Today is Christmas Day
He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang, hammer, ding, dong, bell; bell, dong, ding, hammer, clang, clash! Oh glorious, glorious! Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no mist. Clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold—cold, piping for the blood to dance to—golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells—oh glorious, glorious! “What’s today?” cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him. “EH?” returned the boy, with all his might of wonder. “What’s today, my fine fellow!” said Scrooge. “Today!” replied the boy. “Why, CHRISTMAS DAY” “It’s Christmas Day!” said Scrooge to himself. “I haven’t missed it.”
Those lines from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol remind us that we haven’t missed it. Today is Christmas Day, and a dawn like no other, except perhaps the dawn that rises in the Easter garden, as it will again some months from now. In reality those two dawns are only one: the child we kneel before this day was born for that — to live in our flesh, to teach us the way to Heaven, and to give then that self-same life so as to open the gates of Paradise to those who would be led by a Child.
At dawn on Christmas Day is celebrated the second Mass — that of the Shepherds. Those men of the hill country of Judah who began their shift of flock-watching as they had on any other day, and then the angels came with the celestial choir and they hasten to Bethlehem and found the promised Messiah, not leading an army but as God-made-man, Emmanuel forevermore, the Almighty in all the vulnerability of a baby. The Introit of this Mass makes plain the glory of what the shepherds beheld:
A light shall shine upon this day: for the Lord is born to us: and he shall be called Wonder-Counsellor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace: of whose reign there shall be no end.
We have the shepherds before the crib now, contemplating in wonder the babe and his Mother, no doubt with the angels’ words ringing still in their ears, these moments which they would forever recall. The Gospel of the Mass does not leave them there — we find them then going out and rejoicing and telling all the people of Bethlehem of the joy of this dawn. When God comes to any heart it cannot keep that joy to itself.
Today is Christmas Day, a day like none other. Please God we will find ourselves before the crib this day, to behold the child come to set us free, and with all the many cares and requests for ourselves and our world that we bring to him, let us linger a moment longer and consider that God came down from Heaven, for us, and let us not forget to tell him, simply, ‘thank you’.