A Masterpiece: “Redemption: the Baby-God” (From the Composer of “Creation”)

The liturgy of Christmas has four different Masses, each at its own time: “Christmas Eve”, “Midnight Mass”, the “Mass at Dawn” and the “Mass During the Day”. The prayers and the readings for each Mass are all different, and there is something very beautiful about this. Let me tell you about the four Gospel readings: it may help us to see the great beauty of the Mystery of the Lord’s Nativity, the beauty of what God did for human beings.

Christmas’ Eve Gospel is from Matthew (1:1-23), and it is like the preparation of the stage, the project, the prophecies about Jesus. At Midnight and at Dawn we read the actual Christmas story, from the Gospel of Luke (2:1-15 at midnight, 2: 15-20 at dawn), a mix of darkness and light, the humility of the manger and the angel’s brightness in the announcement to the shepherds. At the Mass during the day, we read John (John 1:1-18), who explains to us the depth of what happened in the manger: God Himself became flesh and dwelt among us; that baby was the real God.

1. On Christmas Eve, the Gospel of Matthew brings the genealogy of Jesus, a long list of Jesus’ ancestors with their real names. From Abraham to David, fourteen generations, from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations, and from there to the birth of Jesus, fourteen generations. Then Matthew goes on to refer to how Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and how the Angel told Joseph, son of David, to take Mary as his wife and that, in her, the prophecy of Isaiah had been fulfilled: “the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son.”

The point I want to make is this: God had a plan. (1) God had designed the work of our Salvation precisely—as an Artist preparing a symphony. Long in advance, He established what was to be the full duration in time of the symphony, that is forty-two generations; (2) He told Abraham about His Project ahead of time, and likewise He told David and His friends the prophets, (3) but only when the time came did He put His Plan into action—and then, in a most wonderful way.

(1) Numbers in the Scripture have a spiritual meaning. The symphony had to last forty-two generations: forty-two is three times fourteen, and fourteen is two times seven. Three, two and seven. Three because three are the persons of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and they are the Author and Composer of this Salvific Work. Two because two are the natures of the Redeemer: one a divine nature and the second, human, and He, of course, is the greatest musician in the orchestra. And seven are all things ordered for our Salvation: seven Sacraments, seven petitions in the Our Father, seven virtues, seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. God had planned all this: fourteen generations from the origin of His people to the summit—with David—of Israel’s Kingdom on earth; another fourteen generations to the failure of Israel’s Kingdom on earth; and another fourteen generations to the birth of Jesus Christ. And with the coming of the Messiah came, first, the creation (from His people Israel) of His new people, the Church; second came the establishment of the eternal Kingdom of Heaven; and third, the destruction of Satan’s dominion. Like a symphony, where the finale captures all that was happening along the way, yet in a new and wonderful fashion.

(2) Not only had God planned it all, He also revealed the details of His project to His friends: He told Abraham that Salvation would be from his children, He told David one of his sons will reign for ever, and He told Isaiah that the Messiah would be born from a virgin and called Immanuel. The Savior would be then from Jewish race, royal line and a virgin mother. His flesh had to be Jewish by His mother, His family had to be royal by His father, and His mother had to be virgin.

(3) How did God manage to do all this? His mother—daughter of Abraham and virgin; His father from royal line; and both legally married, so that the Scripture might be fulfilled: Son of Abraham, Son of David, and born from a virgin. And His name is Immanuel for two reasons: because He is God with us, and because “Jesus” and “Immanuel” mean the same thing. Jesus means “God saves”, and if “God is with us”, it means that God is here to save.

2. Matthew set the stage, he told us about the project. Luke tells us about the premiere, the first night in the concert hall of the world. John is like the “art critic”, the one who understands the masterpiece and explains it to us.

The Gospel for the “Midnight Mass” reports the very moment of Jesus’s birth and the announcement of the Angel to the shepherds. Midnight was the time of the Messiah’s birth: “When peaceful silence lay over all, and night had run the half of her swift course, down from the heavens, from the royal throne, leapt your all-powerful Word like a pitiless warrior into the heart of a land doomed to destruction” (Wisdom 18:14-15). Because it must have taken a while to get from the countryside to the town itself, the Gospel for the “Mass at Dawn” reports the arrival of the shepherds at the manger. And because in daylight everything is more clear and things can be neatly seen, the Gospel of John is read at the “Mass During the Day”. John tells us, not what any person could have seen in the manger with the light of a lamp, not the simple historical fact, but the meaning of the historical event. John tells us what can be seen with the light of faith in the mystery of the Lord’s Nativity. It is not just a baby, but the Baby-God. The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us so that we may dwell with God in Heaven. He came to give us the power to become children of God. Nobody can see God, but the Son of God came to reveal Him to us. He came as a human being to take human beings to God. He came to show us the way. He came to save us from our sins, to give us grace and truth, to give meaning to our lives and hope of eternal happiness.

Christmas is not just a beautiful story, it is God’s intervention in History. And that is what makes it so beautiful: because it is a masterpiece, conceived by the genius of God Himself, and enacted by Him on the world’s stage, for all men and women and children to see. God loves us, He came to rescue us from despair and prepare a room for us in Heaven. For us, who had not prepared Him a room when He first came. Life is good, because God has been good to us. Life is good, and death is not the end. Life is good, but we need to open ourselves to that life, to the grace and truth which come from Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is Christmas: let every heart invite Him into the room prepared for His coming. Let us be the humble manger which welcomes Jesus to be the centre of our lives.