December 22, 2025
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Chicago, IL on December 19, 2025 as part of Simbang Gabi, the traditional Filipino novena of Masses preceding Christmas. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Judges 13:2-7, 24-25a; Psalm 71; and Luke 1:5-25, 57-66.
Wow! Welcome to those of you from other parishes around the Archdiocese of Chicago joining us tonight for this special celebration. Welcome to all the people of Old St. Mary’s joining us for Simbang Gabi for the very first time. And a big, big “thank you” to the entire community of people who have been working over the past several months to make this celebration special. It is partially because of your hard work that so many others have joined us tonight…
… but more than everyone’s work here at Old St. Mary’s, it is the work of God that brings us here tonight. Simbang Gabi celebrates God’s great plan to allow his Son to be born among us. Tonight’s readings will talk about the birth of two other people whose lives changed the world: a child born in the time of the Judges and a child born six months before Jesus.
Christmas is a time not only to recall what happened in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. It is also a time to celebrate how God breaks into our world in new and exciting ways, here and now! Let us take a moment to celebrate that God’s mercy is available to us yesterday, today, and forever.
Children give us hope for the future of the world. The young children participating in our opening procession of parols is a testament to our hope for the future!
The birth of a baby is always miraculous. But millennia ago, the birth of a baby was even more miraculous than it is now. Unless people come to Mass on December 19 each year, they have probably never heard the story of Manoah and his unnamed wife, but it’s the story of a particular birth more than 3,000 years ago that was more miraculous than most. And the birth of John was especially miraculous: we know the story of his mother and father, Elizabeth and Zechariah, conceiving this child in their old age, centuries before the advent of fertility clinics.
When any child is born today — whether the family be obscure or well known — we ask what the people asked at the birth of John: “What will this child be?” But people didn’t generally ask this question in the time of Manoah or Elizabeth. Back then, parents did not croon to their children, “you can grow up to be emperor.” Children were expected to go into the same trade as their families and to live in same village. Why have our expectations changed about our children’s futures?
Partially through the stories of Samson and John the Baptist themselves. Before Samson was conceived, an angel proclaimed that he would “begin the deliverance of Israel from the power of the Philistines.” Samson became the last and probably the greatest of the twelve leaders chronicled in the Book of Judges, using his super-human strength to sacrifice his own life for the sake of God’s people.
As a Levite, Zechariah could only receive the honor of burning incense in the temple sanctuary once in his life. The angel Gabriel — God’s messenger — appears to Zechariah in the holiest place of his religion, at the holiest moment of his life, and announces that Zechariah and Elizabeth’s most fervent prayer has been answered. Zechariah would have recognized that Gabriel was quoting from the Book of Malachi: “I am sending to you Elijah the prophet, before the day of the LORD comes…. He will turn the hearts of fathers to their children.” And yet, Zechariah doesn’t believe it. Since he’s struck mute in a very public way, the people probably later linked the timing of Zechariah’s going mute to Elizabeth’s pregnancy. So even before John the Baptist was born and people knew that his birth was foretold by Malachi, everyone already knew that John would be special.
Contrast this with Gabriel’s visit to Mary during the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Like all Jews, Mary has been praying for the arrival of the Messiah, but surely she wasn’t praying that she would be an unwed mother. Yet she consents to God’s plan to have Jesus to come into the world through her, even though people weren’t going to be talking about the miracle of Jesus’ birth as much of the scandal of Mary having a baby before she was married.
So as Christmas dawns upon us at the end of the year of our Lord 2025, how do each of us react to unexpected news? In a time when so many of us receive our news from the internet and cable TV, it’s easy to presume that anything newsworthy is going to be bad. Granted, it makes sense to approach the news these days with skepticism, but it’s easy to veer from skepticism into cynicism. The birth of a baby is always miraculous. And when we talk about the births of Samson, John, and Jesus, the one that was most essential to the salvation of the world, the one that was the most miraculous of all… is the one that appeared to be scandalous.
In the past 18 months, I have learned a lot about the Filipino approach to Christmas, where the parols go up in the stores in September and the official beginning of the liturgical season of Christmas is 9 days before the rest of the world. Whether you grew up with the tradition of Simbang Gabi, or if you’re fairly new to it like I am, Simbang Gabi is an invitation to be less cynical, to find more joy, more hope, more excitement about how God intervenes in our world and about what the future holds. It’s an invitation to all of us to fervently believe that God still has a plan, a plan for each of us, today, tomorrow, and into the future.
We are not victims of our circumstances. We are each born in the Spirit, and we each have the God-given ability to continue growing in the Spirit. Can we face every day’s news with excitement, and can we see every development as a miracle? Probably not, but we can try to get more excited, to rekindle hope for the world, and to see hand of God working in the world every day. Every person’s existence is a miracle, and God can work miracles through each of us every day.
We have each been called, like John the Baptist, to be a light to the nations, to be instruments so that God’s salvation can reach to the ends of the earth. As we continue our celebration tonight and in the days to come, let us pray ask the Holy Spirit for wisdom on how to be the light in the darkness. Let us ask for the intercession of John the Baptist, whom Gabriel foretold would turn our hearts towards one another.
Merry Christmas, and let us continue to pray for a future brighter than any past!