christmas

Hush Homily delivered by Fr. Jose Ramon (Jett) Villarin, SJ Christmas Eve Mass 2025 There is no noise in space. The light of a star is quiet. The quiet belies the immense power of atoms firing of in a nuclear furnace. We tend to link light with sound, as with lightning and thunder, or even a firecracker. But the light of a star, like sunlight, is silent. The sound of Christmas is like that of starlight, streaming through the dark, steadfast yet silent, laden with power. Of course there are other sounds that accompany Christmas. We know these all too well. These are the sounds of gifts being opened, carols being sung, the laughter of children, the table chitchat of grownups. And yes there is the sound of Jose Mari Chan as early as September, singing Christmas in our hearts. But the real sound of Christmas is like the silent light of a star. We can catch it in the dark. We only need to hush all the hurry to listen to it “truly in our hearts”. And so tonight, for a few moments here at our vigil, we will be quiet. We will set the other sounds aside to listen to the sound of Christmas, the sound of God coming into our world. The sound of Christmas is the sound of Jesus, the Word of God. His is the sound of God who “will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick until he brings justice to victory.” (Mt 12:19-20) And so we shall befriend silence to listen to the sound of Christmas. That means dialing down the chatter and turning away from the noisy lights of our little screens. Those little screens are the shining lights of the attention economy. Money competes for our attention. And so our attention is fractured by relentless noise, images, words, and never ending scrolls of sensory delights that assault us from all over. To listen to the sound of Christmas, we need to welcome silence into our lives. That means cutting down on our quarrelsome ways and refraining from having the last word. There are no words when we are before mystery, before something truly wondrous and ineffable. In the presence of the deeply joyful or sorrowful or glorious, we fumble with words because words are not enough or words are just too much. When we mourn those who are no longer with us this Christmas, when we are going through unspeakable pain, we are quiet; to those we have loved and lost, we over a moment of silence.  Silence can be a fearful thing. We equate silence with nothing, and sound with something. We connect silence with death; and sound with things that are alive. We can be as afraid of silence as we are of nothing. But silence is not nothing. The quiet light of a star is not nothing. Silence is not the absence of life but the fullness of presence. It is the space we hollow out inside us to let the holy come in. True silence is presence, the quiet of hope, the stillness of faithful waiting. It is silence that settles us down. When we unplug, when we let go of the headphones and microphones, we are met with silence. When we go to a chapel and learn to pray again, silence. Even when we are quiet, we can saturate silence with white noise, i.e. with a lot of background hissing and rewinding and regretting. Let silence just help us relish and rest and breathe. We need silence to know the value of words. Words are plentiful. You don’t need to be an economist to know that when something is plentiful, it becomes cheap. Salitang mura. Words can be weapons sharp enough to cut people down. There is a di8erence between being talked at and talked to. We cannot understand each other when there is a lot of talking at, not much talking to, much less listening to and listening for one another. If words can hurt, words can also heal and rebuild and reconnect us to each other. Simple words really. Words like “thank you, forgive me, sorry, I love you, I forgive you”. The writer Pico Iyer has this to say about words: “We all know how treacherous are words, and how often we use them to paper over embarrassment, or emptiness, or fear of the larger spaces that silence brings. “Words, words, words” commit us to positions we do not really hold, the imperatives of chatter; words are what we use for lies, false promises and gossip. We babble with strangers; with intimates we can be silent…. In love, we are speechless; in awe, we say, words fail us.” This Christmas, amid the merriment, let us listen to the quiet light of Bethlehem’s star, streaming into our night, laden with power. This is the sound of Christmas, the sound of God fulfilling his promise. It is the sound of Jesus, the Word of God, breaking the silence, speaking to our worry and fear, telling us we will never be alone, assuring us how much we are loved. Jose Ramon T Villarin SJChristmas Eve Mass at the Cenacle 24 December 2025