Simbang Gabi Mass
Monday of Week Four of Advent (Year A)

Homily

Most Rev Timothy Costelloe SDB
Archbishop of Perth

Monday 22 December, 2025
St Mary’s Cathedral, Perth

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With Christmas now just two days away, the readings which the Church has been offering us in this last week of Advent invite us to turn our minds and hearts more directly to the great mystery of the incarnation, the mystery of God’s overflowing love which leads God, in the person of Jesus Christ, to come among us as one of us so that, in Jesus, we might see the face of the God of mercy and know God as our loving Father.

This is, indeed, a great mystery and when it is revealed to us, especially in the Gospels of Saint Matthew and Saint Luke, we are told of the marvelous, miraculous events which surround the coming of Jesus: the virginal conception of Jesus in the womb of His mother Mary; the unexpected conception of John the Baptist whose parents were thought to be too old to have a child; the strange dreams which Joseph, the husband of Mary, had and which revealed to him the mystery of the origins of the child his wife was to bear. We hear, too, of the choirs of angels who announced the birth of Jesus in song to the shepherds who watched their flocks; of the strange visit of the wise men from the East who came bearing gifts for a newborn king; and of yet another dream in which Joseph was warned to flee with his wife and child from the tyrant King Herod who sought to kill the baby. Thus the Holy Family became a refugee family.

It should not surprise us that the birth of Jesus is accompanied by such marvels. And nor should it surprise us that so many people missed the significance of these events. After all it is the mighty and all powerful God, the source of everything that exists, who comes into the world as a helpless, fragile baby. His life which then continues to unfold, as every life does, will eventually lead Jesus to the cross on Calvary. Because of who he is, the death of Jesus on the cross stands, on the one hand, as the awful symbol of the destructive power of sin and, on the other hand, as the extraordinary symbol of the limitless love of God for his people. 

Those who were present at the birth of Jesus in the stable at Bethlehem, would have known that they were witnesses to, and participants in, a wonderful work of God. And yet almost certainly none of them could have really understood that the fullness of God was contained in this tiny child. And then, at the end of his life, those who jeered at him as He died on the cross were blind to what was really happening: that in Jesus God, on our behalf, had entered into battle with the powers of evil. Even less could they have understood that what looked to be the total defeat of goodness and the complete triumph of evil would prove, three days later, to have been the very opposite. The stable in Bethlehem is inseparable from the cross on Calvary and both only make sense because of the resurrection. This is the source of our Christian hope and the true reason for our celebration of the feast of Christmas. Indeed, if these things are not true, then the Church itself is built on a lie – and yet here we are, over two thousand years later, still gathering together to celebrate the birth of this child.

As far as we know, apart from Jesus there was only one person present in that stable in Bethlehem who was also present on the hill of Calvary just over 30 years later: Mary the mother of Jesus who gave her initial yes to God’s plan when the angel Gabriel announced to her that she was to be the mother of the saviour. That yes, which must have marked every day of Mary‘s life from that time onwards, reached its culmination when Mary again gave her yes, this time in anguish, as she watched her son die on the cross. That Mary was there, giving her yes at the beginning of Jesus’s life, that she was present at the key moments of her son’s ministry, and that she was there giving her yes at the end of his life, explains why we, in our Catholic tradition, have always seen her as the Mother of the Church. Saint Paul reminds us often in his letters that we, the Church, are the body of Christ, with Christ as the head of his body. Just as Mary was the mother of Christ in time, so Mary is the Mother of the Church which is his body. Mary accompanies us on our journey of faith and supports us with her prayers. And as she once did to the stewards who, at the wedding feast in Cana, had discovered that they had run out of wine, so she continues to say to us now: you do whatever he, Jesus, tells you.

Because Jesus, when He was dying, gave Mary to us as our mother, and because when her own life came to an end she was taken body and soul into heaven, Mary is not simply a great figure from the past. She is so closely united to her Son in heaven that she cannot help but be united to his people here on earth. We could do no better, in these last two days before Christmas, than to ask her to be with us and journey with us as we now, like Mary once did so long ago, prepare to welcome Christ once more into our world, into our lives, into our hearts.