Christmas Eve 2007

Most Holy Mystery

As we celebrate this Christmas may we be reminded of our own divinity.

May we birth the light which is within us.

May we spread the Love of our deepest hearts

May we find Humility and Joy

As we celebrate this Christmas

May we remember to breathe and still our busy minds.

May we, our families, loved ones, and all beings know your Benevolence.

May we find the Peace of this moment, every moment.

As we celebrate this Christmas

May we find generosity of spirit

May we find ways to serve our fellow human beings

May we find ways to bring Peace to the earth

Amen

Sing my tongue; sing my hand;

sing my feet, sing my knee,

my loins, my whole body.

Indeed I am His

choir.

St. Thomas Aquinas

SONG: O Come All Ye Faithful

“Christmas” by Friedrich Buechner

from “Whistling in the Dark” (paraphrased)

The young parents do all the things you’re “supposed” to do on Christmas Eve. They tuck in the children, they scurry around trying to finish all of the things that they said they would do weeks ago. “This year is going to be different,” they proclaimed back in November…but it’s pretty much the same. The stockings are the same, the Egg Nogg’s the same, even the candles on the mantle are the same because they never actually burn them – they’re just for decoration.

Finally, everything is done. It’s 2 a.m. Just as they are about to fall exhausted into bed, she remembers the neighbor’s sheep. “You promised you’d feed them,” she tells him. In the rush they had forgotten all about them. So down the hill he goes through knee-deep snow. He gets two bales of hay from the barn and carries them into the shed. There’s a forty-watt bulb hanging by its cord from the low roof, and he turns it on. The sheep huddle in a corner watching as he snaps the bailing twine, shakes the squares of hay apart and starts scattering it. Then they come bumbling and shoving to get at it with their foolish, mild faces, their puffs of breath showing in the air. He is reaching to turn off the light and leave when suddenly he realizes where he is. The winter darkness. The glimmer of light. The smell of the hay and the sound of the animals eating. Where he is, of course, is the manger.

He only just saw it. On his best days he believes that everything that is most precious anywhere comes from that manger; yet he might easily have gone home to bed never knowing that he himself had just been in the manger. The world is the manger. It is only by grace that he happens to see part of the miracle.

Christmas itself is by grace. It could never have survived our own blindness and damage otherwise. It could never have happened otherwise. Perhaps it is the very wildness and strangeness of the grace that has led us to try to tame it. We have tried to make it habitable: The lovely old carols play and replay till their effect is like a dentist’s drill or a jackhammer; the sappy sentimentalism; the chilling commercialism; people spending money they can’t afford on presents we neither need nor want; “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer;” the plastic tree, the candy-coatedness of it all; the Hallmark Nativity Scene. Yet, for all of our efforts, we’ve never quite managed to ruin it. That in itself is part of the miracle, a part you can see. Most of the miracle we can’t see, or don’t.

We have roofed it in and furnished it. We have reduced it to an occasion we feel at home with, at best a touching and beautiful occasion, at worst a trite and ridiculous one. But if the Christmas event in itself is indeed—as a matter of cold, hard fact—all it’s cracked up to be, then even at best our efforts are misleading.

The Word became flesh. Ultimate mystery born within a body so small that it could be crushed in an instant. Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not touching. It is not beautiful. It is uncomfortable. It is unthinkable darkness torn apart by unbearable light. Agonized laboring led to it, space and time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very fibers of reality itself. You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this: “Almighty God, Prince of Peace,” who was born, who is born – to us!

Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see. It is the Resurrection and the Life she holds in her arms. It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast. All wrapped up in one, tiny little baby – our hope, our life, our vulnerability, our end, our beginning, our light.

SONG: What Child is This?

All beings are words of God,

His music, His art.

Sacred books we are, for the infinite camps

in our

souls.

Every act reveals God and expands his Being.

I know that may be hard

to comprehend.

All creatures are doing their best

to help God in His birth

of Himself.

Enough talk for the night.

He is laboring in me;

I need to be silent

for awhile,

worlds are forming

in my heart.

Meister Eckhardt

Vulnerable we are, like an infant,

We need each other’s care

or we will

suffer.

St Catherine of Siena

The Crib Beneath the Christmas Tree - reading

I like this side of you I see

in the crib beneath the Christmas tree

I see a God who lets go of power

so I won’t be afraid of him

I see a God who lets go of riches

so I won’t be embarrassed to be his friend

I see a God who lets go of wisdom

so I won’t feel stupid when I talk to him

I see a God who lets go of being judge

so I feel free to be myself with him

I see a God who lets go of experience

so I can start from scratch with him

I see a God who lets go of expectations

and loves me as I am

I see a God who lets go of independence

and needs me to do for him

I see a God who lets go of maturity

and lets me sing a lullaby to him

I see a descending God

who moves downward to be with me

I see a humble God

who chooses to be on the same level with me

I see a poor God

who comes begging love from us

I see a newborn baby

in this crib

beneath the Christmas tree.

(Little Sisters of Jesus)

SONG: O Holy Night

I will start the lighting of our candles with a blessing then each person will pass the light on to the next. After the last reading and music, you may go into the night silently, carrying your light (or you can leave it at the door if your wish).

O Spirit, as light comes from this candle, may the blessing of Jesus Christ come to us, warming our hearts and brightening our way. May the spirit of Christ bring life into the darkness of this world, and to us, as we rejoice at his coming.

After all candles have been lit:

God has sent the Spirit of the Child dancing into our hearts.
The time has come for our birth.
Leap within the world’s womb!
Let us go forth into an expectant world.
Do not take with you a cry of pain, believing that you are
thrust into the midst of strangers.
May we take with us a cry of recognition, knowing that
we have entered the company of sisters and brothers.

SONG: Silent Night

May the Light of the Divine Shine upon us

May the Love of the Divine heal our struggling world

May the birth of the Divine take place again and again

In each of our Hearts

Beverly Lanzetta