[Fr. Robert Barron] [Comments on]
[The Nativity of Luke's Gospel]
When I was in high school I read for the first time Virgil's Aeneid.
Probably many high school Latin students will commiserate with me
that it was a very difficult experience to get through this
extremely complicated Latin poem.
But "The Aeneid," of course, is one of the masterpieces
of the Western tradition.
It's echoed by one of my heroes: Dante. The author of "The Aeneid" is Virgil
and of course Virgil becomes
the mystic guide to Dante in "The Divine Comedy."
But "The Aeneid" tells the story of Aeneas. Who is Aeneas?
He was a Trojan at the time of the Trojan War with Greece
and he manages to escape from the flames of dying Troy.
Aeneas is also the son of a goddess.
His father was Anchises, who was a mortal, but his mother was the goddess Venus.
So he is a semi-divine figure.
Aeneas escapes from Troy (on Virgil's telling),
makes his way around the Mediterranean and he comes to Carthage,
has adventures there, and eventually he makes his way to Latium
which is the area around Rome (hence the Latin language).
And Aeneas there becomes the founding father, really,
of the whole Roman political establishment.
So Virgil is telling this great myth of origin, if you want.
Where does Rome's power, authority, dignity, piety come from?
Aeneas, by the way, is always called pious Aeneas, the pious Aeneas.
He sums up the best of the Roman virtue.
Where does it come from? It comes from this noble race of the Trojans.
So, Aeneas gives rise to Rome and really gives rise to the line
that has culminated with Caesar Augustus.
Now, Virgil is a contemporary of Caesar Augustus.
He writes "The Aeneid" at that period and he reads several sections of it to Augustus.
It's seen by many people as sort of the greats founding myths of Rome.
Now, Caesar Augustus was also semi-divine. He was also the son of a god.
How come? He was the nephew and then adopted son of Julius Caesar,
who was assassinated on 44 BC by Brutus and Cassius and their coconspirators.
He survives this period (he, Augustus) and he allied himself with Mark Antony.
They eventually do battle with Cassius and Brutus and they emerge as victorious.
Then of course Augustus falls into disharmony with Antony and then
they have this great climactic battle, the battle of Actium in 31 BC,
at which point August emerges as the great, undisputed champion of the world.
He is the leader of the world politically.
And Virgil is telling the story of how this great Augustine divine line
(so Aeneas, the son of the goddess) and now Augustus (the son of a god,
the son of Julius Caesar), how they emerged and reigned in great power.
What you see in "The Aeneid" is a singing of the glory of Rome and the Roman virtue.
How did Rome maintain its power? Well, through military conquest,
through courage, through violence --just to be blunt about it.
And Augustus now is the one who sums up the best of the glorious Roman heritage.
Now, here is what I want you to see. Christmas time. Sentimental time? Sure.
It's a good family time and all that's great.
Christmas stories in the Gospels, beautiful tales we tell our kids...
Yes. Sure. Charming.
But if it's all that we see, we are going to miss a lot of the power of these stories.
Look now at the famous Christmas account in Luke's Gospel.
We read it at midnight Mass.
It's probably the most famous of the Christmas stories.
Luke begins in a consciously subversive way because he mentions
by name Caesar Augustus, when Caesar was the Emperor of the world
and when his flunky Quirinius was the governor of Syria.
So he begins by invoking these great Roman authoritative figures and,
more to it, when Augustus is doing something that is preeminently powerful.
A typically Roman move: To take a census of the whole world!
Now, you see at that moment, if we stop the story right there, you'd say:
Virgil would like that. Virgil would love that story.
Here Caesar Augustus, at the height of his powers,
reigning as the Emperor of the world and commanding a census. Great!
There is the golden age of Caesar Augustus.
But then what Luke does, of course, is he undermines that myth
with a new narrative: The narrative of a new King. Who is He?
Well, he is not born of the royal line going back to Troy.
He's born of a royal line going back to David.
So He is called the Son of David.
Who is David? Not a Trojan king, but this Israelite king.
More to it, he comes into the world not in a palace but in a barn
or a cave or something.
Some out-of-the-way place in Bethlehem of Judea. Where is that?
Not any of the capitals of the world.
A little dusty outpost of the Empire.
He is wrapped in swaddling clothes. He is not a rangy power figure.
He is wrapped up. He is visited by shepherds. What were shepherds?
Kind of street people today, like bums.
That's His court? Shepherds? He's in a barn? Wrapped in swaddling clothes?
What's happening is: Luke is undermining the great sort of Virgilian narrative,
the great Roman narrative of power and pomp and military force.
The True King, the son of David,
is born in humility and poverty and simplicity and nonviolence.
To me the climax of Luke's story is the arrival of the angels.
These powerful figures, but not in the worldly sense.
They are powerful in a heavenly sense.
The word that Luke uses when he says a whole host of angels, a choir of angels emerges.
The word in Greek "stratia" means army.
An army of angels arrives and they announce the new King.
Caesar Augustus, like Aeneas, like all great worldly powers
is backed up by military force, backed up by the club and the sword
and the spear and now we would say the guns and the bomb and plane.
So it always goes.
That's the master narrative of all worldly power.
I'm not just blaming poor Augustus. That's the story behind Napoleon,
the story behind Charlemagne, the story behind any worldly figure.
And then there's Luke's story about this baby King, Son of David,
born in poverty, simplicity, humility and who has though with Him an army
that's more powerful than the army of Caesar Augustus.
And this King, and that's the story of the Gospels, the story of the Pauline epistles,
that this baby King, come of age as the crucified and risen Lord will indeed
become the King of the world.
It's not Caesar Augustus who will reign and his descendants.
It will be Christ.
Now, to bring this thing together up to the present day,
so it's not just all these old battling narratives from two thousand years ago.
Where is Caesar Augustus today? He's a distant memory.
His descendants, where are they? Long gone.
I guess there are some running around, but who are they? No one knows.
Where is Roman power? Roman Empire? Long disappeared.
Where do all the empires of the world go? Eventually on the dustbin of history.
But, the successor of Peter who was Jesus' friend and disciple
is over in Rome right now. You go visit him.
The Church, which is the embodiment of Christ's Empire,
is still alive and well and it flourishes all over the world.
This is a battle of narratives, if you want.
"The Aeneid" versus Luke's story of the coming of the True Emperor
and the prevailing of that latter narrative over the former is a matter of
empirical verification that we can look around the world today
and see the endurance of the great Empire of Christ.
That is the properly subversive story of Christmas.