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.