Text: Canon Pat Browne at Midnight Mass 2015

Last week my friend told me: "you know Pat I do have struggles with my faith. I am Catholic. I pray. I go to Mass and I try to live a good, and just and moral life. I fail often but I am trying. But why am I Catholic? If I'd been born to different parents in a different place, say Egypt, I would probably be Muslim, or born in Tel Aviv, I might be Jewish. And I'm sure I could be a good God-fearing person if I were one of these too. So why am I Catholic? Is It all not just an accident of birth?"

I have to say I have often thought about this myself. But this is not only true of religion. It is true of the education I have received, the genes I have inherited. If, if, if. ....the fact is, different parents in a different culture would in fact make me a different person.

The reality is, I am born to a specific set of parents in a specific culture and in a specific set of circumstances and it is there that God finds me. Yes, he also finds the person in Tel Aviv or Cairo and he reveals something of himself to them through the faith their parents teach them and through their culture.

But he has revealed more of himself to me as a Christian Catholic.

It is not about being fair or unfair.

Just as I have different relationships with different people - my relationship to my best friend is not the same as to my mother or the one to my parishioner bishop is not the same as to my doctor. But each one can say they know me. Some more than others. But all of them know me. And all of them who are of good will respond to me, according to how I have revealed myself to them. That is all I can ask for. Likewise God reveals himself in different ways to different people. No two people are the same. It is called Revelation. And however he has revealed himself, He asks for a response. That is all he asks for. The response will be different according to each person and who they are.

But you and I know by faith, God has revealed himself most fully by becoming human, by boiling himself down to our size and speaking to us man to man, or in the first instance human baby to human people. This is the fullness of revelation.

The Word, God in his Divinity, Majesty and Distance, became flesh and chooses to live among us. God has stooped down from his glorious throne in heaven, stripped himself of his majesty and power, just like he was taking off his clothes. Folds them up and puts them to one side and taking on a human body lies naked as a child in a manger. Can you believe it? Many cannot. Why would God be bothered? Many people think this insults God even to think that he would do this.

If he has done this then I must make the appropriate response. If he has done this I cannot respond to him as if he had not.

Why am I Catholic? Because I look at the face of the baby and I see the face of God. Tonight, make a choice. Do not be a Catholic by accident of birth or culture, or family upbringing. Be a Catholic by choice. Tonight, decide, and choose this baby in his helplessness and innocence in the manger. Then go on to choose him when he grows up and speaks of Mercy and Forgiveness and living justly. And when he tells us as he told Philip one of the Apostles, "he who see me, see the father." When he tells us that as our life in this world will come to an end, he will have prepared a place for us with his father, and he will come back to take us there.

But what about those in Cairo or Tel Aviv, or those who are not even part of the main Faiths of this world? Who still seek God and adore him, maybe in the sun, moon and stars, thinking those things are God? They are closer to him than you might think. Certainly closer than those who have turned their face away from any sort of faith, in complacency or scorn. They must respond to God according to how he has shown himself to them.

A man called Howard Thurman wrote the following -

When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost: To heal the broken
To feed the hungry, to release the prisoner
To rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people
To make music in the heart.

In other words we have to go out and tell others about Jesus, the fullness of Revelation.

It's not their fault they do not know this. It is because we haven't told them. But we must know it ourselves first. It is only when we have him in our hearts and love him dearly in a one to one relationship - that's why he said: "I no longer call you servants but friends -It is only then when we are in this friendship with him that we will be able to do this with any credibility.

A child is born to us. God could have come as King, Leader, Big Boss - and DEMAND our love.

He doesn't. He comes as a baby to evoke our love , to call love out of us. To tease out of us the best of ourselves.

Everyone loves a baby. Even the hardest old curmudgeon. Embrace Jesus this night. Take him into your life. Because as it says in the lovely carol:
"When you kiss the face of the baby, you kiss the face of God."

Canon Pat Browne is Parish Priest at Holy Apostles, Pimlico, central London, and Roman Catholic Duty Priest at the Houses of Parliament.