Christmas address by Father Paul Daly

Nativity scene

One Advent I visited a community of sisters, nuns, who live in the simplest manner possible in order to serve ‘the poorest of the poor.’ In the chapel their crib matched their lifestyle. It was simply an empty cardboard box on its side. Outside the box, next to it, was a tray of straw. Each day of Advent each sister would take a piece of straw as a reminder to practise some act of love or of charity or some small sacrifice and would place it into the crib. As Christmas drew closer all those acts of love would together build a simple yet worthy dwelling place for Jesus.

Christmas is, thanks be to God, a time when we see so many acts of charity and service. So many people carrying out so many kindly acts that there would be plenty of straw here for Jesus to bed down on. Within our own Borough, so many people volunteer, seeking no reward, to serve their sisters and brothers. People of different faiths and none roll up their sleeves and make people’s lives better. Last year, after the floods, we saw such generosity in abundance. This year I read on Rochdale Online of the three friends offering free hair cuts to the homeless in Rochdale Town centre. In my own town of Heywood well over one hundred families have received that extra support to help them have a joyful Christmas dinner and our parish is hosting Lunch on Christmas Day for those who would be on their own. Of course charity has no borders and so, through our Developing World Fund and via CAFOD we have bought gifts to mark the Twelve Days of Christmas from one community toilet and mother and baby care for four families to six chickens, two donkeys, eleven bees and twelve sets of coloured pencils, we are making a difference to people’s lives at home and abroad. And that work, and much more, goes on all year round in every town in the Borough, through mosques and churches and community groups and businesses and schools and in so many other ways.

So, in many ways, your acts of love and charity and sacrifice have helped to build a dwelling place for Jesus in our Borough of Rochdale in 2016 and 2017.

The Gospel of this Christmas begins, though, with these words ‘when Quirinius was Governor of Syria.’ St Luke situates the birth of Jesus in history by reference to Syria. Two thousand years on Syria is still mentioned in the Christmas story. At the time of Jesus, Syria, and the whole Roman Empire, was at peace. Today the news stories speak for themselves. We must pray and work for peace not just in Syria but in the whole of the Middle East. The Bible lands are torn apart by conflict and bloodshed and it’s the innocent that suffer. That’s why the collection at our Christmas Masses in my own parish will go to assist innocent civilians, families, especially children, caught up in the conflict particularly in Aleppo in Syria and those displaced from their homes and even their country.

And pray every day for peace. In one of the psalms the phrase Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem is Shallu Shalom Yerushalaim. Whenever we see on the news more photos of bloodshed in Syria, in Israel, in Palestine, in Iraq and Iran, in the lands of the Bible simply raise a prayer that Jesus himself will have been taught ‘Shallu Shalom Yerushalaim’ for the peace of Jerusalem, home to Jews, Christians and Muslims, and of all the Bible lands.

At the heart of Christmas is the truth expressed by St John at the beginning of his gospel. He tells us that ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.’ Actually the word ‘dwelt’ might better be translated as ‘pitched his tent amongst us.’ A ‘tent’, not a ‘temple’; something portable, not fixed’; useful for the journey, not the staying-put; something fairly simple (forget glamping), not fancy.

Christmas celebrates the God who doesn’t stay away but comes close; who doesn’t just reveal a word but who is The Word; who doesn’t just plan on paying us a visit but who plans to stay (and who does stay despite what the forces of sin try to do to him – but that’s for Easter).

He is the Giver and the Gift. He is not simply the giver of peace and joy and eternal life – he gives us himself and he is God. Christmas reminds us that God has come to share our life, our human life, with its joys and its sorrows, laughter and tears, so that we can, even now and one day in heaven, share the very life of God.

And Christmas gives us the answer to the age-old question; if there is a God, how can I find him? We will find him as the shepherds found him, in the straw, in the very ordinariness of human life.

We will find him still in those with nothing more than straw for a bed and a shed, if they are lucky, for a home. We will find him wherever life is fragile and vulnerable, wherever people are in need. And, please God, they will find the love of God in and through us.
We will find God also in that dwelling place which is our life. We don’t need to be some perfect temple for him to inhabit. It’s a tent he pitches among us so he can stay with us wherever our life takes us. It’s among the straw, the rough and ready, of our lives that he seeks to make his home. Don’t let us put him off by seeking some elusive perfection before we invite him in. Recognise his presence now in our lives. Let our prayer this Christmas be best expressed in the final verses of two much-loved carols.

What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give him – give my heart.

O holy child of Bethlehem,
descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin and enter in,
be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
the great glad tidings tell:
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord, Emmanuel

Father Paul Daly
Parish Priest
St Joseph's
Heywood