Christmas Day, Mass during the Day (2025) - Fr Joseph Vnuk, OP

I was marking essays recently and, noticing how a couple of students had put their trust in AI and had been disappointed, I was reminded of a line from one of the Harry Potter novels, when Mr Weasley says: “Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brains.” We are human beings and we deal best with “others” if those “others” are also human beings physically present to us. Despite the technological advances that enable us to communicate with people far away—letters, telephone calls, video-conferences—we want the people we love to be in the same room as us. And although we may send Christmas cards or emails and even have zoom sessions with family and friends at Christmas, it is a poor substitute for being at the table with us.

It is when we are physically present to each other that we make a present of our physical selves to each other: it is a moment of giving. All these technologies can transmit information or data, but they lack, and always will lack, the power for people to make a true present of themselves.

The frustrations in communications between human beings become so much more noticeable when we try to communicate with God. God quite clearly falls under Mr Weasley’s warnings of a being which thinks for itself and yet we cannot see where he keeps his brains. This has not stopped people from fashioning idols so that they can delude themselves into thinking they can see where their god keeps his brains, but the people of Israel became more and more aware of the dangers of that approach. Instead they had the two tablets given to Moses on Mount Sinai, the sayings of the prophets, and the occasional visions of angels.

These were not enough. If God sends an angel, then it means he himself is still absent and not present. As for the prophets, if you have ever tried to read them, you will realise that they were trying to communicate something that could not be put into words: as the Letter to the Hebrews says, they spoke inconsistently and in bits and pieces. And the two tablets given on Mount Sinai, while much clearer, could not really establish a covenant with God. Although they heard his voice, he was not visibly or tangibly present; he held back from making a present of himself; he did not appear as the gracious giver who inspires grateful love. Instead, the voice inspired fear, so that God had to promise the people of Israel that he would speak to them through one of their own number.

What we are celebrating today is that, after all these unsatisfying preliminaries, we finally have the physical, human presence of God among us. The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. God has not sent a mere angel, but has sent the One of whom he says, “You are my Son, it is I who have begotten you this day.” This is the very Word through whom God makes and sustains all things, the perfect likeness of his nature. The Law was given through Moses, grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ.

This is not just a matter of feelings. I started this homily talking about my experience as a teacher. Teaching is not simply about giving information. It is about walking together with others as they become more profoundly human, and it requires trust. The students have to see the sort of human being that the teacher is, so that they can trust the teacher on the journey they will make together. If you cannot see where the teacher keeps its brains, then you cannot trust where you are being led. When the Word becomes flesh, we finally get to see, so to speak, where God keeps his brains: in a human being who is born like us, who lives like us, who is tempted in every way that we are, who suffers pain and shame and injustice in a way that we would all dread, who died like us, and who rose in glory in a way that we have never known, but in the way that he inspires us to hope for.

This is the good news so beautiful that even the feet of those who bear it share in that beauty, as Isaiah says in one of those prophecies that only make sense in the light of Christ.

Today we celebrate that God is present among us. God has made himself a present to us. In gratitude we make ourselves a present to God. First of all, in the Eucharist, but also in the gift of ourselves to each other. At Christmas we may do this by giving as presents things we have bought or made. But our goal is to become like Christ, to make ourselves a present to others, and in that way reveal in the darkness of this world the glory of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Fr Joseph Vnuk, OP is the Regent of Studies and the Chaplain to Monash University, assigned to St Dominic's Priory, Melbourne.