Christmas homily from Fr Dominic Robinson SJ at Farm Street

Fr Dominic Robinson SJ, Parish Priest at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Farm Street, Mayfair, central London, gave this homily on Christmas Day.

First of all on behalf of the Jesuit Community who have care of this church a very warm welcome to you - wherever you are joining us from, be it here in the church or at home here in London or elsewhere in our country or overseas - and may we wish you a happy Christmas. Over these last few days it's been interesting being offered Christmas greetings. I've been noticing a certain reservation in saying 'happy Christmas' - greetings, to me at least, have been prefaced by "I know it's far from happy this year" or slightly downgrading the greeting to 'a blessed Christmas' or 'a peaceful Christmas'. Midnight/ Christmas Day Mass is usually so uplifting as our church is full and we welcome people who would not normally come to church, indeed welcome people back to church. Over the years here at Farm Street that's been a preoccupation of mine at Christmas. We can't pretend that this year is not so very different.

Farm Street is such a wonderful place on account of our people, a diverse community which gathers to pray, to serve, and to socialise, all gathered around the Lord at Mass in our diversity. And it is because we are a welcoming community we draw more in. But this Christmas I find myself needing to pause and reflect at the end of a year when that human contact has not been possible, and when sadness and loneliness is the reality for so many. I am conscious of the many, I'm very aware among you participating through the livestream or here in person tonight/ this morning who are on their own or unable to travel to meet family and friends. Some of you will be trying to cope with sickness. Some of you have had bereavements. Some of you - well, at times I'm one of those I have to admit - are fed up and frustrated at how life has been restricted, all those plans we were working on as a team for our wonderful parish. And I need to check myself there and thank God for all the wonderful gifts I've been given in this life. The best made plans…

When I was in the early years of formation to be a Jesuit priest there was an iconic book by a great Jesuit now passed away called Gerard W Hughes, called 'God of Surprises'. When I was at university I heard him speak to launch a retreat in daily life and as a young man I was introduced to Jesuit spirituality as a way of living out faith which looked for God in the midst of everyday life. God in the facts. Right under our noses. Not just to be found in meditation or in a beautiful experience of transcendence in worship. That's where God is to be found too as the great mystics teach us. But a God who was to be found in every situation, in the times of joy and fulfilment, in romance and friendship, in service and duty, but also in our failure, in our pain and suffering, even in our despair when God meets us at our weakest and most needy. The God we believe in as Christians, the God who comes to us in the flesh in Jesus Christ, wants us to be happy and fulfilled. The God who has won victory over the powers of darkness and evil invites us to look at our past and our present and to learn from what we are going through so we may rebuild a brighter future.

For me, despite all the frustration, or maybe through it, there have been some surprising glimpses of new life in this extraordinary year. We have been surprised at the way our use of digital media has served one of our primary purposes as a parish as we have reached out to others who have been in communion with us from places far-flung in the world and whose faith has been reignited at this time of great soul searching. I hope through the new digital opportunities we are taking we will continue to welcome many more back to the Church and help them to land safely back home in a faith community which wants to say everyone belongs.

Many felt starved of the eucharist for much of the year when, at least if you weren't a priest or member of a religious community who had privileged access to receiving holy communion, we were unable to gather around the altar of the Lord. It was difficult to be Church, to be the 'ekklesia', the gathered assembly. And yet God surprised us as an army of volunteers gathered from across central London Catholic Churches have lived out the eucharist on the streets of London feeding the many who are being left destitute and homeless. This for me has shown where our heart truly is as a Catholic community who love Jesus and follow his call to bring compassion and mercy to those most in need. This has enabled us to support local businesses too at this difficult time and they have responded with such great generosity, feeding the homeless left on our streets. And it has been a wonderful opportunity to work together with other Christian congregations and faith groups and with civic authorities and leaders. This too will continue as the situation will indeed become more serious. Yet for me this too is where we find the human face of God among us.

This, I know, is only my reflection from my privileged position as parish priest here. It gives me great hope. It enables me to preach a message of hope this Christmas. Your experience, every individual's experience of this dreadful pandemic, will be different. And no amount of encouraging upbeat yet sincerely hopeful words will turn fear, sadness, loss, anxiety, despair into surprising new-found causes for optimism or anything like feelings of peace and joy. We will still be cautious when we wish each other 'happy Christmas'. The hope may be hard to find. As so many cards I'm receiving are saying it may just be a wishful thought - 'let's hope we will have a brighter healthier new year'.

And indeed I know there is so much to despair of. Sometimes I wonder where is this God whose name is mercy and compassion, where is the human face of God? Where is he in a world where there is so much suffering? Under our very noses when I walk around the boundaries of this parish I can easily see the very opposite. Any evening walk along Oxford St, Regent St, Park Lane and Piccadilly, the peripheries of Mayfair, and you will see hidden unreported casualties of the pandemic . On two occasions over the last month our homeless service has encountered individuals newly homeless literally shivering and starving to death. One young man without a job who had been disowned by his family sleeping in the middle of the street on a grate with no sleeping bag, trying to keep warm from the hot air underneath him. Another just a few nights ago huddled in a doorway on Regent St, a young man shivering, again no sleeping bag, just a KFC bucket to collect any coins passers-by would offer. It turned out this was his second night on the streets. Lost his job in retail, estranged from family, insufficient money to pay rent, hadn't eaten for two days. This is 2020, not 1820 in central London. Where is the human face of God? Where is God in a situation where I was told just to days ago there are no beds left for rough sleepers in COVID certified hotels for the 244 homeless left on our streets and where, we know, the vast number of them with no recourse to public funds will after January 1st be even more down that list of eligible human beings.

That makes me angry. That makes me wonder where is this God we believe in? The human face of God - where is it in our world? It can seem so absent in a world ravaged not just by the virus but by selfishness and greed. When evil rears its ugly head despair and depression can grip us. But what does the believer in Christ do? The answer is the Christian must look around, reflect on the coming of God to earth - a God in Jesus himself born into poverty and hunted down as a refugee, a God who is here in our midst beckoning us at our most desperate and hopeless to allow his humanity in, his compassion, his mercy, urging his Church to show his human face.

The human face of God is indeed the message of this Christmas and every Christmas, a God of mercy, compassion, the God who in Jesus is one of us, loves us deeply, always welcomes us back, whatever we've done, whatever our background, whether we're respectable and wealthy or we find ourselves on the margins of society. And I am convinced that the experience even of this dreadful year is teaching us something as followers of Christ. Pope Francis, our Jesuit pope who constantly surprises us, has said repeatedly this is not just an 'era of change' but a 'change of era' and God is calling us not just to discern the signs of these times but actually to take the reins of God-given human freedom, the God who wants us to fulfil our calling as his sons and daughters made in his image, and to rebuild our world. It's up to us to bear that God of peace and mercy to our world around us. He is present in each one of us and will never desert us. He wants to comfort us this night/ this Christmas and to strengthen us to move forward in the hope that he will deliver us from all that is evil and lead us to be heralds of his goodness.

Thank you for joining us today. May this Christmas bring you some good measure of consolation and inner peace.