This homily is a little odd in that I walked over to the altar for the last third of the homily to demonstrate some points while I talked. On the audio you will be able to notice when I am facing the altar (where the recorder was) and when I was facing the people. In the text, those differences are shown by the typeface. Also, there are little ⬆⬇ arrows at one point reflecting where I was making an up or down hand motion.
O Wondrous Exchange, O Admirabile Commercium
Today I want to talk
about Christmas stuff.
Might seem an odd thing
to say.
But actually, I think
Catholics get very little reflection on the mystery of Christmas, the power of
the Incarnation, the spiritual importance of Christmas in our homilies.
Since 1969, the Sunday
after Christmas Day has been celebrated as the feast of the Holy Family.
That’s awesome. That’s a
great feast idea.
But see what often
happens:
Let’s walk backwards
through the Christmas season and think about what you hear.
It ends at the Baptism of
our Lord in early January, and the priest probably isn’t going to be talking
about Christmas.
Week before that is
Epiphany, and we’ll hear about gifts and Magi.
Before that is Mary
Mother of God, which is the octave day of Christmas, but most homilies are
about Mary.
Holy Family is the Sunday
within the octave and we hear usually about the Holy Family, or families in
general.
So that leaves just
Christmas to talk about Christmas stuff.
But most priests strive
to make those Christmas Day and Christmas Eve Masses very accessible.
We know that there are
people there who only come a few times a year.
We know there are
visitors who don’t know what topics a parish has discussed over the last 51
weeks of the year
So, for example, even
last year when I was somewhat theological, reflecting on “Keep the Mass in
ChristMass”, it was still crafted to be “newcomer friendly”.
So the point is: we don’t
very often dig deep into Christmas in homilies.
I’ve said it before and I
will say it again: if you want to know what a holy day is about, look at the
preface.
And again, the preface is
the part right after the “Lift up your hearts; We lift them up to the Lord; Let
us give thanks to the Lord our God” and before the “Holy Holy Holy”.
Now there are actually
three different prefaces for use in the Christmas season—all chock full of
great stuff—and just to emphasize that there is so much good stuff and so
little time to appreciate it in the Christmas season, realize that most people
never even hear all three of the prefaces because there are just two big
Christmas Masses, and then there’s a new preface for Epiphany.
So I want to draw your
attention to Christmas Preface III.
I wish it was in your missalettes
so you could see it too. Alas.
It talks about giving
thanks through Christ our Lord and then “Through him, the holy exchange that
restores our life has shone forth today in splendor”.
I want to highlight one
word there. This word is the key to everything: Exchange.
We think of Christmas as
just a gift, but the Mass itself is insisting that at Bethlehem there was an
exchange, a trade off.
The word in Latin here is
“commercium”, literally whence we get
our word “commerce”.
But it’s not just “commerce”
as in business, but any sort of trade or exchange.
So what’s the exchange?
I’ll let the preface
answer that:
“Through him the holy
exchange that restores our life
has shone forth today in
splendor:
when our frailty is
assumed by your Word
not only does human
mortality receive unending honor
but by this wondrous
union we, too, are made eternal.”
So, our fragility is
assumed by the divine Word, the second person of the Trinity. And the preface
says that when that Word is made flesh:
Our human mortality
receives unending honor ⬇ and we humans are made—in some way—eternal ⬆
You notice my hand
motions there, trying to show the two-way street of the exchange, the commercium.
Even though both are
gifts from God, there are two directions to it: Something coming down and something
being taken up.
The incarnation, the Word
becoming flesh, God-made-man: this exchange seems almost crazy—it seems weird
that we are “made eternal” by him joining his nature to us, but even stranger
things have been said.
In Second Peter, chapter
one, St. Peter himself says: “So that through these great promises you might
become partakers of the divine nature”
And even more bluntly St.
Athanasius says : “God became man⬇, so that man might become God⬆”
Now, we know that we have
to qualify the statements. We know that the incarnation and even Baptism
doesn’t make a cease to be human.
But in a real way, by God
adopting us in his Son, He has made
us sharers in His divine nature.
God became man⬇, so that man might (in some way) become part God⬆.
The exchange is what the
saints and singers called the admirabile
commercium, the “wondrous exchange”.
Admirabile is obviously related to
admirable and admiration, but our modern meaning of those isn’t the same.
It’s more like the idea
of wonder, awe, amazement.
So “wondrous exchange”
works. Or marvelous exchange.
Even awe-some or
amaze-ing probably fall short because of how we use them today: “Awesome! Amazing!”
Awe-full, as in the sense
of “awe-filled”, “filled with awe”, might come a little closer. But…
There is even a 16th
century Christmas song, O Admirabile Commercium,
about this:
“O wonderful exchange:
the Creator of human kind
[...]
assuming a living body,
he lavished on us his
divinity.”
So that’s the heart of
the Christmas mystery
But that idea of wondrous
exchange doesn’t stop once he’s born.
The whole Christian
mystery is this downward and upward, upward and downward motion.
God creates⬇, and his creation gives him praise⬆
The people of Israel cry
out⬆, and God responds with
saving action⬇
Jesus is sent down to
humanity⬇ so that he can in turn
lift humanity up to his father⬆
Jesus hands over his
whole life to his father in sacrifice⬆ and in return his father gives him life again⬇
The whole of Christian
worship—because it’s literally us being joined to the worshiping action of
Jesus—is doing this cycle of give and receive, up and down.
Praise and thanksgiving
go up⬆ and then we ask for
graces to come down⬇
We confess our sins⬆; forgiveness and peace come down⬇
Jesus comes down to us in
the Eucharist⬇ to lead us up to the life of the trinity⬆
We come up to sanctuary
for communion⬆ so we have strength to go out to the world⬇
We bring our cares, worries,
and prayers each Sunday⬆ and lay them at the foot of the altar, and each Sunday we are
filled up at the graces to go out again and face the week⬇
This is the marvelous
exchange.
It’s the pattern of
creation and redemption,
It’s the pattern of our
worship and prayer,
It’s the pattern of our
Christian apostolic life.
I want to wrap up by
showing you one super-concrete example of this that you couldn’t really
perceive until we started saying the Eucharistic prayer ad orientem this fall.
<<For the following
section, I had walked over in front of the altar. The parts in bold are when I turned to and was
facing the people; the parts with regular font are when I was facing forward, ad orientem, toward the altar.>>
So, between the Offertory
and Communion, while the priest is at the altar, he’s mostly facing away from
you and toward the God the Father.
But during that period
there are three times he turns and faces the people, which itself is a little
visual image of the commercium, the
exchange.
Those are the times he
stops talking to the Father and talks directly to the people in the
congregation.
Now, perhaps some of you have noticed that the priest usually
turns clockwise out to face you, and then usually returns back to the altar
counterclockwise.
And perhaps a few of you
have noticed that there’s one time—and one time only—when he doesn’t do quite
that, and that’s at the end of the offertory, right after he has first
presented the bread and wine, and when he invites us all to:
“Pray, brethren, that my sacrifice and yours will be acceptable
to God our Heavenly Father”
He turns out, says the line, and keeps on going the same
clockwise direction back around.
When I was talking to
other priests getting ready to launch this in October one of the priests knew
the reason for that and explained that has everything to do with that line
“pray that our sacrifice be acceptable“
So the priest is turning to the people, collecting all of their
prayers as it were, and asking them to pray with him that we might bring a
worthy sacrifice to God…
And then, almost as if he’s scooping up all of the prayers from
the people➡, he then brings it back
around, with his arms full, back to the altar.
That was cool for me to learn. That made total sense it was just
a great image.
But of course as we’ve learned in this homily it’s never just a
one-way road.
There’s always an
exchange. There must be a moment of return.
So the priest gathers up
all of our prayers and offerings and takes them to the altar. And then—the
priest through Jesus’ power, and Jesus through the priest’s hands—we together
praise and worship the Father facing forward.
All through the Eucharistic
Prayer we stay facing this way, all through the Consecration, and in the Our
Father too because we’re all praying together to the Father…
...So then, when is the
first time the priest comes back around? When does he complete the exchange?
Right after saying the
prayer “Look on the faith of the Church and graciously grant her peace”, he turns and again with open hands says “The
peace of the Lord be with you always.”
It almost feels like he’s flinging this peace out into our
hearts.
The priest with open arms scooped up all our prayers, took them
to the altar; they along with the gifts were transformed, and now he turns and
pours out the peace of the Lord upon us.
Perfect circle. Perfect exchange.
And then look what
happens: he turns back the altar, not to say anything else but just to break
the Host, and then turns back to the people again holding up the Eucharist
saying, “Behold the Lamb of God…”
Like he’s saying “No, really. I meant it about that peace stuff.
Here he is: the Prince of Peace.
We brought our bread and wine here and God exchanged it for the
body and blood of his son.”
And then to complete the downward action, the priest gives the Host
to the faithful, and the faithful go out into the world.
<<return to
pulpit>>
So now I feel kind of
like the kung fu teacher who says, “There is nothing left for me to teach you.”
Once that realization
about the second half of the circle of the divine exchange had sunk in for me a
couple weeks ago at Mass, I knew that was the perfect way to finish out this
year in which from time to time we have really focused on our worship.
Not only is the circle of
exchange at Mass complete, but now we have seen it, and that completes the
cycle of lessons on how we worship.
I feel kind of like
Simeon who can say now “Lord, now you let your servant go in peace.”
If I’m gone tomorrow, I
feel that I’ve giving you what you need to get the most out of Mass.
So as we wrap up this
year, let’s take what we have learned and go forward.
Now we see very
concretely the exchange. It was always there—even when we faced each other, the
wondrous exchange was the key to Mass—
But now we can really see:
we bring all we have to God; he transforms it—bread, wine, praises, and
petitions—and then gives that back to us in spiritual graces and the physical
Eucharist to get us through our days.
