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Pope Benedict XVI- Homilies |
 "God Dwells on High, Yet He Stoops Down to Us!"
Papal Homily at Midnight Mass
H.H. Benedict XVI
December 25, 2008
www.zenit.org
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
"Who is like the Lord our God, who is seated on high, who looks
far down upon the heavens and the earth?" This is what Israel
sings in one of the Psalms (113 [112], 5ff.), praising God's
grandeur as well as his loving closeness to humanity. God dwells
on high, yet he stoops down to us! God is infinitely great, and
far, far above us. This is our first experience of him. The
distance seems infinite. The Creator of the universe, the one
who guides all things, is very far from us: or so he seems at
the beginning. But then comes the surprising realization: The
One who has no equal, who "is seated on high", looks down upon
us. He stoops down. He sees us, and he sees me. God's looking
down is much more than simply seeing from above. God's looking
is active. The fact that he sees me, that he looks at me,
transforms me and the world around me. The Psalm tells us this
in the following verse: "He raises the poor from the dust." In
looking down, he raises me up, he takes me gently by the hand
and helps me to rise from depths towards the heights. "God
stoops down". This is a prophetic word. That night in Bethlehem,
it took on a completely new meaning. God's stooping down became
real in a way previously inconceivable. He stoops down: he
himself comes down as a child to the lowly stable, the symbol of
all humanity's neediness and forsakenness. God truly comes down.
He becomes a child and puts himself in the state of complete
dependence typical of a newborn child. The Creator who holds all
things in his hands, on whom we all depend, makes himself small
and in need of human love. God is in the stable. In the Old
Testament the Temple was considered almost as God's footstool;
the sacred ark was the place in which he was mysteriously
present in the midst of men and women. Above the temple, hidden,
stood the cloud of God's glory. Now it stands above the stable.
God is in the cloud of the poverty of a homeless child: an
impenetrable cloud, and yet a cloud of glory!
How, indeed, could his love for humanity, his solicitude for us,
have appeared greater and more pure? The cloud of hiddenness,
the cloud of the poverty of a child totally in need of love, is
at the same time the cloud of glory. For nothing can be more
sublime, nothing greater than the love which thus stoops down,
descends, becomes dependent. The glory of the true God becomes
visible when the eyes of our hearts are opened before the stable
of Bethlehem.
Saint Luke's account of the Christmas story, which we have just
heard in the Gospel, tells us that God first raised the veil of
his hiddenness to people of very lowly status, people who were
looked down upon by society at large: to shepherds looking after
their flocks in the fields around Bethlehem. Luke tells us that
they were "keeping watch". This phrase reminds us of a central
theme of Jesus's message, which insistently bids us to keep
watch, even to the Agony in the Garden: the command to stay
awake, to recognize the Lord's coming, and to be prepared. Here
too the expression seems to imply more than simply being
physically awake during the night hour. The shepherds were truly
"watchful" people, with a lively sense of God and of his
closeness. They were waiting for God, and were not resigned to
his apparent remoteness from their everyday lives. To a watchful
heart, the news of great joy can be proclaimed: for you this
night the Saviour is born. Only a watchful heart is able to
believe the message. Only a watchful heart can instil the
courage to set out to find God in the form of a baby in a
stable. Let us ask the Lord to help us, too, to become a
"watchful" people.
Saint Luke tells us, moreover, that the shepherds themselves
were "surrounded" by the glory of God, by the cloud of light.
They found themselves caught up in the glory that shone around
them. Enveloped by the holy cloud, they heard the angels' song
of praise: "Glory to God in the highest heavens and peace on
earth to people of his good will". And who are these people of
his good will if not the poor, the watchful, the expectant,
those who hope in God's goodness and seek him, looking to him
from afar?
The Fathers of the Church offer a remarkable commentary on the
song that the angels sang to greet the Redeemer. Until that
moment -- the Fathers say -- the angels had known God in the
grandeur of the universe, in the reason and the beauty of the
cosmos that come from him and are a reflection of him. They had
heard, so to speak, creation's silent song of praise and had
transformed it into celestial music. But now something new had
happened, something that astounded them. The One of whom the
universe speaks, the God who sustains all things and bears them
in his hands: he himself had entered into human history, he had
become someone who acts and suffers within history. From the
joyful amazement that this unimaginable event called forth, from
God's new and further way of making himself known -- say the
Fathers -- a new song was born, one verse of which the Christmas
Gospel has preserved for us: "Glory to God in the highest
heavens and peace to his people on earth". We might say that,
following the structure of Hebrew poetry, the two halves of this
double verse say essentially the same thing, but from a
different perspective. God's glory is in the highest heavens,
but his high state is now found in the stable: what was lowly
has now become sublime. God's glory is on the earth, it is the
glory of humility and love. And even more: the glory of God is
peace. Wherever he is, there is peace. He is present wherever
human beings do not attempt, apart from him, and even violently,
to turn earth into heaven. He is with those of watchful hearts;
with the humble and those who meet him at the level of his own
"height", the height of humility and love. To these people he
gives his peace, so that through them, peace can enter this
world.
The medieval theologian William of Saint Thierry once said that
God -- from the time of Adam -- saw that his grandeur provoked
resistance in man, that we felt limited in our own being and
threatened in our freedom. Therefore God chose a new way. He
became a child. He made himself dependent and weak, in need of
our love. Now, this God who has become a child says to us: you
can no longer fear me, you can only love me.
With these thoughts, we draw near this night to the child of
Bethlehem -- to the God who for our sake chose to become a
child. In every child we see something of the Child of
Bethlehem. Every child asks for our love. This night, then, let
us think especially of those children who are denied the love of
their parents. Let us think of those street children who do not
have the blessing of a family home, of those children who are
brutally exploited as soldiers and made instruments of violence,
instead of messengers of reconciliation and peace. Let us think
of those children who are victims of the industry of pornography
and every other appalling form of abuse, and thus are
traumatized in the depths of their soul. The Child of Bethlehem
summons us once again to do everything in our power to put an
end to the suffering of these children; to do everything
possible to make the light of Bethlehem touch the heart of every
man and woman. Only through the conversion of hearts, only
through a change in the depths of our hearts can the cause of
all this evil be overcome, only thus can the power of the evil
one be defeated. Only if people change will the world change;
and in order to change, people need the light that comes from
God, the light which so unexpectedly entered into our night.
And speaking of the Child of Bethlehem, let us think also of the
place named Bethlehem, of the land in which Jesus lived, and
which he loved so deeply. And let us pray that peace will be
established there, that hatred and violence will cease. Let us
pray for mutual understanding, that hearts will be opened, so
that borders can be opened. Let us pray that peace will descend
there, the peace of which the angels sang that night.
In Psalm 96 [95], Israel, and the Church, praises God's grandeur
manifested in creation. All creatures are called to join in this
song of praise, and so the Psalm also contains the invitation:
"Let all the trees of the wood sing for joy before the Lord, for
he comes" (v. 12ff.). The Church reads this Psalm as a prophecy
and also as a task. The coming of God to Bethlehem took place in
silence. Only the shepherds keeping watch were, for a moment,
surrounded by the light-filled radiance of his presence and
could listen to something of that new song, born of the wonder
and joy of the angels at God's coming. This silent coming of
God's glory continues throughout the centuries. Wherever there
is faith, wherever his word is proclaimed and heard, there God
gathers people together and gives himself to them in his Body;
he makes them his Body. God "comes". And in this way our hearts
are awakened. The new song of the angels becomes the song of all
those who, throughout the centuries, sing ever anew of God's
coming as a child -- and rejoice deep in their hearts. And the
trees of the wood go out to him and exult. The tree in Saint
Peter's Square speaks of him, it wants to reflect his splendour
and to say: Yes, he has come, and the trees of the wood acclaim
him. The trees in the cities and in our homes should be
something more than a festive custom: they point to the One who
is the reason for our joy -- the God who for our sake became a
child. In the end, this song of praise, at the deepest level,
speaks of him who is the very tree of new-found life. Through
faith in him we receive life. In the Sacrament of the Eucharist
he gives himself to us; he gives us a life that reaches into
eternity. At this hour we join in creation's song of praise, and
our praise is at the same time a prayer: Yes, Lord, help us to
see something of the splendour of your glory. And grant peace on
earth. Make us men and women of your peace. Amen.
© Copyright 2008 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Look at the One they
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