Abbot Brendan Coffey OSB
Christmas is very different in Bethlehem this year. The Christian Churches in the Holy Land have decided that the only celebrations in Bethlehem will be religious. No decorations, lights, trees or festivities of any kind. People are in mourning. This is the reality of Christmas 2023 in the land of Jesus’ birth, a sad miserable reality.
This Christmas we are called to go deeper. Tinsel, fairy lights, turkey and ham will not do it this year, not when people are suffering and dying in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza.
Today we like our religion to be like fast food—cheap and easy, something we don’t have to work too much for or think too much about. That’s not how a person becomes fit and healthy, neither is it how a person becomes wise and holy.
This year we must become a Bethlehem; the place where the Word was made flesh. Bethlehem means “house of bread,” and bread here means the Word of God. Bread strengthens the heart, the psalmist says and he wasn’t just talking about nutrition.
This Christmas Bethlehem and the Holy Land are drenched in blood; so how on earth can I find God in this catastrophe of human misery? Christmas teaches us that divinity is always where one least expects to find it. God is never predictable. By becoming Bethlehem we are reminded of the dignity of our humanity, even if we are living through a spectacle of barbarity and lack of humanity.
When Christ was born, Herod, the Roman puppet king, sent his soldiers to Bethlehem and they left behind them a scene of devastation. The Gospel of Matthew records this slaughter of the innocents. We usually airbrush out this part of the Christmas story, because it doesn’t sit well with the idyllic scene in the crib, but this is reality my friends.
The prophecy of Jeremiah still speaks to us tonight.
A voice was heard in Ramah,
lamenting and much weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children,
And she would not be comforted
Because they are no more.
Life is not always sweet and nice. Think of what happened on the streets of Dublin on 23rd November. This is the world we have become. This is why it is so important to celebrate the real Christmas. To remind ourselves that war is an absolute evil. That violence is never the answer.
The famous conversation between Petrarch, a fourteenth century Renaissance man and humanist, and the madman, seems oddly appropriate tonight. The madman saw soldiers on the march and asked “where are they going?” Petrarch answered, “To the war.” The madman continued, “This war will have to end in peace someday, won’t it?” “Certainly”, said Petrarch. “Well then”, said the madman, “why not make peace at once before starting the war?”
Today we live in a world of fear. We fear life; we fear death, and everything in between. The antidote to our fear is the coming of Christ. The first words of Adam to God after the fall were “I was afraid.” The first words at the birth of Jesus are those of the angels to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid.” Despite everything, do not be afraid.
When the angels appeared to the shepherds, the Glory of the Lord enveloped them in light and that light brought them to the manger. If enough people become enveloped in this light, the world will change.