HOMILY
Night Mass of Christmas 2024
As I was praying and reflecting on the wonder of this night, I was reminded that in the year 2008 there was a slogan that apparently began appearing all over the city of London. It was on the sides of buildings, on billboards, on the sides of buses, newspapers; it was everywhere. It was sponsored by one of the four horsemen of the new atheism, Richard Dawkins, and the slogan was: There's probably no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life. Everybody could see it, it was everywhere: There's probably no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life.
I would invite you to pause for just a moment tonight and think with me about some of the people who would have read those words. There's probably no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life. There would have been parents who were having to cope with very sick children. Families facing the death of someone very close to them. Then there would have been the vast number of lonely and lost people wandering the streets. The ‘thrown away people’ that everyone avoids. Those sleeping and begging on the streets, those addicted to alcohol, drugs, gambling, the sex workers and those thinking of suicide. There would be the unemployed, those refuges from war zones who have seen those closest to them raped or blown to pieces. People who are the victims of grave injustice or abuse of one kind or another. Imagine for a moment those people reading; There's probably no God so stop worrying and enjoy your life.’
Cardinal Cantalamessa, who has just retired as preacher to the papal household once said: ‘Atheism is a luxury for those who live privileged lives who have everything at their disposal, whose lives go along just as they're supposed to.’ But atheism, whether it is the formal atheism, that is a complete rejection of the existence of God or whether it's the kind of practical atheism which runs through our veins and is all around us in this post Christian age. A practical atheism where God might exist, but even if he does, it matters little to my personal life and choices.
This view of life that says: ‘There is probably no God so quit worrying and enjoy your life’, is totally inadequate as an explanation for our existence as human beings. It cannot account for all the deep sorrow and tragedy or the joy or the triumph over adversity that we come across. Atheism, as a vision of life, is a complete mockery, an obscenity that leads to discouragement, then to despair, then to utter hopelessness.
What we are celebrating tonight in the birth of this child, what you and I have come to worship as we gaze into this crib at these two bewildered parents and this fragile child, shout out just how inadequate and obscene that slogan and empty philosophy of life truly is. As the Christmas carol echoes, ‘the hopes and fears of all the years are met’, where, here in this encounter with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Only in Jesus can we stop worrying and enjoy life. For only in Him will any of the mystery of life make sense.
Hence the people who were struggling and confused, have, as Isaiah reminded us, ‘seen a great light’. God became fragile, so as to touch our fragility up close. To bring His light into our darkness. The Word became flesh to tell us in concrete form that He loves us and will never abandon us. This light that shines in our darkness says that where you are at this very moment is where He is to be found. ‘Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of peace.’ He is where you are right now. This is the reason for our hope. God is with us and that changes our perspective forever.
‘To you this day is born a saviour’. This is a message not simply for those shepherds long ago, but for each and every human being. Our life, the mystery that is you and me, only makes sense in this child, this saviour, this bearer of light and love. He is the medicine for all our wounds. He comes to restore us to our dignity to remind us of our destiny to blast apart our despair and give us new hope. To you this day is born a saviour’, that's a slogan that we can build our lives on.
Earlier this evening Pope Francis opened the Holy Year door in St Peter’s basilica, thus opening the Jubilee Year in which we are invited to be pilgrims of Hope. The door that opens to us as we come to this nativity scene; opens us to extraordinarily good news. A living Gospel. It takes us on a journey through a door that draws us to the sheer humility of God who became a human being in order to meet us, encounter us, love us and heal us. This child is the door that takes us into the very heart of God.
So, because there is a God, and because this God has made his home within us and taken us into Himself, we can enjoy the life. The worries we have are not the whole story. The Saviour we worship is the door to hope. He heals our perspective eternally.
Abbot Robert Igo, OSB
Abbot of Ampleforth Abbey
24 December 2024
