Christmas I Nativity

Christmas I – The Nativity of the Lord

Isaiah 9:1-6; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14

[A copy of an icon of the “Virgin and Child” by Alex Malynka was given to each person in the assembly as they gathered for Christmas Mass.]

The first thing we ever see is a face.

A newborn’s eyes instinctively seek out another pair of eyes. In the icon, the eyes of the infant Jesus are looking up at his mother. Does not the face express concern as he searches to connect? And when an infant’s eyes connect with the eyes of their mother and father they lock on to each other – a mutual gaze that forges a connection to last a lifetime.

God created us with the desire to seek out faces. Not to look at a face as if it were a portrait but to look into a face. For that is where we encounter the complex mystery of human life, the mystery of personhood. And this personhood refers even to God as the scriptures are replete with references to “the face of God.”

Exodus records numerous times that “God used to speak to Moses face to face, as a person speaks to a friend.” [Exodus 33:11] In the psalms we often plead that God show us his face. “O Lord God of hosts, restore us; let your face shine upon us, and we will be saved.” [See Psalms 31, 67, 80] Even eternity is about the eternal gaze into God’s face. We call it the “beatific vision.” “They will look upon God’s face…and they shall reign forever and ever.” [Revelation 22:4-5].

To look upon the radiant, sublime, delightful face of God, for our God is not a “higher power” but “being itself”; an eternal gaze of intimate relationships: father, mother, son, spirit, parent, child, lover, spouse. The divine Trinity looks into each other’s eyes and faces deepening the bond of love.

Parents as you gaze upon the icon, do you remember the first moment you looked upon the face of each of your children?

Do we not all have a memory as a child of being fearfully lost, say, in a grocery store, until we turned and…and what? …saw the face of our father or mother, our bodies releasing all tension as we ran toward them in relief. To look into a face is to encounter a person, a friend, a lover. To look into a face is to have fear dispelled, to experience light and to know we are cared for.

That is why the most difficult part about these last nine months is that we have not been able to gaze upon each other’s faces. How often have each of us not recognized a person we know well behind that mask?

To gaze upon a face is crucial. Women and men in solitary confinement suffer profoundly from being deprived of another human face. For without looking into another person’s face, we do not come to know who we are.

God, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, chose to offer us a human face to behold, to become visible in a form we are familiar. It is therefore intriguing that the Gospels never describe what Jesus looked like. The closest description we have of Jesus is what the Church sees through the prophet Isaiah which we proclaim on Good Friday:

“There was in him no stately or majestic bearing to make us look at him,nor appearance that would attract us to him…He was rejected and avoided by everyone…like a person from whom you turn your face.” [Isaiah 53:2-3]

There may be good reason for this conscious (?) omission. For are there not faces that are unmasked but entirely faceless to us. “Like a person from whom you turn your face” we have rendered them invisible?  I refer to the disabled, the queer and trans, the refugee and migrant, the homeless and poor, the person who doesn’t speak English or suffers from a mental illness. They live among us but unseen. These faces are not masked, yet they are entirely missing from public life and the church.

In his own facelessness, Jesus, who seeks out the face of his mother in the icon, identifies with and seeks out the faces of his invisible sisters and brothers. His facelessness challenges us to see as he sees. To see those who are invisible among us, who need to be seen, who need compassion, who need to know who they are.

For the first thing we ever see is a face.

[Sources: Riva Lehrer, “The Virus Has Stolen Your Face From Me,” New York Times, 10 December 2020; Sr. Faith Riccio, CJ, Icons: The Essential Collection, Paraclete Press, Brewster, Massachusetts, 2016, see Forward by Frederica Mathews-Green]