Cardinal Timothy Dolan was all about babies at a packed Christmas morning Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
“That’s the message of Christmas, that innocence, that vulnerability. There is nothing, nothing, that changes or transforms the human heart more than a baby,” Dolan told the crowd of about 2,000 tourists and parishioners who waited in a line that wrapped around the block to hear Mass.
The archbishop of New York told the attendees about how he went to a gathering last weekend where everyone was fawning over an infant.
“Not on Great-Grandma, not on the Christmas tree, not on the lavish buffet — maybe mine was — but everybody’s attention was centered around the baby. The baby. The baby that had just been born a couple months before,” Dolan said at the Fifth Avenue church, which was standing-room-only.
“Everybody wanted to see the baby. Everybody was watching the baby. Everybody wanted to hold the baby. Everybody wanted a picture with the baby,” he said.
“When we see that baby, we know that it’s good sign that life is going to continue,” the Catholic leader said.
“At the center of history, when BC turns into AD, is what? The birth of a baby. That birth of that baby, who we claim as the son of God, the Messiah, the Christ and our savior Jesus of Nazareth,” Dolan said.
“Jesus could have just shown up as an adult,” but “God wanted us to know that this baby … really is of human nature. He is one of us. He’s not a phantom, He’s not a ghost.
“God became vulnerable, God became helpless, God became a baby in a crib because that’s precisely what he wants us to do with him — he wants us to hold that baby, he wants us to kiss that baby. That’s god’s desire for us,” Dolan said before concluding his 5-minute message.
Rudy Giuliani attended Dolan’s midnight Mass on Tuesday night, where the cardinal delivered a similar sermon, according to a tweet posted by the former New York City Mayor.
“Cardinal Dolan serves Midnight Mass and reminds us all of the miracle of the birth of Jesus,” Giuliani said, including a photo of the archbishop.
