[A Homily of Fr. Matthew Kelty, O.C.S.O. for the Christmas Midnight Mass (B), 1993: (Lk 2:1-14)]
Darkness in the Garden of Beauty
Here are a few lines from the poet, R.S. Thomas. He calls it: The Coming --
If you are flying in a 747, so I read in the Atlantic Monthly, and the 747 takes to lowering its wings, one side or other in the night. You will not know it. Indeed, if the plane should continue to so fly, or even turn over on its back, you would not know that either. The stewardess would still come down the aisle and pour you a drink. You do not think this is so because you never experienced it, and do not know as much about the mysteries of flight as you think you do. It's all a matter of going beyond, in this case going beyond the limits of gravity.And God held in His hand
A small globe. "Look," He said.
The Son looked. Far off,
As though through water, He saw
A scorched land of fierce
Color. The light burned
There, crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
with slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. And many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The Son watched
Them. "Let Me go there," He said.
Going beyond has been what we have been doing from the beginning. Primitives in time long ago learned to span a river gorge with great vines from the forest and made themselves a suspension bridge. They went beyond the limits of speech by learning to yodel, and so carried messages from one mountain side, across a valley, to another. They went beyond themselves in ecstatic song and dance, and so entered the world of spirit. We have never done going beyond limits. And the process has gone on for millennia and has reached fever pitch in our day.
It is practically impossible even to list in some brief summary what has been done in terms of going beyond our limits.
We can talk and be heard on the other side of the world. And that same talk can be recorded and preserved for time to come. Not merely talk. I can see you as you talk from across a continent, across a world. The limits of speech and of hearing are pushed far beyond their natural limits, not to say sight. For I can see and hear what happens thousands of miles away, and that in live color. And all that -- no small matter -- is but one modest dimension of human achievement in sight, and sound and speech. See the splendor of what we build, the magnificent roads with traffic that span continents, the beauty of bridges that cross stream and river and mighty expanses of water. Not to mention tunnels beneath them. We build superb structures that defy reality in height. And these structures equipped with every facility that makes life not only livable, but pleasant in heat and cool and whatever comfort in food or drink, or clothing. There is no end to a long catalog.
Nor have we touched on beauty. What grace can compare with a speed-skater on ice, a ski-jumper flying through space. Think of ballet, of song and dance, of orchestra and symphony. Of the glories of art: in photography, in painting, in sculpture. All in some sense defy the laws of reality and move beyond their imposed limits.
All to the glory of God. And to the necessary conclusion: it cannot conceivably be that a people capable of such marvels should be destined to no more than a few dozen years on earth. They are certainly immortal. Any other conclusion is absurd.
Like the astronauts on the moon watching the earth rise above the lunar horizon, we are overwhelmed with awe. How beautiful! How beautiful our world and the works that humankind can do in that world.
Alas. It is not quite so, not quite. In the midst of that glorious garden of beauty -- for you have seen our parks, our cultivated fields, our national sea-shores -- in the midst there is some power of darkness. Here stalk monsters of evil, terrifying and surely demonic. These mortals who have gone beyond so much and in so many ways can write a word that is read in Hong Kong the next moment, can travel to the moon and back, can heal so marvelously -- these humans: they kill, they maim. These people: they steal, they cheat, they defraud, they lust, they are greedy. They assault, they burn, they bomb. In the womb and out of it, young, old, male, female -- no limit! How sad. How unutterably sad.
Sometime, somewhere, somehow, something went wrong. The astronauts could not see it from outer space. The world to them was a jewel. But the Son -- He saw more when the Father showed Him. He was filled with pity. And with compassion.
And so He said, "Let Me go there." And the Father let Him. He knowing as well as the Son what would come of it. He would come among them and take the consequence of His goodness.
He is gone, but is still with us. He has come, but is still coming.
And we with Him prepare for His coming again at the end, when the world will have reached its term. When all the hidden glory will make joyous forever the Kingdom of our kind -- humankind -- in Christ.
And we take part in that. We are involved in that, ways hidden to us. Like a yeast hidden in the mass. And the mass will rise.
William Blake said it:
Well said. The chariot of fire is Christ in His Church. And in the chariot we take the bow of prayer and the arrows of desire and engage in spiritual strife that is the conquest of darkness and evil with Christ the Lord. And we do not cease till we have built Jerusalem in our green and pleasant land.Did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?And did the Countenance divine
Shine upon these clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?Give me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear, oh clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!I will not cease from mental strife
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land!
Merry Christmas. God bless you.
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