GOD’S LOVING KINDNESS

SERMON PREACHED BY FR. TONY NOBLE ON CHRISTMAS DAY, 2007

Titus 3:4 "When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he

saved us………..in virtue of his own mercy."

Last June for my summer holiday I spent five days in Ireland. Whilst I was in the city of Dublin I happened to attend Mass in the Roman Catholic Cathedral - a cathedral well known for its brilliant music tradition. It happened to be a Sunday when they were commemorating a local man whose cause was being promoted to enroll him amongst those called blessed. When one is designated Blessed by the Roman Catholic Church, it is a first step to canonization. Sometimes that is all a person becomes - Blessed. It has to be someone who in the first instance has shown a life of holiness, and when miracles can be attested to the person, they are then promoted for the cause of canonization.

But to be Blessed in the definition of the Church is someone who has shown a life of holiness. I had no idea who the man was - thankfully the preacher told us. I can't remember his name, but this man had lived in recent living memory, and there were many people in Dublin who could still remember him. He was poor, as saints often are. However, as the sermon proceeded I was rather taken aback when the priest revealed that this man was an alcoholic who lived in one room in a boarding house in the heart of Dublin's inner city.

He was obviously a true Irishman, but he didn't seem to fit the idea we all have for a saint. What is more, it seems he never resolved the fact that he drank everyday and seemed never to be cured of his problem. It raised a number of questions in my mind. How could this be - this was not what we usually expect when someone is called Blessed?

But here was a Christian community promoting someone they knew as a holy person. What prompted this move within the Church in Dublin was that this man had a great devotion to the Eucharist. Not only did he come to Mass everyday in his local church, but he spent hours in the church everyday praying to Jesus and adoring him in the Blessed Sacrament reserved in the Tabernacle on the Altar - as in this Church.

In his poverty of spirit, this alcoholic Irishman has inspired other people by his devotion, by his simple piety, and left a legacy. For he fulfilled one of the Beatitudes: "Blessed are the poor in spirit".

Can such a weak, ordinary, perhaps we might say flawed, man be blessed? Christmas tells us he can! For all the tradition and beauty, the pomp and ceremony, with which we surround our Services on this day, the first Christmas was very ordinary, very earthy. The stable of Bethlehem could have been an alcoholic's room in Dublin - or maybe even downtown San Diego. For the stable involved a situation all too common these days amongst those who are on the edge of society: migration, overcrowding, poverty, and an inadequate health-care system.

The Christian Gospel asks us to look at Bethlehem, and this earthly humble surrounding - and see God on earth. Yes, the manger of wood, the smelly stable, the ordinary animals and the common people, is precisely the place where we should search for God.

The more ordinary the scene appears, the closer we get to divine presence and truth shining through. God using the ordinary.

God using the ordinary is the principle which lies behind the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Christ in the Sacrament of the altar is not unlike Christ in the crib - outwardly both seem of little worth: a manger, a piece of bread. But the contents of both are nothing less than the Word made flesh.

Thus this feast day of Christmas reminds us of two truths.

+ Firstly - because God wrapped himself in the flesh of a helpless baby, laying down his divinity for our flawed humanity; so we should resolve again to value the ordinary things of life. For in the ordinary things of life God lies hidden.

+ Secondly - this truth about the ordinary things of life is particularly enshrined in the Church, which is also a flawed body - and especially in the Sacramental signs given to us.

For example, in Baptism, through the ordinary action of washing we are made children of God, and inheritors of his grace.

But supremely it is in the common elements of feasting - bread and wine - that we encounter the presence of Christ who is King of kings and Lord of lords.

On this day we know the truth that the altar is another Bethlehem, and that the Blessed Sacrament is a continual Christmas.

And that Blessed Sacrament exists not just for our communion, but also for our adoration - as the Christ Child existed on Christmas day.

And so we say in those age old words: "O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord".