Christmas Homily Inspired by Thomas Berry
By Timothy J. Joyce, OSB, STL
December 25, 2009
Glastonbury Abbey
1. Christmas is a day for singing. This day of singing pushes us beyond all of our old convictions, possessions, fears, habits, and ideologies. The singing invites us into recognition of a new world given us in remembering and imagining.
Let’s take a moment to re-listen to the scripture readings this morning listening to them with musical ear-phones on. Put your best Bose receiver on and listen.
Isaiah: How beautiful upon the mountains are the voices of the messengers who sing peace, who sing of good news, who sing of salvation…. Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they sing for joy. They see the return of the Lord to Zion. Break forth together into singing”
Hebrews: “Long ago God sang to our ancestors in many and varied songs of the Prophets, but in these last day he has sung to us by his very Song through whom he has created the ages. The song is the echo of God’s glory and the exact melody of God’s very being, and God sustains all things by his powerful Song…”
The psalms are always meant to be sung or at least recited as poetry. Today the psalm proclaims, “Sing unto God a new song… make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises; Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre, with the sound of melody, with trumpets and the sound of the horn, make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord.”
When we sing, we are echoing the divine melody that sounds throughout the cosmos. When we sing, Saint Augustine said, we pray twice.
Nowhere is the music of God so manifest as in the lyrical prologue to the gospel of John which we just heard. -
In the beginning was the Song, and the Song was with God, and the Song was God. This song was in the beginning with God. All things came to being through this song and without it not one thing came into being.
The true music which touches the soul of everyone was coming into the world. The song was in the world, and the world came into being through it; yet the world did not know the Song.
And the Song became flesh and lived among us and we have heard its glory.
No one has ever heard God. It is God the only-sung Song, who is close to the Singer’s heart, who made the Singer known.
2. What do we do when hear such a Song?
Well, we ought to sing along. To do that we need to be good listeners and pick up the right notes. God is speaking to us not just in words and reason but through the music of the heart. Cor ad cor loquitur, Cardinal Newman said, “Heart speaks to heart” and that is how God wants to sing to us.
We need to be good tuning forks and resonate with the melody we hear. We need to be in tune ourselves to receive the proper vibration.
And then our lives have to be songs themselves, echoing the divine song.
3. And where do we hear the song?
First of all, in the created world which is the first song that God has sung.
The cosmos is the music of the spheres that has been sung by God.
And as God the singer has sung the song through all eternity, a song which we call the word or son of God, so is the cosmic Christ vibrating in the universe. The letter to the Hebrews said that, through the son, the Song, “God has also created the ages” and again God sustains all things by his powerful song”. The gospel of John clearly tells us that “all things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” and again, “the world came into being through him”.
Pope Benedict names his message of peace to the world for 2010, “If you want to cultivate peace, protect Creation.” This is the challenge to us Christians: to refind our harmony with the universe, to know we are inter-dependent with all of creation, to honor and protect the earth, to stop abusing the natural world. This is a prime way that we will sing God’s song to us.
There is only one God. There is only one song. Creation and Redemption are both verses of God’s song. The Incarnation, the coming in human flesh, of God’s song, which we celebrate at Christmas, reinforces the song of creation. Now, not only human flesh, human life, and human love are gifted with the presence of the divine but all creation is lifted up, all material is holy, all is numinous with the presence of the singer as the burning bush was to Moses.
4. Finally, God’s song, come among us, invites us to witness to others the secret of the world through our songs. All these songs are subversive because they attest that the world is made for fidelity and not betrayal; for truth and not denial, for praise and not self-importance.
When we sing at Christmas, we join the angels who sang to the shepherds, announcing tidings of goods news to all the earth.
A joyful, melodious Christmas to you all.