Homily, Fourth Sunday of Advent

Fr. Ed Oen, C.PP.S.

In this morning’s first reading, the Prophet Micah wrote 750 years before Christ, gives us a sense for the birth of Jesus. The Prophet Micah is not very familiar because we read only one selection of his writings ever three years. He lived 750 years before Christ! He foretold that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem. He prophesized that the great ruler of Israel would be born in a small village.

The name Bethlehem, means “House of Bread.” The town supplied lots of bread for the city of Jerusalem. Baking bread was the main industry in Bethlehem. People would get out early every morning to haul bread to Jerusalem to sell it. When Mica prophesized that the great ruler would be born in Bethlehem, it was upsetting to the people of Jerusalem. Why wouldn’t a great ruler not be born in their city, the city of peace? The citizens of Jerusalem did not consider Bethlehem to be worthy of a great ruler, even though it was the home of the greatest of kings, King David.

In 1865, Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal Priest from Philadelphia, was inspired when he was visiting the Holy Land and saw the little town of Bethlehem. He was burned out and did not know if he wanted to continue in his ministry. He traveled from one end of the Holy Land to the other during his sabbatical there. On Christmas Eve, he arrived on a hilltop overlooking Bethlehem.  He was struck with the smallness of the town, compared to the immense role that this place played in salvation’s history. He penned the poem, O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie! It was 1865; there was no electricity so there were no lights other than a fire here and there. Three years after he wrote the poem, his church organist, set it to music. It’s now one of the favorite Christmas hymns of Christians throughout the world. We can be certain that the song, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” was not sung in this church in 1859 because the song wasn’t written until 1868.

During the new few days, we should try to see the world at Phiillps Brooks as we prepare for Christmas. Come to Mass early on Christmas Eve, at 4 p.m. Invite the new born Savior to be reborn in your hearts. We are not just celebrating an important event that happened 2,000 years ago, we are celebrating what is happening now! In the dark recesses of our hearts, the everlasting light of the world, mentioned by the Prophet Micah, is not being reborn in Bethlehem, but in the hearts of all believers. That’s the task of the liturgy – to bring a past event into the present. This happens every time we have Mass. We recall the Last Supper of Jesus and we recall the table of the Last Supper where the bread and wine became the body and blood of Jesus. The sacrifice is an unbloody sacrifice going on now when once again, Jesus gives Himself during our Mass.

But at Christmas time, we are not just celebrating – saying, “That’s good – that happened 2,000 years ago and I wish we could have been there but instead we are celebrating it in a sense that we are recalling it into mind and reliving it and reproducing it in our own present day.  We have to realize that the liturgy’s call is to bring Christ present in 2009.

The last verse of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” written by Phillips Brooks, reads like this:        

O holy Child of Bethlehem!                                                                                                             Descend to us, we pray;                                                                                                                         Cast out our sin and enter in,                                                                                                                 Be born in us today.

You see what’s happening in the liturgy? We are asking Jesus to take away our sins and to enter in and be born in our hearts today. It’s appropriate to sing that song at Christmas to remind us of the great thing that is happening. The song continues:

We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel!

We can look at that song by Phillips Brooks and the music written years later by his organist Lewis Redner.  We can see that this more modern man wants us to see Jesus reborn in our hearts.

This coming Tuesday at 7 p.m. we have a Penance Service here. We are asking you to come and confess your sins – to open your heart and let the Lord in. The Lord cannot come in if we are selfish. On Christmas eve, Christ is going to be knocking on our door, saying, “Let me in.”  You are going to have to answer, “Yes, I tried to open my heart and I want to give you my life.” But if you have confessed sins, how can you really invite Jesus in? How can you make Him feel at home?

So if you want to be filled with Christmas joy, Christmas love, you have to open your heart so that the Lord can abide with you, and be with you.  That’s the grace of Christmas. It’s not a one-time event; it’s the reliving and rejoining in that event for Jesus to be reborn.  Let Jesus be reborn in your heart.