How will Christmas come this year? It will come as it always does as a message, an announcement, a word. “The Word became flesh,” yes, but the reverse is also true: this flesh became Word. The one-time event of Christ’s incarnation possesses an eternal meaning that is conveyed by the Word. Not, to be sure, just words, a mere report, a weak echo of some historic event, but a word about God and, more significantly, from God, one that truly and for all time represents the will and work of God. “The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; . . . In Him was life, and the life was the light of men” (Jn 1:1ff). When that Word became flesh it did not become less able to be the life and light giving Word that it was before. The message of Christmas is an announcement that has power to effect and make present what it proclaims and promises.

Even for those most intimately related to the event itself, Christmas was first and last a message. The climax of the familiar Christmas story in St. Luke’s Gospel is the angelic announcement to the Shepherds, the “good tidings of great joy” with the accompanying praises of the multitude of the heavenly host. This is thrilling because we realize that at this point we are sharing in precisely the same message announced on that night. Much the same is true in St. Matthew’s Gospel. The actual birth of Christ is only indirectly reported through the actions of Joseph: “he took his wife, but knew her not until she had borne a son; and he called his name Jesus.” The real Christmas story that engages our imagination and through which we experience the event is the coming of the wise men. They are led by a heavenly sign and guided by the Old Testament Prophets to find and worship the true King.

That Christmas comes as a message was even, and perhaps especially, true for the woman closest to this mystery, the Blessed Virgin Mary. The angel Gabriel brought Christmas to Mary first as an announcement. We do not know if Mary caught all the Old Testament allusions in the message, but she understood enough and had been fully prepared by the grace of God to give her fiat, “let it be to me according to your word.” This announcement with its faithful acceptance brought about the reality of which it spoke. The Son of God “eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, . . .became incarnate from the virgin Mary, and was made man.” And on a certain night in Bethlehem 2000 years ago “when Quirinius was governor of Syria” Mary gave birth to this Child and laid Him in a manger.

Then almost immediately this event became a message, another announcement to be received and believed even by the woman through whom the holy birth took place. The shepherds came and made known “the saying which had been told them concerning this child.” And we are told “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.” Later there would be still other words and messages: the prophetic sayings of Simeon and Anna at the time of the Child’s presentation in the Temple and, twelve years later, the Child’s own words when his perplexed parents discovered him among the teachers in the temple. Again we are told “his mother kept all these things in her heart.”

Finally, in her last appearance in the New Testament we find Mary gathered with the disciples on the Day of Pentecost. To her it must have seemed as if everything had come full circle and she was standing at the beginning again. For a second time the Holy Spirit came upon her and she was overshadowed by the power of the Most High. Though preeminent in the Church she does not know her Son in a way different from the Church or apart from the Spirit’s power. He is the fruit of her womb, but she still remains one of those who believe in His name and are given power to become children of God. She is “full of grace,” nevertheless she is among those who receive that “grace upon grace” from her Son’s fullness.

Once, during the earthly ministry of our Lord, a woman in the crowd cried out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!” This is a devout sentiment that seems appropriate enough, especially at Christmas. Our Lord’s response, however, points us toward a deeper and more far-reaching blessedness of his mother and of all believers: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” The greatest blessedness of Mary is not her unique proximity to the Christmas event, but her obedient openness to the meaning and implication of this event both before and after. Elizabeth’s benediction upon her is the more proper one: “blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”

St. Augustine observed that Mary conceived Christ in her heart before she conceived Him in her womb. If she had not received Him in faith, carrying Him in her body would have been of no use to her. At an address in Rome on the day of the signing of the joint Lutheran Roman Catholic Declaration on Justification Pope John Paul II called the Virgin Mary “the greatest example of the justice that comes from faith.”

How will Christmas come this year? To say that it will come as a message from God is to say that it will come in no less power and grace than the first Christmas. In the Gospel announcement it will come to us with the same power and effect as it came to the Shepherds, the Wise Men, and even to Mary herself. That the Word was made flesh and then became Word again means that the Christmas event is not diminished by the passing years. Indeed, it is more present to believers today than it was to those who lived at that time—the inn keeper, say, or Herod—who did not regard its message or accept its meaning.

Christians like to point out that the word “Christmas” is etymologically derived from “Christ Mass.” At a far deeper level we may, in fact, say that Christmas is the Christ Mass. The Christ Mass is a solemn liturgical assembly in which the mystery of Christmas is proclaimed audibly in the word of the Gospel and is truly present in the visible word of the Sacramental elements. A Christmas that comes to us as a message to be believed is not less than the real and true Christmas!

Sincerely,  
Fr. Richard G. Herbel

the Voice and the Word

In a sermon St. Augustine offers an interesting comparison of the relationship between St. John the Baptist and Christ to that between the sound of the voice and the word or concept that is communicated.

John is a Voice, but the Lord is the Word: “In the beginning was the Word.” John is a Voice for a time; Christ is the eternal Word at the beginning of time. Take the Word away, and what becomes of the Voice? Where there is no understanding, it is an empty noise. A wordless voice beats on the ear; it does not quicken the heart.

Now in this actual business of quickening the heart, let us observe the sequence of what happens. If I am thinking what to say, the word is already in my heart; but if I want to talk to you, I search for a way in which what is already in my heart may be also in yours.

In this search for a way in which the thoughts of my heart may be conveyed to yours and lodge there, I use my voice, and with its aid I speak to you; the sound of my voice conveys the meaning of the word to you, and dies away, but the word that the sound has brought you has reached your heart without ever leaving mine.

When the Word has reached you, does not that very sound seem to you to say: “He must increase, but I must decrease?” The sound of the Voice made itself heard as it performed its function and then died away, as if to say: “Now is my joy complete.” Let us hold fast to the Word; let us not lose that Word that has been quickened in the mind.