4th Sunday of Advent – 18 December 2022
On this the Sunday before Christmas, we light the fourth candle for Advent – the candle of peace. Over our journey we have lit candles for hope, for faith, for joy. Now, on the eve of Christmas. we do so for peace. Peace is the quality that perhaps we most often associate with Christmas. It is the quality we want to surround our coming celebration – the outcome of the lights, the gifts, the carols, our Christmas Mass, our family gathering. For a few brief moments, Christmas promises us peace. We catch our breath; we glimpse innocence; we let go of the demands of our work; we rest. That peace might reign is our ardent prayer.
Peace in this sense, however, is very transitory. It is as fleeting as a quiet nap on Christmas afternoon, or a few quiet hours on Boxing Day. And for many in the world, there will be little peace over these days. Where is the peace of Christmas for these people?
For the people in the Christmas story events are hardly peaceful, either, in fact. They are anxious times. Mary is near the full term of her pregnancy: she is traveling to a distant place. What certainty might she have in being able to deliver her child safely? The young couple don’t have the luxury of online booking – they have to turn up to Bethlehem for a politically motivated census without knowing where they might lodge. The discover there is nowhere for them to stay. There are abandoned; on their own, away from any support of family or friends. Can we imagine their terror as their child is delivered without any assistance at all? The entire situation is charged with anxiety.
And yet the Nativity scene presents to us as one bathed in peace, quietness, stillness. The paradox presents as altogether curious. It teaches us that the peace of Christmas, just as the hope, faith and joy that underscore it, is not simply a feeling. As we have recounted throughout our journey of Advent, we can be concerned, confused and sad and yet we can be full of hope, faith and joy. So, too, we can be anxious and yet be peaceful. This is because peace is not the absence of conflict; it is not the alleviation of concern; it is not the freedom from care. The peace of Christmas is not given to us through the exercise of techniques of meditation and relaxation that restore our emotional equilibrium. If only it all came that simply. As various accounts in the Gospel teach us, the peace that Jesus gives us, however, is that which is found in the midst of the storm, not apart from the storm. Peace is what holds us steady in the midst of all the turbulence.
And what holds us steady? The knowledge that a baby has smiled.[1] When any baby smiles at us our own hearts always leap for joy. The smile of a baby towards us is a profound assurance of the goodness of life, of our own goodness. Our interaction with a smiling baby restores us to the truth of ourselves, to our own loveableness and the loveableness of life itself. But in the baby of the Nativity, it is God who smiles at us. And this smile influences our whole perspective on life and on ourselves. It frees us; it dispels our self-doubt; it opens our entire countenance, our whole being. In that brief moment we see ourselves loved and unconditionally valued. And we are never the same. The moment may be brief, but its effect is eternal. It marks indelibly.
And this indelible mark at the core of who we are enables us to stand in the midst of all our cares, concerns and contingencies with an assurance that we are part of something much larger than ourselves; that something has been achieved that is not dependent on us; that a promise has been given that will see its fulfillment even if not entirely by ourselves. This is the peace of Christmas. It is a peace that lives underneath whatever we might feel in the face of our ever-changing circumstances.
Peace is the gift that Jesus wishes to give us above all others. He says to us just before he dies, My gift to you is peace. And the peace I want to give you is the peace that I myself know, the peace that I have because I know that I am held in love by my Father, a love that will never leave me, the love which gives me my very identity. This is the peace that I carry into whatever is about to happen to me even if this threatens to extinguish me. This is the peace that I want you, too, to have. It is my legacy to you. For if you believe in this peace then you will also know my joy, my own joy will become complete in you. And it is because you live in this peace and in this joy, you will be free – free of fear, free to love. Lives of hope, faith, joy and peace – these are loving lives: lives capable of going out beyond themselves in attention and care of others. And so, in a few days’ time we will light the Christmas Candle symbolising love, the crown of all the other lights upon which we have reflected.
Faith, hope, joy, peace, love: these are all deeply interconnected. They are not independent of one another, such that we might have one of them and not the others. To believe that God has become one of us, one with us, is to give us hope in a future. It is to gift us with joy and the peace that comes from this faith. They are the greatest gifts we are given to us who believe in the mystery of Christmas. May they be our true lights this Christmas and as we journey into a new year and decade.
[1] This was the theme of Pope Francis’ Christmas Greetings to Vatican Employees and their Families, 21 December 2019. See https://zenit.org/articles/pope-offers-christmas-greetings-to-vatican-employees-and-families/
