When we meet together on Christmas Day for this great solemnity it can seem quite noisy, or at least there may be plenty of talking, music and singing. Just imagine sitting in church and never uttering or hearing a word – there would be only silence. But the Lord, the God of Israel, is a God who desires to communicate, to share His life with us. So He broke the silence and from the very beginning He spoke a Word. And from then on the Lord spoke to us through Moses and prophets, sharing His law and His wisdom. Yet He promised that He would come even closer, as Isaiah tells us today: we shall “see the Lord face to face.” Last night, when we celebrated Midnight Mass, we heard how the angelic light shone on the shepherds and they were told to go to meet their Savior. What did they find? A very human scene. A young Jewish couple expecting their first child, forced to travel to Bethlehem by the dictate of a Roman emperor. And then in the manger in the face of that Child we see God. We could delight in this wonderfully human scene, which touches people’s hearts like the birth of any child. But the Church today wants us to draw out the full implications of this human scene. For, as we listen to the words of St. John’s great prologue, we learn how in that child God’s desire to communicate with us comes to a climax. The Word and wisdom of God had been present in the world has now entered fully into our human condition. God has taken our humanity and the Word has become flesh. If we want to find the glory of God’s presence we do not need to search for it in silence, we do not need a spirituality that takes us out of this world. In the Christmas crib we see the glory of God in the child Jesus. He is the Word, the intimate expression of the Father’s love for us. He shares with us His divine life so that we can truly become children of God.
There is a certainly a place for silence in what we can be the noise and bustle of Christmas celebration. But is is a silence that Mary enjoys as she ponders over the mystery of her newborn son. We receive the bread and wine transformed into the real body and blood of Jesus. We recognize in human flesh the divine presence. And we reverence that presence in the silence of our prayers and also when we greet one another with the peace of Christ. Then we can go home and celebrate this great feast of God’s gift of himself to us in Jesus. We can recognize in the faces of our children, our parents, grandparents, friends and strangers, the presence of God and treat them with love and reverence, for they are made in the image of the God who has today been born of our flesh.