Daily Gospel Reflection
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December 24, 2021
Zechariah his father, filled with the Holy Spirit, prophesied, saying:
“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel;
for he has come to his people and set them free.
He has raised up for us a mighty Savior,
born of the house of his servant David.
Through his prophets he promised of old
that he would save us from our enemies,
from the hands of all who hate us.
He promised to show mercy to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant.
This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham
to set us free from the hand of our enemies,
free to worship him without fear,
holy and righteous in his sight
all the days of our life.
You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High,
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,
to give his people knowledge of salvation
by the forgiveness of their sins.
In the tender compassion of our God
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
Reflection
How does God “shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,” breaking upon us like the dawn of a new day?
God comes with boundless compassion, not with trumpets blaring and bright lights shining, almost silently. In humility and humanity, the frail child Jesus forms in the womb of his mother, as well as in our hearts and souls.
The dawn is an interior one. It is the dawning of awareness that Christ is within us, always here in the noise, imperfection, and injustice of the earth, showing us how to love amidst its churning.
Tomorrow we celebrate the coming of the Incarnate Jesus. His birth is an all but unnoticeable event. Are not all days when Christ further enters into our lives? It is the sprouting, not of a giant oak that rules the forest, but rather, of a tiny mustard seed that grows unnoticed until it steadily weaves its way into the interstices of our being.
May we finish this Advent, allowing the God-man Jesus to come and abide within. May we ponder his humanity, his willed encounter with the life-long tension between the sacred and profane that we each embody. May we ponder his divinity, his infinitely and intimately loving acts of healing body and soul.
May we also ponder his sense of abandonment as he suffers an unjust and painful death. Through his acceptance and rising, he shows us the way—we who otherwise dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
Like Our Lady, may we ponder all these things about Christ in our hearts, both on this eve and on all days until the end. May his dawn break upon us, inspiring us to join in building God’s kingdom.
Prayer
Lord, as we prepare to celebrate your birth, we echo the song of Zechariah: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, for he has come to his people and set them free.” You come as our Savior to set us free, Lord. May we use this freedom to make your name known to all we encounter in our lives. Amen.
Saint of the Day
"O happy fault!" announces the ancient text of the Exsultet during the Easter Vigil, "O truly necessary sin of Adam," it cries, "that won for us so great a Redeemer!"
Our liturgies during the Easter season often seem to call to mind the underlying reasons for our salvation more frequently than at Christmas. Christians in the Middle Ages, however, honored Adam and Eve as the parents of humanity and used December 24 to recall the Genesis story that tells of their fall. It was a way to prepare for the Christmas feast of the birth of Jesus, who saved us from death—the consequence of their original sin. Some Christian traditions, such as the Eastern Orthodox, explicitly honor these two figures as saints because they were redeemed by Christ during his harrowing of hell, although they are not on the calendar of saints in the Roman Catholic Church.
Why are Adam and Eve important to us? What do they tell us about what it means to be a human being, made in the image and likeness of God? In his collection of homilies on the Genesis narrative, In the Beginning, Pope Benedict XVI writes:
"The biblical account of creation means to give some orientation in the mysterious region of human-beingness. It means to help us appreciate the human person as God's project and to help us formulate the new and creative answer that God expects from each one of us."
Each of us, like Adam and Eve, are tasked with helping God recreate the world.
Recalling Adam and Eve on December 24 is a natural way to highlight the roles that Jesus and Mary play in our salvation. The Adam and Eve story sets the stage for the saving drama of Jesus’ birth because Adam and Eve remind us of why we need a savior at all.
In the Office of Readings for today, the Liturgy of the Hours features a sermon by St. Augustine that says:
"Truth, then, has arisen from the earth: Christ who said, I am the Truth, was born of a virgin. And justice looked down from heaven: because believing in this new-born child, humanity is justified not by themselves but by God."
The disobedience of Adam and Eve gives us a contrast to the obedience and faithfulness of Jesus and Mary. Adam and Eve are figures who remind us that we are trapped by death; Jesus brings us life, and Mary brings us Jesus.
St. Paul refers to Jesus as the “second Adam” who brings new life to all of humanity, and Mary’s “yes” to the invitation to bear Christ to the world is seen as a saving answer to Eve’s “no” to God when she and Adam sinned in the garden. Our featured image today depicts Adam and Eve's banishment, the promise to Mary, and the birth of Jesus in a stained glass window from the Basilica.
Medieval Christians celebrated December 24 with what was known as a “paradise play.” They would re-enact the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden around an evergreen tree that was decorated with apples to represent the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Some believe this “paradise tree” developed into the Christmas tree, which is often still decorated with round, red balls that resemble apples. The image above shows the Christmas tree beneath the rotunda in the Main Building on Notre Dame's campus.
On Christmas Eve, let us remember our first parents, Adam and Eve, whose fault our Savior comes to mend—come, Lord Jesus!