Incarnation Solidarity

Merry Christmas!  At long last the mini-Lent that we call Advent has reached its culmination with the birth of our Savior.  For the past three and a half weeks, we have longed for the coming of our Messiah along with all creation throughout all history.  It is challenging for us to observe Advent in our commercialized culture that begins with Christmas even before Thanksgiving is celebrated.  I guess there is Christmas stuff for sale even in October.  Nevertheless, our Advent celebrates God fulfilling His promise to send us a Savior and to dwell with us.  

Remember what the angel told the shepherds, “I bring you good news of a great joy…for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”  Did you hear that?  He said, “to you is born”.  He was not saying that to Mary and Joseph.  He declared that to the shepherds who represent all of us.  He says it again today, on this Christmas Day, to you and to me, to us is born a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.  So let us celebrate today and proclaim with the angels, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men”.  

What makes this so amazing and astounding?  In my journey to becoming a Catholic, what resonated with me was the history and authority of the Catholic Church.  It is truly the Church that Jesus established.  History is one proof of this.  Additionally, the Church has been given the true authority to protect and proclaim the Gospel and the deposit of faith.  In my wandering through various denominations in my Christian journey, I was always looking for that rock solid place I could rest, knowing that it isn’t up to me to determine the truth. And I found that rock in the barque of Peter, the Roman Catholic Church.  What I did not realize at that time was, it is the mystery and profound depths of the faith expressed in the Catholic Church that give me an awe and wonder.  Through my reading and learning since my conversion and through the studies during deaconate discernment, I am nearly scandalized by who God is, who we are in relation to Him and creation, and the means He chose to save us.

Our brothers and sisters in the eastern churches believe that the incarnation of God as man might be the most incredible and condescending act that God made.  Even more so than the Lord’s passion, death, and resurrection.  This comes from a deep searching and understanding of the wholly otherness of God.  In their thinking, it is far more difficult, awesome, and unfathomable, for the infinite, eternal God to limit Himself in the form of man.  And this is exactly what our God chose to do.

The Gospel of the Apostle John begins with these mysterious words, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.  In him was life, and the life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”  Jesus is God, is eternal, is life itself, is light that dispels all darkness.  In introducing God to the Athenians the Apostle Paul proclaimed, “in him we live and move and have our being”.  All that was created at the very beginning of time was made by Jesus.  And He even now consciously holds us in being, in existing.  We cannot make ourselves exist or force our existence to continue. Without God continually, consciously imparting existence to us, we would not exist.

Now consider this incredible truth.  This Jesus – God and creator of all – became an embryo, an infant, a young boy, a teenager, a young man, and a man of full stature.  In his letter to the Philippians, Paul says, “Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”  The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us, “He became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man.”

Why would the Son of God do this?  Why would he choose to enter into our confining struggle where we suffer pain, injury, sickness, loss, sadness, hunger, death?  Why?  For God so loved! God loved.  He so loved.  When God so loves, he loves us to His infinite God ability – infinite God love.  And what was that infinite God love compelled to do? What does the whole verse say?  Remember these are the words of Jesus.  He said this Himself.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son…”  God so loved that He gave. What did He give? He gave us Himself through His Son.  Isn’t that incredible?

And why did He give?  He gave because His love wants us to be with Him.  He wants us to share life, real life. The verse ends this way, “that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  Remember what John wrote at the beginning of his gospel, “in Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”  The Catechism quotes St. Gregory of Nyssa, “Sick, our nature demanded to be healed; fallen, to be raised up; dead, to rise again.  We had lost the possession of the good; it was necessary for it to be given back to us.  Closed in the darkness, it was necessary to bring us the light; captives, we awaited a Savior; prisoners, help; slaves, a liberator.  Are these things minor or significant? Did they not move God to descend to human nature and visit it, since humanity was in so miserable and unhappy a state?”

And let’s not forget the Annunciation which we celebrated on April 8^th this past year.  This is the beginning of it all when Mary says, “be it done unto me according to your word”.  At Mary’s fiat, the Holy Spirit overshadows Mary, and God is conceived as man.  At conception, human life is created.  God was an embryo.  Our culture tells us that these embryos are not human.  No, we believe that Jesus was fully human and fully God when He was conceived.  Consequently, we proclaim with the ancient Church that Mary is the Mother of God.  Thinking through the incarnation and all that we now know, I get a glimpse of the awe and humility that Mary must have felt.  What an amazing mother we have.

Again, let us proclaim, glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men.  Our Advent and our Christmas gives us great confidence and hope as we and all creation long for Christ’ second advent, His second coming.  He is coming again, Alleluia.  Merry Christmas!