Homily for Midnight Mass

December 25, 2025
St. Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

Isaiah 9:1-6
Psalm 96: 1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone.” What is this darkness into which streams such brilliant light? What is this gloom prophesied by Isaiah? This darkness and gloom is the experience of a newborn child being born in a filthy stable and resting in a trough because he and his parents are not wanted so that there is no other room for them within a human society; valued only for enumeration in the census ordered by Caesar. The gloom of rejection that will shadow this child’s life through His Passion and Death is present even tonight.

Yet, in this murky stable shines precisely the brilliant light who is the light that the darkness cannot overcome. In the Divine Infant Jesus, we see also the fully human infant Jesus — in need of our love and attention. In the Divine Infant Jesus, for whom the world has no space, we see Him make space for us in the gift of our true humanity. In the Divine Infant Jesus, God has laid low all of the sins that have clung to human nature since the disobedience of Adam and Eve and has washed us with virtue. For now, amidst the gloom and murk of the stable, our full humanity beams radiantly with selflessness and love. This love has changed human history: Are we willing to make room for this love that He might change our lives? As Saint Augustine once wrote, “Human pride weighed you down so heavily that only divine humility could raise you up again.”

God has become man in the Divine Infant of Bethlehem through the loving and faithful consent of the Virgin Mary, that we might see all children in this child. In this child we now can see clearly in the darkness of our still impoverished world that still clings to gloom in the darkness of fear. In our baptism, we have been washed clean of the murk and darkness of vice that we might reflect the brilliance of the light of this child. The enlightened eyes of the baptized recognize God in every human being and reject the lie of the evil one who would distort human beings as nothing more than brute animals. Through the grace given in the Christ Child, we have the knowledge and humility to recognize and embrace the dignity of other children for which this world and its staunch partisans still has no room nor value — the poor, the unborn, the refugee from war, and those in the margins who matter only to be numbered in a census.

Darkness and gloom are no longer inevitable for us because of God has shone His enduring and eternal light.

As our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, said earlier this evening, “In the Child Jesus, God gives the world a new life: His own, offered for all. He does not give us a clever solution to every problem, but a love story that draws us in. In response to the expectations of peoples, He sends a child to be a word of hope. In the face of the suffering of the poor, He sends one who is defenseless to be the strength to rise again. Before violence and oppression, He kindles a gentle light that illumines with salvation all the children of this world.”

The Child born tonight is Christ the Lord who is our Savior, sent by the Father to deliver us from the darkness of sin and the gloom of fear. We are attentive like the shepherds to His birth as the Light of the World and because of this, we are attentive to His mission that He generously offers us as our mission of light into darkness. Thus, we leave tonight obliged in love to be attentive to His presence in others who are affected by and accustomed to the darkness so in need of the light that now has shone upon and in us. Our attentiveness has brought us to the stable tonight with the shepherds to meet the Christ Child; our attentiveness must guide us out of this Cathedral tonight to see the same Christ Child present in the poor, in the unborn, in the refugee, in victims of crime, in those wounded in battle, in those who are ignored and overlooked in a society that has grown accustomed to the darkness and indifferently imagines the darkness to be inevitable and not all that intolerable.

As we approach this altar this morning, let our hearts “exult before the LORD, for He comes; for He comes to rule the earth. He shall rule the world with justice and the peoples with His constancy.”