The Roman Liturgy: Christmas and Christ’s Triumph over Darkness
“The fate of the prince of this world has been cast.”
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The Roman Liturgy
Christmas
In previous parts of this series, we considered Advent’s liturgical texts and their meaning for us today.
We saw that the Church calls, again and again, for her Lord’s coming, and that she promises her children that he will arrive without delay. The excitement and restlessness only increases as Advent progresses, especially on Christmas Eve.
We saw how the Advent liturgy can be seen to focus, not just on Christ’s birth, but also the “Parousia” (the second and final coming of Christ). As Fr H.J. Coleridge SJ tells us, Advent represents the Church “training us” to see the end of the world in the right way, and even to long for it:
“The Church at this time, my brethren in Jesus Christ, is training us to prepare ourselves more particularly to celebrate with joy and thankfulness the great feast of Christmas, the commemoration of our Lord’s first coming into the world, in poverty, in suffering, in gentleness; in benignity and humility.
“But she is led by a heavenly instinct to, do this, in great measure, by means of considerations concerning our Blessed Lord’s future coming in glory, majesty, and power.
“These two thoughts seem, as it were, to require, each the other, as its own fitting and natural supplement.”[1]
This “training” can in turn prepare us to face the encroaching tyranny and ecclesiastical chaos of our time.
But this “apocalyptic” approach to Advent is, to some degree, absent in the popular imagination today. For example, it rarely appears in conferences or popular carols.
As we saw from the writings of Fr Johannes Pinsk, this approach allows us to enter into the Church’s liturgical calls for the coming of Our Lord in an apparently new way for many.[2] Rather than praying for Christ’s historical birth, which has already happened, and rather than just praying for his coming into our souls (supremely important though this is), approaching Advent in this way inculcates into us a real hope for a host of public, ecclesial things that have not yet happened: the final, triumphant glory of Christ; the vindication of his claims against his enemies in this world; his social reign over society; and the eventual exaltation of our Holy Mother, the Church.
But here a question arises: if we are to accept this apocalyptic view of Advent, then where does this leave Christmas and Epiphany?
Are we to spend four weeks hoping for the final coming of Christ, only to give up on the idea, and celebrate two feasts marking solely historical events in Our Lord’s life?
History
Our Lord’s birth was an historical event. We see this focus on the historicity of his birth on three occasions in the liturgy (the Fourth Sunday of Advent, the Martyrology on Christmas Eve, and in the Gospel of Midnight Mass). In each of these, the Church proclaims the birth of Christ with reference to civil dates and known civil rulers.[3]
The historicity of everything about Christ’s life and work emphasises that our holy religion is based on a true, solid and historical foundation, quite unlike the other mythical, mystery religions existing in the world.
But even as an historical event, the nativity of Christ already points towards the future. We can already see the wood of the manger foreshadowing the wood of the Cross, and the swaddling clothes foreshadowing the ropes, bindings and shroud. The very name of “Bethlehem” (House of Bread) points towards Christ giving himself to us under the accidents of bread and wine, to be our true and living sustenance in the Holy Eucharist.
Pinsk claims that Our Lord’s nativity points even further forward than this. All the Church’s feasts, Pinsk says, have some reference to the final coming of Christ. According to him, if Advent is a season when we long for and pray for Christ’s final coming in triumph, then Christmas (and Epiphany) would in turn be a commemoration of that final coming itself.
Already the End Times
In the words of St Ignatius of Loyola, Christ wills “to conquer the whole world and all [his] enemies, and thus to enter into the glory of [his] Father.”[4]
The will of Christ is also the will of his mystical body and spouse, the Church. We, the members of that mystical body, continue his mission on earth – whilst our head, of course, has already entered into this glory.
In this, we are already assured of the triumph, and are merely cleaning up the remaining skirmishes of the war. At any moment, the final victory is to be accomplished.
Pope St Leo the Great explains how all this appears in Christmas, which pertains to the birth of the Church herself:
“… [I]n adoring the birth of our Saviour, we find we are celebrating the commencement of our own life.
“For the birth of Christ is the source of life for Christian folk, and the birthday of the Head is the birthday of the body.
“Although every individual that is called has his own order, and all the sons of the Church are separated from one another by intervals of time, yet as the entire body of the faithful being born in the font of baptism is crucified with Christ in His passion, raised again in His resurrection, and placed at the Father’s right hand in His ascension, so with Him are they born in this nativity.”[5]
Just as calling for Our Lord’s coming in Advent should progressively detach us from the worldly city, and make us cleave more and more to the Kingdom of God and the Church, so too can Christmas itself do the same. We want Our Lord to reign over our hearts and our families – but we also want him to reign over society and the whole world. As said in the last piece, we all want everyone – the shepherds and the kings – to come and recognise him in his mystical body. In other words, we want something ecclesial and public.
Pinsk says that Christmas represents “the real fulfilment, albeit still imperfect, of what Advent has prepared” – namely, this very victory and reign of Christ over his Kingdom (the Church) and over society as a whole.
Many do not know Christ, or even reject him. Whole nations remain or have become rebels against his reign, and as such, his reign can still be extended. Each celebration of Christmas may therefore bring new graces to achieve this end, and that of the final ousting of the Prince of this world.
But in another sense, Christmas helps us celebrate the kingship of Christ which he is already exercising over us and over his kingdom. It is for this reason that the New Testament says that “the fulness of time” has already arrived. In Galatians, St Paul tells us:
“When the fulness of the time was come, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law: that he might redeem them who were under the law: that we might receive the adoption of sons.” (Gal. 4.5)
This phrase appears in several other places.[6] The point, according to Pinsk, is this: all religious events – in fact, all events – prior to Christ’s first coming had pointed to the Incarnation and Redemption. Pinsk writes that there is, in a sense, nothing more to come:
“[T]his historical event itself is both the foundation and the revelation of the mystery to the world. With the Incarnation of the Son of God begins a new world, a new era, a new ‘aeon’, whose fundamental characteristic consists in the following: the individuals of this world are no longer mere vehicles of a life and a power received from God and created ‘ex nihilo’ by Him; they now possess a life that is properly uncreated and divine.”
For this reason, he says, “it is impossible to enclose and limit the whole mystery of the Incarnation within the framework of a simple historical event.” Rather, this annual feast of the historical birth of Christ, “while stressing the events that took place in Bethlehem, goes far beyond the limits of this purely historical aspect.”
In other words:
“[I]n order to celebrate the feast of Christmas in its fullness, it is necessary to go beyond the external circumstances of the Saviour’s birth, and to grasp what constitutes the permanent reality of this mystery.” (Emphasis added)
And what is this “permanent reality”?
Christmas as the feast of our coming and present victory
The permanent reality of Christmas, according to Pinsk, is the Incarnation of God as man: it is the fact that the man Jesus of Nazareth is the Word Incarnate, the eternally begotten God the Son, and is sitting at the right hand of his Father. This is the same God-man who suffered, died, rose, ascended – and who is King by right over all societies today, and who will come to judge the living and the dead.
It is important to always keep in mind that this glorious Judge loves us with a human heart full of eternal, burning and divine love.
The Martyrology’s announcement tells us that Our Lord came to earth, “willing to consecrate the world with his most gracious coming.”[7] We see this “consecration of the world” made most manifest in what is to be an unending union between the second person of the Blessed Trinity and the human nature which is hypostatically united to him. Of this Pinsk says:
“This union guarantees in a definitive way the eternity of the flesh: glorified in Jesus Christ. In this we truly celebrate God’s triumph. So well has he overcome human frailty and human weakness that he has infused them with divine life in the person of the Logos, without destroying or weakening the intensity of this life or the power of his Word.”
And yet, as we know, this “consecration of the world” and the redemption of Christ does not restore everything in this world to how it was in the Garden of Eden. Rather, it inaugurates a campaign, a battle, and a struggle. For this reason, Pinsk writes:
“This is what gives the feast of Christmas the character of a combat, of a duel with the powers of evil.”
Does “Christmas as a duel” seem far-fetched? We have already seen that the texts of Advent give us a dramatic and thrilling picture of the season, quite different to that to which we are accustomed.
If we consider Christmas’ liturgical texts, we find the same militaristic spirit of combat which we have been discussing.
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The Liturgical Texts
Consider the spirit of combat in the very introit of the Midnight Mass – the first thing we hear:
The Lord hath said to me: Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee.
V. Why have the Gentiles raged, and the people devised vain things?
This Introit is taken from Psalm 2, which we find the following:
The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes met together, against the Lord, and against his Christ.
Let us break their bonds asunder: and let us cast away their yoke from us.
He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them: and the Lord shall deride them.
Then shall he speak to them in his anger, and trouble them in his rage. […]
Ask of me, and I will give thee the Gentiles for thy inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession.
Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron, and shalt break them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.
This is the Psalm, again, which opens the Midnight Mass of Christmas. And the Gradual of the same Mass is no less triumphant and pugilistic:
With thee is the principality in the day of thy strength: in the brightness of the saints: from the womb before the day star I begot thee.
V. The Lord said to my Lord: Sit thou at my right hand: Until I make thy enemies thy footstool.
This continues into the Christmas period. Consider the Introit of the second Mass:
A light shall shine upon this day: for the Lord is born to us: and He shall be called Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace: of Whose reign there shall be no end.
V. The Lord is King, in splendor robed; robed is the Lord and girt about with strength.
The verse also appears in the Gradual. Some commentaries say that this “Dawn Mass” of Christmas is focused on coming of the shepherds to Bethlehem, because of the Gospel reading: but the other propers also seem to point towards the same spirit which we have been discussing.
Consider also the Introit of the Sunday in the octave:
While all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course, thy Almighty Word, O Lord, came down from thy royal throne.
This is taken from the book of Wisdom, which continues immediately thus in the inspired text itself:
… as a fierce conqueror into the midst of the land of destruction, with a sharp sword carrying thy unfeigned commandment, and he stood and filled all things with death, and standing on the earth, reached even to heaven. (Wisdom 18.15-16)
If we open the Missal or Breviary at random in this season, and we will not go far before finding such texts, all frequently insisting that this victory has arrived today.
Not that we should ignore the Christ-child in the manger. As already mentioned, the Masses of Christmas do indeed refer to the historical events – particularly in the Gospels which narrate Christ’s birth, and the coming of the shepherds (as already mentioned). We all love singing carols around the crib, and all the other lovely things about Christmas.
But we should not lose sight of this other spirit expressed in the Liturgy. The Gospel of the third Mass – St John’s “Last Gospel,” recited at each Mass – also speaks to us of the eternal generation of the Son of God, and expands our horizon beyond just the temporal, historical paradigm. Even the other references from this same Mass (and that of the Octave) which seem to refer to the Christ child, nonetheless refer to his power and glory:
A Child is born to us, a Son is given to us; upon His shoulder dominion rests; and His name shall be called the Angel of great counsel.
V. Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done wondrous deeds.[8]
The early Christians, Pinsk tells us, celebrated the historical events of Christ’s life – but always with their gaze turned towards the future in this way. He writes:
“Christian piety of the first centuries feels like a chosen army, sure of its triumph and of its future victory… The Christians of the first centuries looked forward to the coming of the Lord as a future reality… Ancient piety aspired to the second coming of Christ, to his definitive triumph: ‘May the form of this world disappear and the glory of the Lord appear’ (Maranatha). (Maranatha).”
As we can see from the texts above, this spirit is infused into the Christmas liturgy.
All this should teach us to see fierce glory in this infant, and tender love in our redeemer, conqueror, king and judge. This, perhaps, is what is meant when the Book of the Apocalypse talks of “the wrath of the Lamb.” (6.17).
Conclusion
Throughout Advent we prayed for Christ to come and to deliver us from the powers of darkness, and to judge the living and the dead. On the Fourth Sunday of Advent, the Church prays:
Put forth thy power, O Lord, we beseech thee, and delay not: and with thy great might come to our aid, so that what is hindered by our sins may be hastened by thy merciful goodness.[9]
And on the very eve of Christmas the Church explicitly calls to mind the coming of the Judge:
O God, You Who gladden us year after year with the expectation of our redemption, grant that we, who now welcome with joy Your only-begotten Son as our Redeemer, may also gaze upon Him without fear when He comes as our judge, our Lord Jesus Christ.[10] (Emphasis added)
Perhaps this way of understanding the texts of Christmas – as well as Advent and Epiphany – is precisely what we need today.
We are surrounded by wicked men who wish to destroy us, and who wish to pervert the Catholic religion into something which it is not, and cannot be.
It should give us great hope to know that even if we personally are destroyed, Christ has already won, and that his army and mystical body continues and will continue until none of his enemies are left.
And rather than give way to hatred, let us pray that Christ “destroys” his enemies in a more perfect and glorious way still – by converting them to himself with his merciful grace, and binding us all together in faith and charity, kneeling at the altar of our God.
As I said in the articles about Advent: this “apocalyptic” paradigm is by no means the only one for approaching the great feast of the Nativity of the Lord – nor should it exclude the others taught to us by the great spiritual masters. But we should also be taught by the holy Roman Liturgy. And this Roman liturgy teaches us the following, in Pinsk’s words:
“After the Incarnation, the fate of the prince of this world has been cast, even if he still has his role to play. He is in retreat. He can still mobilize his troops, but even his resistance and his very advances must lead him irremediably to his final ruin.
“We can, therefore, celebrate with joy the feast of Christmas; through it Christ, ever living in the Church, brings her one step closer to her divinization, to that day when in all truth and reality ‘all flesh shall see the salvation of God’ [Communion of the Vigil of Christmas].
“Then the Incarnation of the Son of God will no longer be the object only of the faith of ‘men of good will’ but will be the object of the vision of the whole universe.”
On that day, when all men see Christ as their judge, with their own eyes, may we be found amongst his friends, and not among those enemies whom the Midnight Mass propers says will be put under his feet as a footstool, and will be broken into pieces “like the potter’s vessel.”
Further Reading:
Fr Henry James Coleridge – The Return of the King – Discourses on the Latter Days
Fr H.M. Féret OP – The Apocalypse of St John
Dom Prosper Guéranger – The Liturgical Year
The Roman Liturgy – an ongoing series of standalone pieces about the liturgy, hope, and the crisis in the Church
Septuagesima I: The Beginning of the Liturgical Year?
Septuagesima II: The Babylonian Captivity and the Crisis in the Church
Lent I: The Protection of God
Lent II: “What Think You of Christ?”
Lent III: Laetare Sunday and the Church
Passiontide I: The Silence of Passiontide
Passiontide II: The Composure and Agony of Passiontide
Holy Week: Maundy Thursday and the Stripping of the Church
Holy Week: Good Friday and Christ’s Royal Throne
Easter: Faith and Failing to Recognise the Church
Ember Days: The Privilege of the Ember Days
Trinity Sunday: Explaining the Holy Trinity simplyChrist the King: “Are you a King, then?” – Christendom and the Social Kingship of Christ
Advent I: The Advent Liturgy and the Apocalypse
Advent II: The Close Presence of Christ in Advent
Advent III: Advent and the Preparation for Victory
Christmas and Christ’s Triumph over Darkness
Epiphany as the Manifestation of Christ’s Kingship
Epiphanytide: Ordinary Time or our Entrance into Eternity?As Amazon Associates, we earn from qualifying purchases through our Amazon links. See also The WM Review Reading List (with direct links for US and UK readers).
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Footnotes
[1] Fr Henry James Coleridge SJ, The Return of the King – Discourses on the Latter Days, Burns and Oates Ltd, London, 1894, p 1
[2] This essay draws on the observations of Fr Johannes Pinsk (1891-1957). Fr Pinsk was involved with the twentieth century liturgical movement in ways that many readers would consider regrettable. However, his 1933 essay ‘The Coming of the Lord in the Liturgy’ has a wealth of interesting information about Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, which I would like to share. It also contains some things which we, as traditional Catholics, would either reject or consider suspect. My purpose here is to present what is good, along with some comments, and so to help us pass a profitable Advent. Johannes Pinsk, ‘The Coming of the Lord in the Liturgy’, from Liturgische Zeitschrift Jahrgang, 1932-33 and reproduced in the Bulletin Paroissial Liturgique n. 1, 1938. This version is a DeepL translation from the Spanish version reproduced in El Que Vuelve, Vortice, Buenos Aires 2018, an available at https://engloriaymajestad.blogspot.com/2016/09/la-venida-del-senor-en-la-liturgia-por.html. Due to the difficulty of locating a physical copy of this text and giving correct page numbers, I will not clutter the text with references to it.
[3] “After the creation of the world, when in the beginning God brought forth heaven and earth out of nothing, in the year five thousand one hundred and ninety-nine; after the flood, in the year two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven; after the birth of Abraham, etc…. In the year seven hundred and fifty-two of the foundation of Rome and forty-two of the Empire of Octavian Augustus, the universe enjoying peace; in the sixth age of the world, Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father, wishing to consecrate the world by his merciful advent, having been conceived of the Holy Spirit, was born in Bethlehem of Judah, made man of the Virgin Mary”.
[4] St Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, trans. Louis J. Puhl SJ, The Newman Press, Worthington, Ohio, 1951, n. 093
[5] Pope St Leo the Great, Sermon 26 (VI on the Nativity). Translated by Charles Lett Feltoe. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 12. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1895. Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. Available at: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360326.htm
[6] In Ephesians, St Paul tells us that the redemption was the working of God’s will, “In the dispensation of the fulness of times, to re-establish all things in Christ, that are in heaven and on earth, in him.” 1.10. The same ideas appear in Hebrews and St Peter’s first epistle.
[7] Jesus Christus, ætérnus Deus æterníque Patris Fílius, mundum volens advéntu suo piíssimo consecráre,
[8] Introit for the Third Mass, taken from Divinum Officium.
[9] Collect, from Divinum Officium
[10] Collect, from Divinum Officium