Scripture in Depth
Mass During the Night
Reading I: Isaiah 9:1-6
This is the most famous of all the messianic prophecies of Isaiah. Its original meaning was very different from the associations that have grown up around it in Christian use during this season.
It may have been composed originally as a liturgical anthem to be sung on the occasion of the coronation of the Davidic kings of Judah. Every time a new descendant of David ascended the throne, it was hoped (note the irrepressible hope of Old Testament religion!) that this king would in fact prove to be the ideal king.
The joy of the occasion is expressed by two comparisons: the joy of harvest and the joy of victory on the battlefield (Is 9:3). The new reign ushers in freedom from want and freedom from oppression (for the allusion to Midian, see Judg 6-8) and peace (the burning of the bloody debris of the battlefield).
The “birth” of the child (Is 9:6) was actually the enthronement of the king, which in the royal theology was conceived as God’s adoption of the king as his son (see Ps 2:7).
The king is hailed by a series of royal titles. This is one of the few places (cf. Ps 45:6) where the king is actually called “God.” Usually it was anathema for Israelite religion, even in the royal theology, to go as far as that, though it was common enough in the surrounding nations.
Probably we should understand the king’s divinity in a modified sense: he is the embodiment of God’s own kingship, God’s representative on earth.
Christian faith reinterprets this passage.
The joy is the joy of Christ’s advent, which ushers in deliverance for the oppressed (Lk 4:18) and peace between God and humankind (Jn 14:27). The words “a child has been born for us” now suggest the birth at Bethlehem rather than the enthronement of a king.
This reminds us that the birth of Jesus is only the beginning of the Christ event, that the Nativity really stands for the total advent of Christ, the whole saving act of God in him.
Finally, it seems more appropriate to hail Jesus rather than the king of Judah as “God.” Yet, even here we must be careful. The New Testament never refers to Jesus as God without qualification. Jesus is not Deus in se (such a notion would compromise the unity of God), but Deus pro nobis—God turned to us in grace and salvation.
Responsorial Psalm 96: 1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13
This is probably the most magnificent of all the enthronement psalms that celebrate the kingship of Yhwh. Much of its content also appears in another place in the Old Testament, namely, 1 Chr 16, a cento of psalms put together by the Chronicler to mark the bringing of the ark into the temple by David.
The theme of a “new song” can be traced all through the Bible. The old song was sung by Moses and Israel at the Red Sea (Ex 15). One might say that the whole liturgy of the old Israel was a continuation of this old song. But it lost its zest with the passage of time and especially in the Exile: “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” So Second Isaiah looks for a new song to be sung after the return (Is 51:11).
This hope for a new song was disappointed at that time, and the new song became part of Israel’s eschatological expectation.
In the Book of Revelation, the new song’s promise is fulfilled at last in the celebration of the victory of the Lamb. Christmas marks the first step toward that victory, so the Church can already here and now take up the new song (as it always does in its liturgy).
In the birth at Bethlehem, Yhwh truly comes to judge and save the world.
Reading II: Titus 2:11-14
This passage speaks of the two comings of Christ: (1) “the grace of God has appeared,” that is, in the Christ event (and Bethlehem marks the inception of its appearance); (2) “while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory...”
The Second Coming, which had been the dominant theme at the beginning of Advent but had receded into the background as the season progressed and the expectation of the birth of Christ took over, is not completely forgotten now that Christmas has come.
For it is only in the light of the Second Coming that we can celebrate the first coming. People who forget this sentimentalize Christmas into a “Baby Jesus” cult.
In the Nativity, Christ comes first in great humility in anticipation of his coming again in majesty and great glory. It is especially fitting that this note should be struck at the Midnight Mass of Christmas, for much of our traditional imagery speaks of the Lord’s Second Coming as taking place at midnight. This imagery is found in the parable of the ten virgins: “At midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom!’” (Mt 25:6).
Gospel: Luke 2:1-14
The infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke pose very difficult problems for those who would use them to reconstruct actual history. The two narratives agree on the following points: the names of Mary and Joseph as the parents of Jesus; his supernatural conception and Bethlehem as the place of his birth; and the dating of his birth in the reign of King Herod. Clearly these items go back to earlier tradition, prior to the evangelists.
Is the location of Jesus’ birth at Bethlehem simply an expression of faith in his Davidic messiahship (see Mic 5)? Probably this question will never be answered. Then there is the unsolved problem of the census.
Luke dates it during the period when Quirinius was legate of Syria. This we know from Josephus to have been from 6 to 9 CE, a dating that appears to be confirmed by the fact that Josephus places the first census in Judea (see Acts 5:37) at about 6 CE. This was immediately after Judea came under Roman rule—a more plausible reason for a Roman census than at the time when Judea was still a quasi-independent kingdom.
But this dating for the census clashes with Luke’s other statement, supported by Matthew, that Jesus was born in the reign of Herod, that is, not later than 4 BCE.
Many attempts have been made to vindicate Luke’s account of the nativity census. For instance, it has been suggested, on the basis of remarks by Josephus, that Quirinius had already been in Syria as early as 10-7 BCE.with a legatine commission.
But the neatest solution, proposed not long ago, is a different though perfectly plausible translation of Lk 2:2: “This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.”
Another problem is that we have no evidence for people returning for a census from their normal domiciles to their ancestral homes.
These historical problems should warn us that, in the words of the Jerome Biblical Commentary (original edition), “the details of the narrative are symbolic and biblical; they communicate the mystery of redemption, not a diary of early events.” That is certainly how the narrative should be heard at the first Mass of Christmas.
We should probably not romanticize the shepherds. They had a bad reputation as thieves, and in any case they were poor. In fact, as Joachim Jeremias has shown, they were classed with tax collectors and prostitutes as members of despised trades. This fits in perfectly with the emphasis of Luke’s Gospel.
The angelic announcement is the biblical way of bringing out the meaning of an event in salvation history (see the annunciation stories). This is the birth of One who is to be the Savior, the Christ (Messiah), and Lord. In the second proclamation, made by the “multitude of the heavenly host,” not his titles but the effects of the Christ event are announced: glory to God and peace (with the full meaning of shalom) among people.
The words “among those he favors” vary in the Greek texts. The King James Version favored a text that gave the sense “good will [i.e., God’s good will or favor] toward men.” The Vulgate preferred a reading that yielded, literally, the sense “to men of good will.” This is probably the right text, but the literal meaning is badly misleading.
“Men of good will” is a Semitic idiom that means people who are the objects of God’s favor. So actually the Vulgate reading comes to very much the same thing as the King James translation. This is a warning against much of the loose talk about people “of good will” that goes on at Christmas time, especially in the secular world.
Reginald H. Fuller
**From Saint Louis University
Mass at Dawn
Reading I: Isaiah 62:11-12
This passage is from what is now commonly called Third (or Trito-) Isaiah (Is 56-66). These chapters take up the themes of Isaiah 40-55, which announced the impending return of the exiles from Babylon to their homeland (Is 40), but they reapply these themes to a new situation.
It is no longer the exiles returning to their homeland but the pilgrims going up to the Temple at Jerusalem for the feast (Tabernacles?).
When read at the second Mass of Christmas, these themes are reapplied to the birth of Christ. The passage now speaks of the joy of the new Israel at the advent of its salvation.
Responsorial Psalm 97:1, 6, 11-12
Like the other enthronement psalms, Psalm 97 is appropriate for any Christian festival. A different selection of verses from this psalm is used during the Easter season in series C. The present selection includes verses 11-12, with reference to the dawning of the light, imagery that has passed into the lore of the season and is expressed in so many Christmas carols.
Reading II: Titus 3:4-7
This passage is very similar to the second reading at the midnight Mass (Titus 2:11-14). Both passages speak of the “appearance” of divine salvation and can therefore be related fittingly to the Nativity. But there is a difference, too.
The earlier passage went on to speak of the second coming and made it the basis of an ethical exhortation. This passage takes a different direction.
The appearance of “God our Savior” in the Christ event leads to our regeneration and renewal, our rebirth as children of God (see Gal 4:5-7). Christ is Son of God by right; created human beings forfeited divine filiation by the Fall. But Christ has appeared to give us rebirth as children of God.
This thought is succinctly expressed in the collect that Cranmer composed in 1549 for the second Mass of Christmas: “Almighty God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him. ... Grant that we, being regenerate and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit.”
And the Anglican poet Christopher Wordsworth, taking up the great patristic paradoxes of the Incarnation, expressed it thus:
God comes down that man may rise,
Lifted by him to the skies;
Christ is Son of Man that we
sons of God in him may be.
Gospel: Luke 2:15-20
This reading completes the narrative begun in the gospel for the Midnight Mass—the pilgrimage of the shepherds to Bethlehem and their visit to Mary, Joseph, and the babe in the manger.
The angelic message had told them that the things they would see would be a “sign” (Lk 2:12). What they see has a meaning beyond what is visible to the eye, which can only see a baby, its mother, and her husband—a common enough sight. But this sight is a “thing that has taken place.”
The word translated “thing” can also mean “word,” that is, a significant, meaningful communication. So the sight of the child is a sign communicating to the shepherds the significance of what the angelic message had proclaimed: God’s salvation has come to earth.
The shepherds do not see the salvation itself but only its outward sign—the birth of the child, wrapped in swaddling cloths.
Reginald H. Fuller
**From Saint Louis University
Mass During the Day
Reading I: Isaiah 52:7-10
This magnificent passage from Second Isaiah is rather similar to the Old Testament reading for the second Mass (Is 62:11-12), and even closer to the enthronement psalms that form the responsorial reading for all three Masses of Christmas.
The prophet announces the return of Yhwh to Zion in words identical with those that scholars think were used at the new-year enthronement festival: “Your God reigns.”
This proclamation is described as bringing “good news.” The Hebrew word for “good news” lies at the root of the New Testament Greek term euangelion, or “gospel.”
Paul took up this very text and applied it to his own apostolic work of preaching the gospel in Rom 10:15, and it probably influenced Jesus’ own formulation of his message of the kingdom or reign of God.
The use of this passage in the liturgy today suggests yet another application. It can be referred to the angelic proclamation at the Nativity. This is indeed a proclamation of good tidings, a publication of salvation, an announcement of the beginning of the dawn of God’s reign.
It is in the Incarnation that the church sees the return of Yhwh to Zion and to Jerusalem to comfort his people (Is 40:1). Here the Lord bares his arm and the people see his salvation.
Responsorial Psalm 98:1-2, 3-4, 5-6
Selections from this psalm also appear on the twenty-eighth and thirty-third Sundays of the year in series C. This selection is also very similar to the psalms used in the first and second Masses of this day and to the first reading of this Mass. Its applicability to Christmas is obvious.
Reading II: Hebrews 1:1-6
The letter to the Hebrews is unique among the letters of the New Testament. Although it clearly ends like a letter (Heb 13:22-25), it does not begin like one. There is no opening greeting, as was customary. There is no statement of the author’s name nor of those to whom he is writing. Instead, he plunges immediately into his theological exposition: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways ... ”
Actually, Hebrews looks like a series of liturgical sermons on a collection of Old Testament texts. In fact, the author himself or the editor call the work a “word of exhortation” (Heb 13:22). The first of these sermons, whose exordium we have here, uses a series of texts to establish Christ’s superiority over the angels.
It is probable that the readers, presumably Jewish Christians with syncretistic leanings, wanted to rank Christ among a whole hierarchy of angelic mediators (see the later Gnostic aeons; also Col 2:18) and thus deny the uniqueness and finality of the revelation he brought.
The author prefaces his texts with what looks like an early Christian hymn to Christ, similar in theme to the Johannine prologue, which follows as the gospel for this Mass. The hymn in Hebrews seems to be based on an earlier Jewish hymn to Wisdom.
Wisdom existed with God from all eternity and was the agent of creation and preservation. She manifests herself on earth and then returns to heaven. In its Christian adaptation, the hymn identifies Christ with Wisdom as the agent of creation and preservation. He then appears on earth.
Note that the whole Christ event is covered by the words “when he had made purification for sins ...” There is no explicit mention of his incarnation or earthly life as in most of the other hymns, although the author himself does add an allusion to his entry into the world in verse 6 (see also Heb 2:14).
After his sojourn on earth, Christ returns to heaven and is exalted to the right hand of the Majesty on high, triumphant over the angels, who are here conceived, as so often in early Christian mythology, as hostile powers.
A further point to be noted about this hymn is that it sets Christ’s revelation of God in Israel’s salvation history. The same God who has now spoken “in these last days” (that is, eschatologically) in his Son had spoken previously “in many and various ways.” In the Greek, the word for “many” brings out the fragmentary, partial character of the previous revelations.
This is a very important passage, for it relates the final revelation of God in Christ to the Jewish religion, and by analogy to other religions, too.
All religions contain fragmentary and partial disclosures of God, and each religion has its own distinctive insights. But what was fragmentary and partial is now finally and fully disclosed in Christ.
Here we have the biblical approach to the question of the non-Christian religions, which has exercised Christian thought so much since Vatican II: the claim that the final revelation is given exclusively in Jesus Christ.
Of course, our apprehensions of it are never final. The finality of the revelation must not be confused with any particular Christian theology or expression of the Christian religion, for all these are still fragmentary in character. Our claim is for Christ, not for our understanding of him.
This is not a piece of religious imperialism or triumphalism. It follows directly from the eschatological character of Christ’s revelation: God has spoken “in these last days,” not merely through the prophets but through his Son, the unique and final embodiment of his total self-disclosure.
Gospel: John 1:1-18 (long form); 1:1-5, 9-14 (short form)
It is fairly certain that the evangelist John did not himself compose the hymn to the Logos, but that it existed prior to his use of it. Yet, its origin is much in dispute.
Some think that it came from Gnostic sources; some regard it as a Hellenistic-Jewish hymn to Wisdom. It has even been suggested that it was a hymn to John the Baptist, celebrated in the “baptist” circles as the bearer of the final revelation of God.
It would then have been adapted by the evangelist for Christian use by adding a series of “footnotes” to the hymn: “He [the Baptist] was not the light,” etc. It is interesting that the short form of the gospel drops precisely these parenthetical notes.
Whatever its origin, the Johannine prologue sketches in the eternal background of what happened in the ministry, life, and death of Jesus. This whole ministry was the revelation of the Word-made-flesh, the embodiment in a human life of the totality of God’s self-communication to human beings. This self-communication did not begin with the Christ event; it began with creation (see Heb 1:1-4).
God created the universe in order to communicate God’s self to it in love. God communicated himself to men and women throughout history. This God did especially, though not exclusively, in Israel’s salvation history recorded in the Old Testament.
As the prologue puts it: “the life was the light of all people. ... The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” The reception of this revelation (here the evangelist has in mind the consequence of the Incarnation) gives men and women the power to become children of God.
It is often debated just where John moves from the preexistent Christ to the incarnate Christ. Clearly he has done so by Heb 1:14. Yet, the parentheses about the Baptist have the effect of changing the earlier statements about the Logos into statements about the Word-made-flesh. Thus, the whole Johannine prologue is a commentary on the rest of John’s Gospel. The entire life of Christ is the story of the Word-made-flesh.
Reginald H. Fuller
**From Saint Louis University