Homily at the Christmas Vigil

“Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying, ‘Ask a sign of the LORD your God; let it be as deep as hell, or high as heaven.’ But Ahaz said, ‘I will not ask, and I will not put the LORD to the test.’”

In those days the southern kingdom of Judah was besieged: the northern kingdom of Israel was in league with the Assyrian king, and their joint forces had reached the gates of Jerusalem. The prophet Isaiah had gone to Ahaz, king of Judah, with God’s reassurance that he was not idle in Judah’s defense; that the enemies of Jerusalem would not prevail and would themselves be judged, cast down.

Ahaz, as we see, was unwilling to take God at his word; to ask a sign, any sign, that he would deliver them. Why?

Ahaz phrases his refusal in what may sound like pious terms. After all, in Deuteronomy 6, Moses warns, “Do not put the LORD your God to the test, as you did at Massah,” referring to a memorable episode of unbelief during Israel’s wandering in the desert. Jesus himself quotes this injunction when he is tempted by the devil. But Ahaz misinterpreted and misapplied it. He refused to ‘test’ God—yet not in faith. God invited him to ask for a sign, and put no boundaries on the sign. Ahaz was unmanned with fear because of the army outside the walls, but no longer believed in the power of God to save. His refusal was the counsel of despair.

The Psalmist gives us another response in similar situations. He acknowledges the providence of God in the trials of his chosen people, yet calls on God for salvation.

“You have made us the derision of our neighbors, and our enemies laugh us to scorn,” and yet, “Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; show us the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.” The Psalmist waits and hopes for God to act.

God offered Ahaz light and hope in the darkest hour, life snatched from the jaws of death. “Ask a sign of the LORD your God, be it as deep as hell, as high as heaven.” As it says elsewhere, God’s throne is in heaven, he beholds all the dwellers upon earth” (Ps. 11), and Isaiah later wrote, “Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save, nor his ear heavy that it cannot hear.” Not God’s inabilities, but your inquities, have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have his his face from you, that he will not hear.”

Ahaz, not God, was being tested, to see if he would turn to God in his time of need. In short, he failed the test. And yet, as Isaiah goes on to describe, God promises to accomplish a deliverance greater than Ahaz could imagine, with or without the king’s cooperation.

“He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede: then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him.”

“The LORD himself will give you a sign,” and this sign is both as high as heaven and as deep as hell, “for behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” After all human strength, all human goodness, all human courage and hope have failed, God reveals his power paradoxically, in human weakness: a young woman and her infant Son: a son whose name, Immanuel, means “God with us,” and a woman who through her free act of faith and obedience becomes the Mother of God.

This is a sign, and not only a symbol but a reality that encompasses everything. It means the salvation of the whole world—and salvation offered to each one of us—a sign that comes to us from highest heaven and fathoms even the depths of hell.

So in these two individuals we have the two ways; the way of life and the way of death; the broad and easy way that leads to destruction and the narrow way that leads to salvation. The Blessed Virgin Mary is our preeminent icon of this way of life—“be it unto me according to thy word”—and Ahaz, not that Scripture lacks a sufficient number of such examples, reminds us today of the fate of those who refuse to put their hope in God.

Ahaz misses out on much more than a way out of his present difficulty. He misses out on being a part of God’s plan of salvation.

The Christian doctrine of hell, so much a part of Jesus’s own teaching, is not something we can set aside, even in the context of the universal and free offer of salvation in Jesus Christ.

A great living theologian wrote this about it: “Christ . . . descends into hell and suffers . . . but he does not, for all that, treat man as an immature being deprived in the final analysis of any responsibility for his own destiny. Heaven reposes upon freedom, and so leaves to the damned the right to will their own damnation. The specificity of Christianity is shown in this conviction of the greatness of man. Human life is fully serious.” (J. Ratzinger, Eschatology, p. 216)

Next Sunday is Christmas. It’s easy to forget, in all the sentimentality of the season, mangers and mistletoe, that we rejoice at Christmas because God has done something utterly serious, even catastrophic, for our sake. The world in its present form will not survive the impact of this salvation; our own lives, though we are saved, will be utterly changed. Come, Lord Jesus, and make perfect our will.