Christmas Dawn Mass 2022
If you were at Midnight Mass, you will have heard me recite one of my speeches as First Shepherd in my Primary School Nativity play, AD 1960. Explaining things to the innkeeper, I had to say “In that stable, host, in the manger, lies the Saviour of the world. A child has been born there this night who will redeem Israel.”
Actually, I suspect that the shepherd wouldn’t quite have said that. After all, shepherds were ordinary working blokes, not theologians. Historians differ as to whether they were scallywags or respectable citizens. Either way, I imagine that the shepherd’s speech would have been more on these lines:
“I haven’t got an effing clue, mate. All I know is this effing angel appeared and told us that in this effing stable there’s a baby who is going to turn the effing world upside down. In fact there was a whole effing army of them. It was like one of them effing religious festivals.
“Oh sorry, luv. I didn’t mean to swear. Ey, watch your effing language lads, there’s a lady here.”
“And everyone who heard it was astonished at what the shepherds had to say” reports St. Luke. Aye, I bet they were. “When they saw the child, they repeated what they had been told about Him…and the shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen.”
Does it strike you that the shepherds are now fulfilling the role of angels: angels with dirty faces, maybe, but angels nonetheless? After all, an angel is a messenger, from the Greek word angelos.
In the parish of St.Thomas the Apostle, Claughton-on-Brock, we found ourselves a shepherd short. It was actually a king who went missing on his way back to the East: he probably fell off his camel. In any case, he ended up in pieces. Being a resourceful parish, we promoted a shepherd to kingly status, giving him a fresh dab of paint, placing a gold painted box at his feet. After all, you can get by with one shepherd: two wise men would lack a certain je ne sais quoi.
Also, we didn’t have an angel, which created a useful point for a homily. At the Mass which most of the children attended I asked “Is anything missing from the crib?”
Being largely from farming backgrounds, some of them latched onto the shortage of shepherds.
“Is there anything else?” Eventually, it dawned on some bright spark that there was no angel.
“Are you sure? I can see lots of angels. I can see a dozen angels standing here at the front, and looking around the church, I can see loads more.”
At this point, some clever mick spotted the two marble angels over the altar, and had to be slapped down. I then explained the meaning of the word “angel”—there’s nothing like a Greek lesson to put rural Lancashire children in the Christmas spirit—and gave them the task of being angels, with or without dirty faces, in the coming year.
Right then! Have WE got an angel? Not in the crib we haven’t. You know what that means, don’t you?
