I wonder what it is you desire this Christmas?, Midnight Mass Sermon, 24 December 2021

I wonder what it is you desire this Christmas?

That word – ‘desire’ – is very important.

For children, Christmas is often equated with receiving and giving presents. They desire this or that toy. And God help you if they don’t get what they want.

For our contemporary culture, desire has particular moral and spiritual difficulties. It’s linked to our culture of advertising, social media, along with the post-Freudian ‘sexualization’ of desire. Satisfying our desires is portrayed almost as a basic human right.

Yet desire is the deep-seated longing that is the core of our self. It’s evident from the very moment of birth… the newborn comes with the fundamental desire for human intimacy, warmth, nurture. In the fourth century, the most well-known African theologian, St Augustine, reflected upon desire in his great book called Confessions. He articulated a desire for the divine – ‘my heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee’. We have this is a deep longing for that certain ‘something’, the longing for heaven, the desire for God, which no amount of presents, success or wealth can fulfil.

So, desire is natural to us. It’s part of who we are.

One of Augustine’s most insightful comments comes upon reflecting on his first experience of heading off as a student to the big city—Carthage, in north Africa—and falling into a “swirling cauldron of lust.”

Augustine describes his young self as not yet being in love, but rather desiring to be in love. He desired that rush, that high that comes from first love. We now know that the rush is from chemicals like dopamine, “feel good” drugs that our brains generate in response to various stimuli. 

Our “modern-day hypodermic needle” that delivers shots of dopamine are our smart phones demanding our attention, entering the TikTok vortex, scrolling Instagram or Facebook, receiving validation by how many ‘likes’ we get.

The desire these things have created within us means that we’ve forgotten how to be alone with our thoughts. We’re forever interrupting ourselves for a quick digital hit. For many, the pandemic has exacerbated dependence on social media and other digital vices, as well as alcohol and drugs.

If we become what we desire, then our modern addictions are alarming. We are becoming a mess of noise, violence, and greed with little room for the divine.

We can, however, learn from the saints throughout the centuries. They weren’t perfect. They don’t become saints by isolating themselves away but are found within the mess of life, yet not overwhelmed by it. And that’s because they take time to be present and available to the eternal, to the in-breaking of God. This is what we are invited to be ready for at Christmas, the in-breaking of the divine.

To retrain our disordered desires requires a commitment to prayer. Prayer is the crucible of the transformation of all desires. And by prayer, I mean taking time out simply to be. To ignore our phones, our things to do. To open our hearts to the divine.

My 11-year-old son gave his sister book for her 17th birthday, entitled, ‘How to break up with your phone’. I think we all probably need to read it!

Contemplation anchors us, it roots us in the source of God’s compassionate and all-embracing love, so that we are not held captive by our passing emotions and obsessive thoughts.

And while the Christmas story can seem remote, happening 2000 years ago, in a distant place, the invitation at Christmas is for it to become present in our lives.

The c.14 mystic theologian, Meister Eckhart, says ‘The Eternal Birth must take place in you’ and in me. And the birth of Christ in our souls is for a purpose beyond ourselves: because his manifestation in the world today must be through us.

I wonder what a realigned desire might look like for you this Christmas? Rather than simply consumption and accumulation, what might we desire for ourselves and our world, to bring more of Christ’s love here, into our busy and often messy lives.

And what might our world look like if we, to quote Mahatma Gandhi, ‘become the change you want to see in the world.’