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Fr. John O’Callaghan: ‘If you choose you will keep the commandments and so be faithful to his will’. This statement, which we heard from the Old Testament, was followed by the words of Jesus in the gospel ‘if your righteousness does not surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.’ It was the Ten commandments, and a multitude of other precepts, that the scribes and Pharisees were teaching. So there is a difference between the teaching of the Pharisees and what Christ calls for, one surpasses the other. That is what we should consider today, with reference to the examples Christ himself used: murder, adultery and breaking an oath.

Christians know well that the sixth commandment, against adultery, is concerned with the special respect due to, the inviolability of, the relationship between husband and wife: that that relationship is not to be intruded upon by a third party, it is not to be a transitory connection, but a permanent and profound one, where spouses share with each other their true worth and stature. The attraction of the sexes, which in the first instance is a biological law, one of nature’s tricks (one might say), receives a human and spiritual dimension within which fidelity and ties of love can develop.  It is a relationship in which what is sensual becomes spiritual and what is spirit become sensually tangible. A relationship of married love is a way in which a human being can open him or herself up for another.  And that love is not all giving, but it is not all taking either. Anyone who gives love must also receive it as a gift. As Christ said (Jn 7:37) one can become a source from which rivers of living water flow. Yet to become such a source, one must constantly drink anew from the original source. 

And this, we may add, gives us some insight into God. God’s love for us, by  contrast, is totally giving. We know, by simply reflecting, that by his very nature, by definition, God does not need us. He has choosen freely to enter into relationship with us. And his love is more than creative generosity for God is one who forgives, as we see in sacred history. Israel betrayed him, in the language of the Old Testament, committed adultery against him, broke the covenant made at Sinai and worshipped other gods. It would have been entirely fair and right for the people of Israel to be judged, condemned and repudiated. For the relationship to end. But his excess of love was revealed when, in the words of the prophet Hosea, he said: ‘How can I abandon you, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel! My heart recoils within me my compassion grows warm and tender… I will not destroy… for I am God, not man, the Holy One in your midst’. God turned against Himself, God’s love is greater than his justice’. It is a prefiguring of the mystery of the Cross: God’s love for humankind goes beyond all reason, beyond justice, by becoming human in Christ, by sharing in our life, our death and gifting us with the resurrection. 

When we encounter this love, as an event, perhaps as a personal experience, we are inspired to a more mature discipleship than straightforward obedience to Ten Commandments and precepts. This is all the difference between the teaching of the Old and New Testaments. The Old is at best a preparation for the New, an education for a better way of living.

The same logic of love applies to the other demands made on us in today’s gospel. ‘You shall not murder’. Within ourselves we may find it obvious that we should not kill someone else. However at the two extremes of life, its beginning and its end, Christian love inspires us to go beyond evaluating life in terms of practical utility and therefore possibly eliminating it; rather we are inspired to  preserve life from conception through to death. We are called to help people to live rather than help them to die. 

And, thirdly, ‘you must not break your oath’. Tell no lie! Do not bear false witness! Truth is a fundamental gift for humanity. All the commandments are commandments of love or are developments of the command to love.  In that sense they all have to do quite explicitly with the precious gift of truth. One recalls the dictum of Edith Stein: ‘Accept nothing  as love if it lacks truth,  accept nothing as truth if it lacks love.’

To conclude, the Christian faith has retained the core of Israel’s faith, while at the same time giving it new breadth and depth. We are not simply called to obey commands for good behaviour; we are called to a personal response to the gift of love received from the God in Christ and which flows over to love of neighbour. The first line of the First Letter of St John articulates the heart of Christian faith and our calling: ‘God is love, and the person who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in that person’. (1 Jn 4:16)

Fr. Mark Patrick Hederman. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Salt and Light are two images suggesting the amazing reality of who we are if we only choose to realise this fact. Salt is a rock, perhaps the only one we eat to keep ourselves alive. It is also a mineral, a stable chemical compound, which never rots or decays. That is why it has been used for millennia as a way of preserving food, and as a way of embalming dead bodies, such as Egyptian mummies: Tutankhamun, or King Tut, for instance, who reigned as pharaoh in Egypt a thousand three hundred and thirty years before Jesus Christ came on earth.  

You are the salt of the earth means that you are potentially everlasting. So valuable was salt in ancient Rome that soldiers were paid with it as others might be paid with silver or gold. The word salary comes from the Latin word sal, meaning salt.    If you get a cut in your salary it probably means that you’re not ‘worth your salt.’ 

The light of the world, is another attempt to explain how powerful we really are, if we only reach down and turn on the switch. As of this weekend,  the majority of the 30,000 households  left without power by Storm Chandra will have had their power restored. They had been cut off from the energy supply normally available to us all. The Gospel this morning is telling us that we might all be in the same situation: the power available to us is being left dormant. We haven’t switched on the light.

About a hundred years ago, in 1923 in fact, a young engineer from Drogheda called Thomas McLaughlin returned to Ireland after a period working with Siemens in Berlin and studying hydroelectric schemes throughout Europe. He proposed damming the River Shannon and building an electric power station at Ardnacrusha. We owe a debt to such visionaries and to those who raised the million utility poles that brought power to the homes and farms of rural Ireland.

The electrification of Ireland was always on a voluntary basis. You could freely choose to participate in this new kind of energy and many refused the offer because they did not believe in it or because they could not afford it. What better way to explain the huge gift on offer in terms of Divine energy: The choice is yours, it is up to you. There is a secret subway that provides access to an alternative energy. It introduces you to a co-pilot who takes all the worry out of navigation, who is as canny as a sherpa, and who never intervenes unless invited to do so. This person is polite, imaginative, personable, sympathetic, patient, self-effacing, practical, and will disappear at the slightest hint of disapproval. 

There is a great deal of discussion today about the surest, cleanest, cheapest, least toxic, most reliable energy in our world. Harnessing power is a major preoccupation for a world that wants to spin. The human race has used its ingenuity to a maximum in this regard. From the first discovery of fire through flint, to the hectic story of the Twentieth Century plundering expensive energy from an ever diminishing supply of fossil fuels, we have come to the more recently discovered uranium fuel. One pellet creates as much energy as a ton of coal or 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas. None of these sources of energy is as potent as the power of the Holy Spirit blowing everywhere in our world. But we, as human beings, have to harness this power; otherwise it blows where it will. You can become a generator if ‘you fan into flame the gift of God which is in you’[2 Timothy, 1:6]. “If you have faith even as small as a mustard seed, as one uranium pellet, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” [Matthew 17:20]. Ardnacrusha in Irish árd na croise means the height of the cross, that 2,000 year old utility pole, raised up in Jesus Christ to hold us aloft in the Holy Spirit.

The times in which we live are among the most challenging, both for the world and for the Church. As Christians, we experience time as marked by the cycle of feasts. In last month’s newsletter, we were introduced to the beautiful tradition of announcing the movable feasts of the newly begun year, which traditionally takes place on 6 January. This month, it may be a good opportunity for us to pay closer attention to the feasts of the saints whom we commemorate throughout the year.

We have just celebrated one of them: a great saint of Ireland, Saint Brigid of Kildare. Brigid, with her distinctive voice and her ways that challenged established patterns of thinking, was part of a period of great religious fervour on this island. This was soon followed by the remarkable missionary zeal of the Irish, who tirelessly carried their enlightened faith to Scotland and Britain, and further onto the European continent. These were turbulent times, yet the contribution of the Irish monks helped to establish a new and lasting identity for the peoples of Europe, particularly in France, Germany, and Italy.

A parallel work was undertaken later by Bulgarian monks in the eastern parts of Europe. On 14 February, we will celebrate the founders of that missionary movement, Saints Cyril and Methodius. Not only did these brothers, together with their companions, evangelise a vast area of the continent, but they also established a new language for that purpose, known as Old Bulgarian, or Old Church Slavonic. They recognised that, in order to reshape the mindset of the peoples they encountered, a new tool of communication was necessary. Through the spread of this language, their mission reached as far north as Great Moravia.

Centuries later, Leoš Janáček, a composer from the land reached by those Bulgarian saints—now known as the Czech Republic—made a remarkable connection with the history of his homeland. Although he described himself as a non-believer, Janáček composed the Glagolitic Mass, a deeply moving work of liturgical music that pointed to the alphabet devised by Cyril and Methodius for the construction of their language. That alphabet would go on to shape the identity of many countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

Less than twenty years ago, Janáček’s compatriot and devoted admirer, the writer Milan Kundera—who had lived in exile in Paris since 1975—attempted to make sense of the composer’s mindset. “Who was he?” Kundera asked in one of the essays in his Encounter. He went on to question Janáček’s stature: “A provincial character under the spell of folk music, as he was persistently described by the arrogant musicologists of Prague? Or one of the great figures of modern music? And in that case, of which modern music? He belonged to no recognised trend, no group, no school. He was different, and alone.”

One of the brothers who established the mysterious Glagolitic alphabet, Saint Cyril—after whom the better-known Cyrillic alphabet is named—went to Rome toward the end of his life. His relics now rest in the church of San Clemente. Remarkably, in our present context, this church has long been cared for by Irish Dominican priests.

The question, then—for Rome and for the Church, for Europe and for the whole world—is this: where are we to look for the new identity so urgently needed today? Is it to be found in established patterns of thinking, in what is already recognised? Or must renewal come from what has so far remained isolated, different, and alone?

For anyone who truly cares about the future of the Church and of the world, the task is to apply themselves to a re-reading of the sources of our cultures. In Greek—the primary language of Cyril and Methodius—this act of re-reading is anagnosis, which literally means “re-cognition.” It is imperative that we re-cognise our own identity, our values and traditions, and ultimately the depths of who we are as Christians, as Europeans, or simply as inhabitants of this world. This may be the only way forward in these most challenging of times.

Jarek Kurek OSB

Fr. William Fennelly: Contemporary spirituality tends to identify holiness with wholeness. Given that theology has always affirmed that grace builds on nature, that equation is, if taken correctly, good algebra. What is less emphasised in contemporary spirituality is how difficult it is to attain any kind of wholeness.

Why is this? I think it’s partly because we are all so incredibly complex. We spend much of our lives sorting through various rooms within our hearts trying to find out where we’re really at home and trying on various personalities the way we try on clothes. It’s hard to come to wholeness when we aren’t always sure who we are or what’s ultimately truest within us.

I recently saw an interesting interview in youtube with Catherine de Hueck Doherty, the foundress of the Madonna House Apostolate, an originally lay spiritual movement in the US in the 1940’s. Like St Brigid whom we celebrate today who also founded a monastery that had such an impact on her native Kildare so Doherty had an important impact in Canada. She was already 80 years old in the clip and was reflecting upon her own spiritual struggles. “Inside of me,” she said, “there are three persons:

There is someone I call the Baroness. This person is very spiritual, efficient, and given to asceticism and prayer. The baroness is the religious person. She has founded a religious community and writes spiritual books challenging others and herself to dedicate their lives to God and the poor. The Baroness reads the Gospel and is impatient with the things of this world. For her, this life must be sacrificed for the next one.

Then there is Catherine. Catherine is, first of all and always, the woman who likes fine things, sensual things. She enjoys idleness, long baths, fine clothes. Catherine enjoys this life and doesn’t like renunciation and poverty. She is nowhere as religious or efficient as the Baroness and they don’t get along at all.

And finally, inside of me too there is another person, a little girl, who is lying on a hillside in Finland, watching the clouds and daydreaming. This little girl is quite distant from both the Baroness and from Catherine.

… And as I get older I feel more like the Baroness, long more for Catherine, but think that maybe the little girl daydreaming on a hillside in Finland is the true me.”

Had these words been written by someone with a lesser within the spiritual life, they would not be as meaningful. Human personality is so complex and the struggle for wholeness is so difficult. Like St Brigid who today has to carry the 5th century Brigid, modern Brigid of Brigid’s day festival also has to carry also the Celtic goddess Brigid who was celebrated at Imbolc.

Like Catherine Doherty, all of us have a number of persons inside of us. Inside of each of us there’s someone who hears the Gospel call, that’s drawn to the religious, to the beatitudes, to self-sacrifice, to a life beyond this one. But inside of us there is also the hedonist, the person who wants to luxuriate in this world and its pleasures. Beyond that, inside of each of us there is too a little boy or little girl, daydreaming still on some hillside somewhere.

John XXIII once said that to be a saint is to will one thing, “to desire holiness above all”. However, given all of these people inside of me, what can I really will?

Moreover, given that grace is not meant to demolish nature it is too simple to say that the spiritual life is merely a question of having the “spiritual person” win out over the “lover of this world,” and the “daydreaming child.” Wholeness must somehow mean precisely a making of one whole out of all of these parts. To ignore, demolish, invalidate, or bypass one part for another is unlikely to achieve real wholeness.

The truly spiritual person is a whole person and a whole person is, as Christ was, the ascetic and the lover of this life and the lover of the next life, the dreamer and the realist, and many more things, all at the same time. What must be rejected in our spiritual quest is not our own nature, with its endless paradoxes and seeming schizophrenia, but all spiritualities, ideologies, and conventional wisdom, which tell us that it’s simple, and would have us believe that holiness can be achieved quickly, without confusion and without great patience and perseverance. Doing holiness, wholeness is lived in time and over time.

All of us are pathologically complicated. Each of us could write our own book on our multiple personalities. But that points to the richness, not the poverty, of our personalities. It doesn’t suggest that there are parts of us that aren’t spiritual, but that the attainment of wholeness is a lot more complex than any one part of us would have us believe. Nikos Kazantzakis once wrote that “the spirit wants to wrestle with flesh that is strong and full of resistance … because … the deeper the struggle, the richer the final harmony.” This becoming is as St Paul wrote  God choosing the foolish of the world to shame the wise. To be as Zephaniah says one of the humble of the earth seeking the Lord. One of Matthew’s “poor in spirit” who are promised the kingdom of God.

Fr. Luke Macnamara: “Ground zero” once referred simply to the centre point of a nuclear explosion. Since 9/11, it evokes the World Trade Centre and the memorial to the 2,977 lives lost that day. New York’s city centre will forever be remembered as Ground Zero.

Something similar happens in today’s readings. Zebulun and Naphtali were tribal place names, long unused by Jesus’ time. His contemporaries would have called the region Galilee. Yet the Gospel deliberately uses these older names, which carry a history of suffering: oppression, exploitation, conquest, and displacement. Zebulun and Naphtali recall some of Israel’s lowest points.

By beginning his ministry here, Jesus shows that he comes to people at their lowest, where need is greatest. These struggles are not only caused by external forces but also by internal sin and division. Still, he comes: “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

We all have our own “Zebulun and Naphtali”—places in our lives where things have gone wrong, often because of our own choices. The good news is that Jesus comes even to our darkest places. He brings the power of God’s kingdom to transform our lives: “The people who lived in darkness have seen a great light; on those who dwell in the land and shadow of death, a light has dawned.”

How do we receive this light? One way is through the Word of God. The psalmist reminds us: “The Word is a lamp for my steps and a light for my path” and “The Lord is my light and my help.” Even when darkness comes, God’s Word can reach the deepest parts of our hearts and shine a transforming light there. As Hebrews says: “Indeed, the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit… it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

God’s Word not only brings light but transforms us: fear becomes trust, despair becomes hope, hatred becomes love, and division becomes unity. It reshapes how we think, speak, and relate to God, to one another and to ourselves.

Let us honour the victims of 9/11—and all who suffer from violence and war—by walking in the light of God’s Word. May we nurture the gifts that flow from it: trust, hope, love, and peace. Just as Zebulun and Naphtali became “Galilee of the nations,” may we too become a land of freedom and courage—a home where God’s light shines, even in the darkest places. 

Fr. Simon Sleeman: ‘Look’, here is the lamb of God, John the Baptist calls out. At communion, I will say, ‘Behold’ ‘Look’, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world –  twice I’ll say it. There we have an image of the lamb on the front of the altar. In the OT people bitten by snakes are told to look at a bronze serpent and be healed…Looking, looking, looking….it seems to be key. Yet it seems an easy, uncomplicated task.

But it is not simple – this capacity to look has taken 3.5 billion years to become the superpower it is today.

How we ‘look’ is unclear … it is a problem that has bedevilled scientists, philosophers and engineers for a long time and especially the last fifty years…It is the BIG issue for AI. Teaching a ‘robot’ to look.

The old idea was that the world is made of objects, we look at an object, the chair. Evaluate the object and then act.  I sit on the chair.

When I look down the church, what do I see?  and what determines what I see? I can’t look at everything…and there is an infinite number of things I could look at….

Six people were in a gym – three dressed in white bibs and three in black ones. Their task was to pass a basketball and to count the number of passes made to a person in a white bib. In the middle of the game a person dressed in a gorilla suit walks into the group, stops, thumps its chest and moves away. You can see it on tube only 45 seconds. Most of the group never saw the gorilla!

Looking is not that simple it turns out. When we look, what we see is in accordance with our aim.  What I look at, what I see, reflects my aim.  ‘Look’ there is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Sin means my aim is off.    

Our culture tempts us to aim low.  ‘Look’ it says – at stuff that brings your aim down – do things that bring your aim down – in some ways, our culture, doesn’t want us with any aim at all – just blind, confused and distracted, consuming in desperation, accumulating. Fulfilling every desire and whim – the secret to happiness and the economy growing…and our aim dragged down into the mud. 

The readings today, in contrast, challenge us to aim high. Look, there is the Lamb of God. ‘Oh Christian be aware of your nobility’: become a light to the world, saints of God. Aiming at the highest.

It is no accident that the cross hangs, high, above the altar inviting us to ‘look up’… to aim high.  ‘Look up’ at the fulfilment of the highest possible aim, behold the lamb of God, crucified, in an act of sacrificial love, inviting you and me to do the same – to die and to rise from the dead.

At this time of the year it is easy to for our aim to be off ….and thus to look down – it takes great courage and fortitude to live to the highest aim, to take on the responsibility of your life and live to your highest calling. And we fail but we come each week to urge each other to ‘look’ up again, to check our aim. You might say, that we don’t do it very well and that may be true but what happens doesn’t depend on you and me alone – you are, we are, the one on whom the Holy Spirit descends, nudging us upwards. The Cross hangs there, a challenge, right in front of us. Beckoning.

Fr. William Fennelly: On Christmas Day we asked the shepherds‘Whom have you seen? Who has appeared on earth?’ Then came their answer: ‘We have seen the New-Born Child, and choirs of Angels praising the Lord.’ Today’s Feast invites us to ask again: ‘Who has appeared on earth?’ Remember ‘epiphany’ means ‘appearance.’

Let’s ask the Magi. They saw the stars align. They were led to the manger by their own questioning and their following of the star. Maybe the Magi would reply: ‘The heavens tell us of a King born in Israel.’ If they had talked to Mary and Joseph, they might add: ‘This King chose the time of his own birth so the heavens proclaim him.’

This Feast traditionally celebrates three events. In the West, we spread them out; in the East, Our Lord’s Baptism is today’s main event. So let’s ask God the Father: ‘Who has appeared on earth? ’We will hear God add at the Lord’s baptism next Sunday: ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’

Let’s ask the Holy Spirit: ‘Who has appeared on earth?’ or, rather, let’s ask John the  Baptist what the Spirit meant by descending on Jesus. St John in his gospel records the Baptist’s answer: ‘He who sent me… said… “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptises with the Holy Spirit”.’

The third event is the Wedding at Cana, when Jesus worked his first sign. To the question, ‘Who has appeared on earth?’ it gives this answer: ‘The Creative Word who turns water into wine. The context in which Jesus worked this sign adds: ‘The Divine Bridegroom come to purchase his Bride.’ Let’s ask St John: ‘Who has appeared on earth?’ He replies, enigmatically: ‘Jesus… manifested (showed) his glory.’

In Greek, epiphany can refer to various types of appearances, among them to the appearing of a god. The Eastern Churches are a bit clearer, and call today Theophany, the Appearing of God. The Feast is not, primarily, about the visit of the Magi to Jesus; it’s about God’s Visit to us, the Solemn Visit in which the Divine King has let the world see him. The Magi, the star-sign they saw, and the others of whom we enquire, tell us whose Visit we celebrate.

They also point us towards a greater Theophany. Today’s the traditional day for the date of Easter to be announced. This points to the fact that it was on Calvary at Easter that Jesus, as King, drew all things and all people to himself. God isn’t only adored in some disembodied spiritual quest by an inward movement folded in upon myself and detached from all that might disturb and engage the heart. It has to be possible to find and adore God in the simple yet messy complexity of human experience’ of our experience.

Even in our own times which so profoundly distrust claims for absolute truth, there remains in the human heart a deep desire for the truth. The RB talks about the dilation or expansion of the heart. We believe that the child born in Bethlehem is the truth for which the human heart hungers. Like the magi, we need to be attentive and to seek the truth wherever it is to be found, for ultimately it is in Him who said, ‘I am the truth’, it’s in this great God who shows himself to us in a little child.

Fr. Fintan Lyons. Among other gifts, some people receive books at Christmas, and if one is fortunate enough, the book will appear interesting, and not one already read and already familiar. So, what happens next is likely to be a quick survey of the beginning of a new book received and then a check on how it ends. I think we are all inclined to do that. 

The story from the Gospel of Matthew today, is however already very familiar; the story of Jesus’ baptism is in each of the gospels and has been read many times, so we may find what we have heard today less gripping for being so familiar. 

I’m saying that because I want to focus on the person of Jesus at the centre of the story, and stay with him, rather than moving quickly to the implications of our own baptism, as we often do on this Sunday of the Baptism of the Lord.

And, familiar as the story is, we need to be reminded of the lead up to it in the gospel, not included in today’s reading. What precedes it in Matthew’s gospel is an account of John the Baptist’s personality and what he was doing at the Jordan. This fearsome ascetic, clothed only in camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, was calling on the crowds who gathered round, fascinated by him, to repent of their sins by immersing themselves in the Jordan. 

Baptism was not part of normal Jewish ritual – Jesus was not baptised as a child – though it was used for converts to Judaism from paganism, but a water immersion could also be part of a person’s expression of a conversion experience when they recognised God’s mercy in forgiving them; that would be the meaning of John’s ritual. 

Why then would Jesus, the sinless thirty-year old, leave his carpenter’s workshop and walk the 135 km from Nazareth to Bethany on the other side of the Jordan river, opposite Jerusalem, to go through that ritual himself? 

That question invites us to reflect on Jewish religion in the time of Jesus. John the Baptist obviously believed it was in a bad state. But he didn’t think his special cousin, Jesus, deserved to be included with those whom he addressed in harsh terms as a brood of vipers. So why did Jesus insist on being baptised, saying something about fulfilling all righteousness or justice? 

What it means, I believe, is that Jesus was identifying himself with the people of Israel, God’s chosen people, good and bad. He made no distinctions as he began the mission he sensed he had, to restore their relation with God – God whom he had called his Father as a teenager in the Temple, according to Luke’s gospel. 

It’s something to be marvelled at, this young man finding himself, finding his purpose in life, about to begin a career following on that of John the Baptist. If he needed reassurance that this is what he was called to do, all three accounts of his baptism speak of his hearing a voice from heaven declaring him to be God’s son, and of his sensing the power of the Holy Spirit confirming him in his mission, at whatever cost to himself. Soon, the Spirit led him – drove him, Mark’s gospel says – into the wilderness, where he had a bootcamp kind of encounter with the devil, if that’s not too irreverent a way to speak of the devil’s assault against Jesus.

His endurance, as one whose own relationship with God was unique, would enable him to restore to God’s favour not only his own who would accept his leadership, but all who would look to him as the one enabling them to address God as their father, including ourselves. Our faith is that he embodied within himself a new Exodus, a new journey to freedom, and, most important, he was the paschal lamb of sacrifice marking reconciliation with God for all humankind.

So, what of us, who I said benefit from Jesus’ saving mission? According to St Paul and  early church Fathers, Jesus by his baptism in the Jordan was not only finding himself, but emptying himself by descending into the water, not holding on to the dignity of being God’s son but leaving it there as a dignity humanity could acquire. According to Ephrem the Syrian, Jesus went down into the water of the Jordan to deposit there the robe of glory, thus making it possible for humankind to put it on. (Hymns on the Epiphany 12:1). St Paul says in Galatians 3:27: ‘As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ’.

So we do need to reflect today on what our baptism has done for us; it has made us sharers in the life of the risen Christ and the power he won to conquer evil, power we have also. The early Christians suffered from persecution like Christ, but in the strength of their faith in the Risen Christ overcame the power of a hostile Roman  empire. Aggressive empires exist today, both seen and unseen; each one of us faces the challenges of evil influences, but with faith in Christ we can overcome.

Fr. Senan Furlong: When the scientist Benoit Mandelbrot began studying patterns in nature, he noticed something strange and beautiful. The closer he looked, the more familiar everything became. A small rock resembled a mountain. A fern leaf was made up of smaller leaves shaped exactly like the larger one. A snowflake carried the same design in every branching arm. No matter how far he zoomed in, the pattern repeated itself—more detailed, more intricate, more beautiful. The same mystery, revealed more deeply. Mandelbrot called these patterns fractals: designs where the whole is present in every part. Fractal geometry is the scientific equivalent of the intuition to sense the great in the small, the infinite hidden within the ordinary.

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

This is why the mystery of Christmas is never exhausted. Like a fractal, it invites us to return repeatedly to the same scene, and each time discover ever-unfolding horizons. The pattern does not change, but our vision deepens. And the pattern is this: the unfailing love of God.

In today’s first reading from Sirach, we see the outline of that pattern. Wisdom comes forth from eternity, from the mouth of God. She is sent to pitch her tent among a people, to take root in Israel. God’s Wisdom chooses to dwell in his people’s life in the form of the Law so that the divine light might shine into the world.  Then, in the second reading, St Paul prays that we may be given a spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that the eyes of our minds may be enlightened. In other words, Paul is asking God to help us look more closely, to zoom in. In Christ, he says, we have already been chosen, blessed, and destined to become God’s children. What was once hinted at now begins to come into focus: God is not merely near to us; he is drawing us into his own life.

And finally, in the Gospel, St John takes us all the way in. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. This is the deepest level of the pattern. God’s Wisdom is not an idea or a force, but a person, Jesus Christ. The Word pitches his tent in our humanity. God does not stand outside our lives but enters them from the inside. This is the heart of Christmas. At Christmas, the infinite God is revealed in the smallest possible way. Like a fractal, the whole mystery is present in a child lying in a manger. We look at that Child and say: This is what God is like. And if we look closely enough, we see everything: humility, mercy, self-giving love, light offered without force or compulsion.

Christ is the image of the Father, and we are made in the image of Christ. When we look at a life lived in him, the same pattern should appear: love, mercy, light overcoming darkness. This is why St John says that those who receive the Word are given power to become children of God. Not copies, but true reflections, each life unique, yet each echoing the same divine geometry of self-giving love.

Scientists tell us that no two snowflakes are exactly alike, and yet all obey the same hidden design. God saves the world in the same way, not through force or compulsion, but through love patiently repeated: from eternity to infancy, from the eternal Word to a new born baby’s cry, from the crib to the cross, and from the cross into the everyday acts of mercy that quietly change the world.

We see this mystery most clearly at the Eucharist we now celebrate around the altar. Ordinary bread and wine: plain, familiar, and yet lifted up, revealing infinity. The whole contained in the small; a fragile host bearing the Lord of heaven and earth; the eternal Word placed into our hands. 

And so we are invited to live the mystery we celebrate: to let the eternal shine through our ordinary, unfinished, even broken lives; to let the great be revealed in the small; to make room for God dwelling among us.

To see a world in a grain of sand, 

To hold infinity in the palm of your hand: 

This is the mystery and message of Christmas.

Abbot Christopher Dillon: Mary, Mother of God. What an extraordinary concept, that God should have a mother! And that that mother should be a human being like one of us! This noblest of Mary’s titles says much about the graciousness of God, about the identity of the boy and the man, Jesus, and also about God’s regard for humankind and most of all about God’s regard for Mary herself. All of it expresses the realisation of the blessing which Aaron was ordered by God to invoke on humankind, the graciousness of God brought to fruition in this gift to us of God’s very self in the person of Jesus Christ; this gift which ennobles us as children of God, daughters and sons as beloved to the Father as the only begotten Son is beloved; and heirs with him to all that he is heir.

We have been resting with the majesty of this mystery over the past week, some of us, perhaps, more than others. We can and really should continue to ponder it in the weeks and months to come, along with Mary and indeed with Joseph, her most remarkable companion and spouse.

By devoting this first day of the year to the achievement of this solemn blessing of us by God, we acknowledge, at the same time, the splendour of God’s cosmic creation  project in our regard in the very meaning of our existence, namely, that God has become human in the person of Jesus, so that we humans may become God. Now, that is something to ponder with Mary; something to ponder through the year!