The cloth and the cave

On behalf of Fr. Ev Hemann and myself, I welcome all of those people we see weekly, those that are not quite as frequent and especially those who we have not seen in some time. All are welcome here. There is an old principle that I learned in seminary pertaining to mass. It says that the more solemn the celebration, the less apt we are to change things. During this time of year, this principle applies equally well to our readings as it does to sheered pine trees and colorful wrapping paper. So, in the spirit of this tradition, I humbly submit the following reflection. It is in the style of an early church catechetical homily, which means it is a little more poetic, a little more scriptural symbolic, and little more affective than most homilies. If you like it, I say sleep in heavenly peace. If not, you will just have to come back next week to experience a different style.

How cold it must have been for them…how dreadful! Can you imagine the opulence they enjoyed, the fruit they feasted, or the peace they felt with God’s dominion in one hand and original grace in the other? This first male and female were, likewise, the first to defy their God and be punished to here. This place, with its winter and floods and drought and other such discomforts. The first woman and man could have had no knowledge of what to expect with the first pregnancy. Undoubtedly, expecting that all good gifts had been forsaken by their act of disobedience, they had no idea that God left one blessing not forfeited by original sin nor washed away in the flood. They were the first to share in God’s sacred rite of matrimony. They shared in God’s fruitful fecundity and bore, first Cain and then Abel, two sons. Both boys were born wrapped in the cloths of original sin in a rock hard place outside their paradise where no one should have had to walk. Before long, through the original act of fratricide, Cain murdered his brother and forced the original sinners to also be the first to lay a son in burial cloths in a rock-hewn tomb where no one should have laid.

It was through the offspring of this first disobedience, David the King, that the knot of our original sin would begin to be undone. That king, born the son of a meek shepherd, would succeed the shameful Saul and shepherd his people toward unity. Yet, David was not to undo original sin through obedience, but through coveting his neighbor’s wife, murdering him, and having his children. In this we see that God can even make something good happen from an evil act – and so he did in the person of brave Solomon who was wrapped in a mantle of military might with a rock-hard determination. He continued what no one else could do and made Israel a great nation in history.

Israel was to be the scene of the final undoing of disobedience when a new Eve, at the angel’s invitation, joyfully accepted the arduous responsibility of giving birth to the son of god. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone. For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster you have smashed...For a child is born to us, a son was given us; upon his shoulder dominion rested.” Wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger because there was no room, this child whose birth we hold dear was born. He was thought to have been the new David, the new Solomon whose wisdom would unite the country of Israel and overthrow her oppressors. In truth, he was the new Abel, another fratricide whose mother, the new Eve, was forced to redo the horrifying responsibility of the first one by wrapping her son in the swaddling clothes of burial and laying him in a man made tomb where no one had laid before.

Yet, unlike the first fratricide, this was no mere act of disobedience for all people, a simple effect of the original sin. This obedience began when his mother said, “Let it be done according to your word,” and concluded when he said, “Father forgive them.” His obedience pulled off the veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations; his obedience destroyed death forever. As we adore Christ the child wrapped in swaddling clothes, in a manger, with no room in the Inn, let us give thanks to the savior of the world and join our voices the angels in adulation, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”