“THE ANGELS SING EMMANUEL”
Saint Luke 2. 1-14
Eve of the Nativity of Our Lord: 24 December Anno Domini 2011
Father Jay Watson SSP
This Holy Eve you are surrounded by the Host of Sabaoth. Angels fill the night sky and the air above your heads. Their wings are vibrating to the strains of the Gloria in Excelsis which you will sing with bold confession and tears of joy on the morrow as you celebrate His most Holy Mass.
Tonight you are far more graced and blessed than any Archangel or Seraph. For this night you remember "et homo factus est" and was made man! The Second Person of the Trinity was not born an angel but a man-your Brother. The greatest mystery is not the Eucharist or the Regenerative Waters; the most awesome mystery is not the Resurrection, the Ascension or the water-walking; the Mystery of Mysteries the Holy of Holies, the sanctum sanctorum is the Incarnation of God - - and then the proof via the Nativity of your Lord at Bethlehem. Emmanuel-God born a baby from an inviolate and ever-pure Virgin Mother!
It is wonderful the God IS! It is fitting that the One you worship is omniscient and infinite; eternal and pre-existent; alpha and omega. But the Christmas joy is that He is "for you" born this day! The Nativity is for your salvation!
The "fiery ones," the ranks of angels worshipped the Son of God in His full Trinitarian revelation, way before Matthew chapter one and Luke chapter two.
Beholding the Face of God in His beloved, only-begotten Son, the Messenger Spirits bathed in His radiance, light and beatific beauty-the vision of perfect bliss and peace.
Then after He created man in His own Image, something He did not do for the angels, they beheld a story, written in His own hands and heart and blood from before their own creation during the first 6 days. The angels witnessed the rebellion of Satan, the loss of many of their company, and the fall of Man-The Lord's supreme creation. Now, instead of merely worshipping their Master and joyfully protecting their charges (Adam & Eve), now, the cherubim were given flaming swords to guard Eden and its Tree of Life, until such time as the Son of God was also the Son of Man, when in the fullness of His Time the victory would be won.
It began to be won on that day when their great captain Gabriel went to the Blessed Virgin and Gospelled the Son of God right into her womb through her ear. With Saint Mary's fiat "be it unto me according to Thy Word" the Heavenly Host sang more expectantly than at any time since before the "Fall." The united voices of Gabriel and his legions, of Michael and his battalions must have chanted the Trisagion (Holy, Holy, Holy) with bravura and ecstasy as the Holy Ghost overshadowed the most highly favored maidservant and she was "with child?," yes, as she was "with God."
The long Lenten wait for the Angels, nine months wherein their spiritual eyes could not behold their Master (for angels have no more x-ray vision than they have omnipresence or omniscience), would come to an end in that dark and cold cave outside the lodging district of Bethlehem. There in the stable, next to the cow and the turtle dove, and the donkey, the teen-aged Jewish virgin would give birth to God-and her soul magnified Her Lord. Saint Mary's spirit rejoiced in God her Savior. How the mystery? How great the Sacramentum? She who was sinful flesh and blood, just like you, had held the Maker of the universe in her womb for His first nine-months of His now forever Incarnated being! Emmanuel-started off as El-Mariam-God with Mary! How sublime and beyond understanding that He who feeds you all, who clothes the lilies and gives food to the ravens which cry, would suck nourishing milk from His mother's breasts. He Who was The Word from the beginning, Who was with God and Who was God, Light of Light, uncreate of uncreate, was nestled and rocked in the arms of His young virgin mother; was sung to and cooed to by her sweet and tender voice of love and care.
The gladness of the angels was so palpable and overflowing and un-restrainable that it's a wonder they were not heard all over the globe as they sang, and not just on that particular Judean hillside, so appropriately covered with sheep and shepherds. For is not the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church the lambs and the shepherds sharing in the Evangel of the Angels?
Mother Eve's sin was now being cleansed away in the birth of the man-child promised to her by the Lord after her destructive treason. The woman that sinned by listening to a fallen angel is being redeemed by the fruit of the womb of a woman who joyously assented to the Gospel of the Lord's Messenger angel. And oh did his comrades: thrones, dominions, virtues, powers, principalities, seraphim, cherubim, angels, and archangels share in this joy! Joy to the World the Lord has come let earth receive her king. O come all ye faithful joyful and triumphant.
These messenger beings who faithfully guarded the patriarchs, prophets, priests and good kings, who dutifully and patiently waited through the 40 years of desert wandering which stretched from Eden all the way to that cave-like stable in Ephatha-burial place of Rachel and birth place of David-would this evening join in with smelly shepherds, astonished carpenter step-father/Guardian, Pure and immaculate Virgin, and maybe even a stable boy with a drum…to witness the Good News in the flesh-the tiny, soft, pink, delicate, and innocent flesh of Jesus. Jesus-Savior, one little Word.
Myriads and myriads, legions and legions of these ineffable spirits crowded and jostled to crane their necks over the shepherds and peer down into the crèche to behold the Babe-Who was their creator and LORD. They too marveled and kept all things they had hitherto seen in their incorporeal hearts. They who had attended Him while He was seated on the Throne, in Esaias' great vision, incense filling the Heavenly Temple, now saw Him enthroned in a feeding trough. You will likewise see Him on altar top tomorrow, wrapped in the swaddling clothes of bread and wine to be Eaten and Drunk for forgiveness and communion. They who knew Him as the Eternal Word would now hear him gurgle and chirp and burp and suck. They who knew Him as the Pantocrator, i.e. ruler of the cosmos would behold the small and vulnerable fleshly God…the same God/Man they would later behold crying in Gethsemane and nailed to the Tree, the now fully revealed Tree of Life on Golgotha's skull-littered hillock.
But not that night, and not this night-this night it would be Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, God will toward men. Jesus is God in the flesh; Jesus is Peace in the flesh. The Christ Mass is to receive that Peace, that God, that Jesus, in the Flesh. Come to Holy Christ Mass tomorrow, even as you sing the praises of your salvation and deliverance on this Holy Eve. Gods will is toward you men. Gods will is Emmanuel, for your forgiveness and life.
In the Name of The Father and of The + Son and of The Holy Ghost