suffering and pain is always — and even only — the occasion for greater trust in and love of God. I have been to Bethlehem and the other major places in the Holy Land once in the past, and those experiences formed my faith in ways beyond measure. Yet I know that, for however meaningful those may have been, if I could travel there now, at the present moment, and look into the eyes of those who fear for their lives and still hold with all their might to the hope that is within them, that I would walk away forever changed by the Christmas mystery lived in their flesh.
Although such a trip is not possible, I know full well that I do not need only to look far away to find people who believe in the midst of their suffering: they are in our own City, our own places of employment, our own parishes, and our own homes. Their pain takes on forms many and various, yet in all who are poor and destitute, abandoned and alone, oppressed and ridiculed, awaits the face of God to be discovered. If we would set out for Bethlehem to see the newborn King, then we would also set out to the peripheries to find the same Christ who always allies himself with the poor. If we would come bringing gifts to support the Holy Family in the humble cave, then we would also feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, comfort the sorrowful, and care for the dying. If songs of love and praise would come from our lips to lull the baby lying in the manger, then words and deeds of love would also come from the depths of our hearts for those lying at our door begging for a mere scrap of bread. If we would approach each day as if the world were Bethlehem that Christmas night two thousand years ago, with Christ waiting to be found in the smallest and most vulnerable of all places, then we would rejoice every day at the grace of finding him, worshipping him, and serving him in the least of his own.
What amounts to my mind as the single most precious gift of the Christian life is the promise that for whatever is given away a hundredfold is given in return. Serving Christ in the poor will not only help them. It will also help us. God is not miserly with his gifts, and he will bless us as we bless them. God’s blessing will come not in success or any material gain, but in the consolation of his abiding presence with us and among us, through every trial and triumph, every moment of war and of peace, every day that is marked by grief as well as those that are filled with joy. If we proclaim to those who need to hear it that Christ has been born for them, we will more quickly come to believe that Christ has also been born for us. The more broadly and confidently we announce the good news of salvation to the world, the more we will rejoice in it ourselves.
With an increase of faith will also come an increase of peace — and this is the peace that Christ has come to bring. We can, and should, pray for peace in the world. Yet we should also pray for peace in our hearts. Wars will continue, the poor will be ever with us, brokenness and pain will always be part of our experience. But with faith comes the knowledge, the sure and certain conviction, that Christ has come and has triumphed over the very forces of sin and death and that nothing stands outside his power. And in this is true and lasting peace.
This Christmas, let us pray for the peace that the world cannot give, the peace that only Christ can give, the peace that comes through faith in him, the peace that is found in serving him in the poor, so that we may all come at last to live in the eternal peace of his kingdom, where he lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.
Homily preached on Christmas at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen and St. Thomas Aquinas Parish.
Justice and Peace Commission Assembly of the Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land, “A Wartime Christmas Message from the Catholic Church in the Holy Land,” America (December 18, 2023).