The Nativity of the Lord (Christmas)

Since The Nativity of the Lord (Christmas) rarely falls on a Sunday, I’ve never taken the opportunity to write about the readings for this holy day, since my focus is generally on just the Sunday readings.  But I find myself in a festive mood (and with some time on my hands) so I thought I would dive into the readings for this, the start of the Christmas season.

As with most other holy days, the time of the Mass dictates the readings.  For The Nativity of the Lord, there are four separate selections:  The Vigil Mass, Mass During the Night, Mass at Dawn, and Mass During the Day.  It is also important to note that, like with the Triduum and Easter, the readings for The Nativity are always the same, and do not change with the Liturgical cycles.  And if you’ve ever read my synopsis of the Easter readings, you know that I lament about those “twice-a-year” Catholics because the readings for Easter Sunday don’t truly express the wonder and meaning of the day without the context of the readings from Lent through the Triduum.  The same can be said of our readings for The Nativity – without the context of the readings from the Advent season, our readings for The Nativity, by themselves, don’t provide the context to really give us a fuller understanding of the awesomeness of the moment of Jesus’ birth.

The Vigil Mass
Isaiah 62:1-5
Psalm 89:4-5, 16-17, 27, 29
Acts 13:16-17, 22-25
Matthew 1:1-25

Mass During the Night
Isaiah 9:1-6
Psalm 96:1-2, 2-3, 11-13, 13
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14

Mass at Dawn
Isaiah 62:11-12
Psalm 97:1, 6, 11-12
Titus 3:4-7
Luke 2:15-20

Mass During the Day
Isaiah 52:7-10
Psalm 98:1, 2-3, 3-4, 5-6
Hebrews 1:1-6
John 1-1-18

Now, rather than reviewing each set of readings individually, I’d like to review them collectively so it’s easier to compare the different readings for the selected Masses.

Our first readings are all from the book of the Prophet Isaiah.  Not at all surprising given that Isaiah is often our go-to prophet for high Christian occasion, not only because this book is the most prolific of the prophetic writings (coming in at 66 chapters), its authors provide us with a vision of “the son of man” that to our Christian ears sounds very much like Jesus.  All four readings from Isaiah, spanning all three sets of authors (Isaiah chapters 1-39, Deutero-Isaiah chapters 40-55, Trito-Isaiah chapters 56-66) all speak of hope, God’s forgiveness, and the restoration of Jerusalem into Zion (a “heavenly” or “perfected” Jerusalem) – all suitable for the celebration of the Nativity.  While our reading for the Vigil Mass speaks of Jerusalem’s vindication, the Mass During the Night specifically mentions the means of that deliverance though a son born to the throne of David.  For Mass at Dawn, we hear a short passage about our savior coming, whereas for Mass During the Day we hear “God is your king” amid a beautiful mountain of Zion – not so much a vision of a savior, but a story of a redeemed Jerusalem.

Our Psalms for The Nativity are all joyous.  For the Vigil Mass we sing “Forever I will sing the goodness of the Lord,” calling God our “rock” and “savior.”  For Mass During the Night our refrain is much more specific, “Today is born our Savior, Christ the Lord,” wrapped around verses from Psalm 96, which while praising God for his wonderous deeds, does not mention the Christ – so our response being more of a Christian conceit to the method of God’s saving the world.  For Mass at Dawn we sing, “A light will shine on us this day: the Lord is Born for us,” another Psalm showing us the Lord is King, dressed with the Christian refrain that the Lord, in this case, Jesus, is born for us.  For Mass during the Day, our references to a savior or Christ is, similar to our first reading, somewhat obscured as we sing, “All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God.”

For our second reading, the Vigil Mass avoids the epistles and goes to Acts of the Apostles, where we hear Paul teaching the people of Antioch about Jesus – specifically his origin story as a descendant of David, called to be our savior.  For the Mass During the Night, we hear from the rarely quoted Letter to Titus, where we are warned to reject godless ways and wait in hope for the coming of Jesus – not really an expectation of the Nativity as it is a guide for the second coming, but a valuable lesson nonetheless.  For Mass at Dawn we hear again from the Letter to Titus where we are told that it was through God’s mercy that Jesus came to us.  For Mass During the Day we hear from the opening of Letter to the Hebrews.  Like our other readings for this Mass, the message, while poetic, is a little hard to follow.  It opens with how the scriptures prophesied of the Son who will be the heir of all things, and telling us that this sone is more than a mere angel, but one whom the angels worship – putting this son on par with God himself, but never mentioning him by name (in fact, we don’t even hear the name of Jesus until halfway through Chapter 2).

For our Gospel readings, we get some variety among the different Masses.  For the Vigil Mass, we start with the optional genealogy from Abraham to Joseph, followed by a narrative of how the birth of Jesus came about from Joseph’s perspective – not surprising given Matthew’s Jewish audience.  For Mass during the Night, we turn to Luke’s gospel where we hear the more familiar version of the Nativity – the one quoted by Linus in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”) – where Mary gives birth to here first born son, and the angel appeared to the shepherds in the nearby fields.  For Mass at Dawn we continue the narrative from Lukes Gospel where the shepherds, after hearing the message of the angel, go to see the Christ child.  For Mass during the Day, we turn to John’s Gospel, as we so often do during high holy days.  Here we get the Jesus’ origin story (extremely fitting for the holy day) from the opening paragraphs of his gospel, but as is typical with John, it’s wrapped in lofty, metaphorical language that can be hard to follow.  We here the famous, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  An extremely beautiful way to describe how Jesus was always meant to be from the dawn of creation to now, but it can also have the average listener saying shaking their heads saying, “what?”  It’s clearly a reading that requires some unpacking to appreciate its poetry and message for the average Catholic.

Final Thoughts:
All these readings for the Nativity share the same message – through God’s love and mercy we, as God’s people, have been redeemed, and that redemption comes though Jesus, the Christ, God’s only begotten son, delivered to us as one of us, born as an infant and raised by Mary and Joseph, to become the sacrifice that saves all humanity, bringing us back to the Lord.

For our beloved twice-a-year Catholics coming to Mass on Christmas Day, I think the message is somewhat obscured through some beautifully poetic readings, but they still give us the basis for the celebration:  In these readings we have a message of hope, redemption, and joy.  Joy that God loves us so much he sent us his son to guide us back to him.  Yes, that guidance comes at a great price, but that part of the story is for later.  For now, we rejoice in that the long-prophesied savior has been born!  Praise be to God!

And let us please not forget - for all faithful Christians, this day is just the start of the Christmas season!  All these people who kick their Christmas trees to the curb on December 26th are missing the point!  The Christmas season BEGINS on the 25th with the Nativity of the Lord, and runs through to the Epiphany, and in the modern Roman Calendar, ends with the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord.  Twelve days (or more) where we get to keep the party going, continuing to celebrate with family and friends through the New Year and beyond.  What better way to praise God for giving us his son!