The Night Heaven Came to Earth

The following comes from the Catholic Exchange:

It was night. The shepherds were keeping watch with their sheep in the fields.

They lived in a time of epic and empire, the greatest the world had yet seen. But here, in this land of balding hills and boulder-strewn fields, in a small town in a backwater region, about the most exciting thing these shepherds could expect was a stray wolf striking at their flock.

They were about to witness the most unexpected event in the history of the world.

First came the angel. He appeared not above them, not suspended in the air, but standing right next to them. The angel had to make way for something far greater.

Then the divine splendor of God Himself shone all around them, like a giant halo encircling a hilltop.

An angel was one thing. But this was too much for them. They were reportedly “struck with great fear.” Or, as the original ancient Greek text of the account puts it, they feared with great fear. So begins the Annunciation to the Shepherds as recorded in the Gospel of Luke, in the second chapter.

The shepherds had good reason to be afraid. Luke describes the divine splendor that shone all around them as the “glory of the Lord.” This is the same language that described the cloud that had descended upon Mt. Sinai, where Moses met with God. Then the glory of the Lord could be seen even at a distance, appearing to the Israelites far below as a “consuming fire” (Exodus 24:17). Here’s how Exodus 19 further describes the scene:

On the morning of the third day there were peals of thunder and lightning, and a heavy cloud over the mountain, and a very loud blast of the shofar, so that all the people in the camp trembled. … Now Mount Sinai was completely enveloped in smoke, because the Lord had come down upon it in fire. The smoke rose from it as though from a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled violently (Exodus 19:16, 18).

Moses spoke and God answered him in thunder (Exodus 19:19). So dangerous was the presence of God that the Israelites were ordered to come no closer than the foot of the mountain, lest they be struck dead.

As fearsome as this was, to both Moses and the Israelites, both had time to prepare for this encounter with God in His glory. Moses had conversed through the God through the burning bush. And the Israelites had seen the power of God at work in the plagues and the parting of the Red Sea.

But these shepherds on their night watch never saw it coming. The consuming fire, the cloud glowing with lighting and grumbling with thunder—they had no time to prepare for such a wonder.

But that wasn’t even the big news of the night.

The angel tells them he has “good news” of “great joy” for all of humanity. We can only imagine what is going through the shepherds’ heads at this point. Of one thing we can be assured: the angel had a captive audience. If he proclaimed something of greatness for the whole of humanity, it was pretty believable in that moment.

Then comes the news of an even more extraordinary event: For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

God’s Surprising Christmas Gift

The following comes from the Catholic Exchange:

Our God likes to surprise us, to break the mold, to reveal his awesome power in ways that we could never have anticipated. The virgin birth of Christ is one of the most surprising and yet splendid events in history—the greatest of Christmas gifts! This Sunday’s reading of a short passage from Isaiah (7:10-14) is one of the most controversial and yet crucial passages of the whole Bible. It prophesies the virgin birth of Christ during a moment of international political crisis.

Historical Context

The Assyrian empire is expanding and conquering. Pekah, the king of Israel, and Rezin, the king of Syria make an alliance against Assyria, the dominant superpower of the time. They want the kingdom of Judah, led by King Ahaz, to join the coalition, but he refuses. Afraid that their two-king alliance won’t be strong enough to withstand the Assyrians, these two kings seek to conquer Judah and set up their own puppet king as the third member of the coalition. At this historical moment when the kingdom of Judah is under threat, the prophet Isaiah speaks these words to King Ahaz. The two allied kings have mustered an army and come to conquer the kingdom of Judah, depose Ahaz and set up a puppet king on the throne. No wonder Ahaz is scared!

God’s Faithfulness and Human Foolishness

Despite Ahaz’s previous unfaithfulness, the Lord pledges to save Judah, David’s kingdom, from the peril posed by the two-king alliance. The Lord wants to reassure Ahaz by offering a divine sign of the king’s choosing as confirmation of the prophet’s word. Rather than responding to the Lord’s invitation with a request, Ahaz pretends to be pious by saying he does not want to “tempt the LORD” (a citation of Deut 6:16). Of course, the Israelites had tested the LORD during the wilderness wanderings, and provoked his judgment. But here, the Lord is offering the king a sign not as an insincere trick to get him to sin, but as a powerful antidote to his lack of faith. Ahaz refuses to ask, showing his obstinance, his unwillingness to be converted even by a miracle. 2 Kings 16:7-8 tell us what Ahaz does instead: he makes an alliance with the powerful Assyrians against Israel and Syria. In fact, he pledges allegiance to Assyria and sends silver and gold from the Temple itself to firm up the offer. The Assyrians accept Ahaz as an ally and launch a counterattack against both kings’ capitals: Damascus and Samaria. Eventually, the Assyrians will break their agreement with Judah and come to attack it as well (2 Kings18).

Two Key Words

Two Hebrew words that underlie this text are important to know: almah and immanuel. The first word,almah in Isaiah 7:14, is translated as “virgin” by the New American Bible. This Hebrew word is a general purpose word for “young woman” (e.g. Gen 24:43) and there is actually another word, betulah, that specifically means “virgin” (e.g. Gen 24:16).  However, the ancient pre-Christian Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, translates almah in Isa 7:14 as parthenos, which means “virgin” in Greek. So when Matthew’s gospel quotes this passage in reference to Christ (Matt 1:23), it is quoting from the Septuagint Greek and showing that the prophecy was understood to be about a virgin birth, not just any birth.

The other key word is well known to us Catholics: immanuel. It is really a compound of two Hebrew words: immanu, meaning “with us”, and el, meaning “God.” So of course, the translation is “God with us.” This name for the child of the virgin indicates that God will come to dwell with us through this special child.

Two Fulfillments?

While Isaiah 7:14 mainly prophesies the virgin birth of Christ, one must ask whether Ahaz received a sign from God at all. The Lord asked him through the prophet to request a sign and since he does not, tells of a sign to be offered anyway. It would seem odd for the sign not to come to fulfillment at all for some 600 years. Did Ahaz receive a sign in his lifetime?

If you read the rest of Isaiah 7, you’ll see that the promises of the Lord here are not a bed of roses. Since Ahaz refused to accept the Lord’s blessing, the Lord will bring judgment upon his kingdom by means of Egypt and Assyria (7:18). Though Ahaz’s enemy kings will be brought low before the child is grown up (7:16), places that used to be fertile farmland will get covered in briers and thorns (7:24-25). God’s judgment is coming upon the kingdom of Judah.

Immediately following in chapter 8 is a description of the birth of Isaiah’s son named Maher-shalal-hashbaz, “one who hastens to plunder, one who hurries to loot” (8:3). The Lord promises that before he can talk, Damascus (Syria’s capital) will be despoiled by Assyria (8:4). This lines up with his promise about Immanuel in 7:16—that Israel and Syria will be deserted before he is grown up. And indeed, this prophecy is addressed to “O Immanuel” (8:8).

This is a little complicated, but I think what we can see here are two fulfillments. On the one hand, Isaiah begets a boy who is a concrete sign of judgment for Ahaz. This first “Immanuel” is conceived by natural means and born of a young woman. On the other hand, the prophecy points to a greater, more significant fulfillment—the birth of a son to the Virgin Mary by the power of God, to the birth of the everlasting Immanuel, to the birth of Jesus himself. While the first Immanuel (Maher-shalal-hashbaz) is a sign of God’s temporal judgment on his people for their unfaithfulness, the final Immanuel is a sign of God’s salvation, rescuing his people from the darkness of their own sin and establishing his reign in their hearts.

The great surprise of the virgin birth, when God intervenes in human history in an unprecedented and powerful way, sets the stage for the great salvation which the Baby of Bethlehem will win for us at Calvary. The greatest of all revelations begins with the most surprising of Christmas gifts, the virgin birth.

Heather King: A Course in Christmas Miracles

The following comes from Heather King:


"For some extraordinary reason, there is a fixed notion that it is more liberal to disbelieve in miracles than to believe in them. Why, I cannot imagine, nor can anybody tell me."

--G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

A friend recently asked my take on a passage that began: "One of the keys to survival is to know deep in one’s heart no one is coming to save you. Because as long as the person who is in a dire situation thinks that is so, then they sit and wait. They don’t go on about the business of living in that place. Rather, they wait for someone to save them so that then they can resume living." 

"Because obviously," my friend continued, "we all have to come to grips with the fact that no-one's coming. No-one's going to save us." 

I looked around my room. The home-made triptych to my three unborn children that sits in the loft above my bed, the Sacred Heart of Jesus icon, the Christmas lights, the angel candle (lit each night before I go to sleep), the rosary of purple glass beads, the multiple Madonna and child calenders, prayers cards, the photo of Therese of Lisieux (the one where she looks both infinitely tender and infinitely fierce), the Rembrandt Head of Christ  (the one in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where he looks like he has been regarding your wounded, conflicted, fearful, yearning heart with utter love for all eternity).

I thought about how, as a kid on holidays and especially Christmas, I could hardly wait for Nana to come. Nana, who would have been driven over in the big black Buick by Cousin Richard, who she had raised, and who was now her helpmeet. Nana, with a white-blue perm, a long fur coat with a weasel-head clasp, and a hard-sided black leather handbag that held an embroidered hankie (raised pink rosebuds, pale blue forget-me-nots), a bottle of Yardley Smelling Salts, and a change purse filled with coins she was lavish about doling out.

Nana, Daddy's mother, the Queen Bee to whom we all instinctively paid homage. Nana, with her brogue. "She's here, she's here!!" I'd yell, and race out through the breezeway to stand in the ice-rutted driveway, semaphoring my arms like those parking lot jockeys with orange flags, in case (though Nana and Richard came almost every Sunday), they'd forgotten where we lived.

I'd yank open the passenger side door--"Merry Christmas, Nan! do you want me to take the rolls, Nan? What does the ocean look like today, Nan?..."

Nana always brought home-made yeasted rolls. At Christmas, she made red wool shirts for "the boys" (my father on down), and for "the girls"...I can't remember. A card with a five or ten-dollar bill maybe. Nana was the present. She was special, she was ours, I would have broken the arm of anyone who tried to wrest from me the honor of hanging up her coat, or situating her on "her" place on the couch, or fetching her a glass of punch.

After she fell years later, on the steps of the church, I'd go over to the house in Rye Beach and stay overnight, filling the hot water bottle for her aching hip. I still spoon sugar every morning into my coffee from the blue and white sugar bowl, part of the china set she brought over on the boat from Ireland.

"Because obviously no-one's going to save us....obviously no-one's coming"...

I thought about how the mark of a follower of Christ is to believe in miracles, in magic, in angels and prophetic dreams and saints. I thought about which is more sublime, more clear-eyed, harder: to stop waiting, to harden your heart against waiting; or to wait in hope, your whole life, for someone you know will never come. I thought about how Catholicism ends with a wedding. 

I wrote back to my friend, "Actually, I don't think no-one's coming. In a practical sense of course I identify with feeling lost and the realization that no one is going to save us. I think we first realize that as children--and forever after, we're pissed off! Yes, I absolutely think we are responsible for making a life-or-death choice as to how and why we are going to be on this earth. But from a mystical sense, I DON'T think no-one's coming. I long to be united with Christ, who has already come. And at the end of time, will come again"....

Christmas, Suffering, and the Cross

The following comes from Michael Coren at the Catholic World Report:

I graduated from high school in England back in 1977, and it’s grimly sobering that some of the people reading this column weren’t even born then! Be warned younger people—middle age creeps up on as surreptitiously as the most careful and crafty beasts of prey. There was a somewhat perfunctory party where students and teachers said goodbye to one another, but most of us were only too eager to see the back of school and go on to university, work, fun, whatever. I remained close to my oldest friend, who later was the best man at my wedding, but otherwise I have not maintained contact with most of my contemporaries. Frankly, I can’t even remember their names.

There was one couple, however, who I do remember: Jonathan and Angela. I say “couple” because while only 17-years-old back then, they always seemed to have been together. Not in some prurient way but as surprisingly mature, committed young people. They were also both extremely good-looking, athletic, and intelligent. With so many gifts they could at least have been unpleasant and rude just to balance things out, but they were also kind and generous—the model couple.

I recall Angela speaking to me at the party about her plans but I think I was too busy trying to look at her legs to listen to what she was saying (I wasn’t a Catholic at the time, so it was okay!). After that I pretty much forgot about Angela and Jonathan. I married, came to Canada, started a family, and moved on.

Fast-forward twenty years to a phone-call from that oldest friend. “Are you still visiting London at Christmas,” he asked, “and do you remember Jonathan and Angela?” I said “Yes” to both questions. “They’ve apparently been living in Africa and have just returned to Britain. They’re having a party to say hello to everybody. They want us all to know, however, that Jonathan was in an accident. Angela has been a teacher at a small school, and there had been a fire. One little boy, Joshua, had been left inside. Jonathan ran back in and rescued the boy. The child is fine, but Jonathan is badly burnt; they don’t want anybody to be shocked when they see him.”

I did indeed fly to London that Christmas, and made my way to the apartment whereJonathan and Angela were staying. It was Christmas Eve, and I’d planned to go to Midnight Mass after seeing them. As for burns and the accident, I had worked as a war reporter, had seen death up close, and I was—so foolishly prided myself—a man of the world. I arrived a little early, and knocked on the door. There was Angela, as lovely as ever. “Come in, come in”, she said. “You’re the first here, and Jonathan will be overjoyed so see you.”

There he was. This once strikingly handsome young man, sitting in a large armchair, his face so disguised by scar tissue that I could barely see his eyes. One ear seemed to be almost missing, and he had hardly any hair. I tried to register nonchalance, but it never works. Then he spoke, and the voice was the same as it had been two decades ago. And the words, the words. “All right Coren, I know I look a bloody mess. But at least one of us has kept their figure.”

I tried to laugh, but instead I began to cry. Angela ran to me, embraced me, said, “Don’t worry, don’t worry, we’ve both done a lot of that. Don’t worry.” Then a little African boy ran into the room, jumped on Jonathan’s lap and said, “Daddy, daddy!” Angela held my hand and said, “Have you met our new adopted son? His name is Joshua.”

I learned that night that Jonathan and Angela were Christians, had been all of their lives, and that after university they had worked as missionaries in Africa. Jonathan helped bring a clean water supply to the region; she set up and ran a school. Christ had formed their lives, their behavior, their relationship, their love, their sacrifice, and their courage. I should have known this years earlier but I was—yes—too busy trying to look at Angela’s legs. That was an evening, a Christmas, and a Midnight Mass I will never forget.

Let me be candid. There are times when I wonder if it’s all worth it. The internal politics of the Church; the ambitious Catholics—clergy and laity—who gossip and betray; those who are never happy unless they are condemning and criticizing the words and actions of others. It was Flannery O’Connor who spoke of suffering for the Church and suffering from the Church. The first is easy and rewarding, and can lead to deeper faith. The second is enervating and painful, and can lead to despair. But whenever I feel the sting, see the unfairness, shudder at the injustice, I try to think of Jonathan, Angela, and little Joshua. But most of all I think of what this season is all about, and it is about He whose birth we celebrate at Christmas.

I know the birth of Jesus Christ may well not have been in December and that it may not have been a stable, but I really could not care less. I have been to Bethlehem, but more importantly Bethlehem has been to me. I have not had to run into burning schools or put my life at risk, and my complaints about ill treatment are generally little more than privileged whines. Nor do I want to be a martyr, if it can be at all avoided. The point, though, is not whether we die for Christ but whether we are willing to die for Christ. If it’s love, it’s total. There’s no middle way when it comes to the romance of faith.

He became a baby so that we could know Him and understand Him properly. This is the quintessence of Christmas, the story of God becoming man—becoming child. Naked vulnerability guaranteeing eternal life. Angela reminded me of this when I spoke to her the day before I returned to Canada those twenty years ago. “Women used to turn and look at my husband in the street because he was so good-looking”, she said. “Now everybody turns and looks at him, but for other reasons.” A pause. “I’ve never stopped looking at him, and never will.”

Never stop looking at Jesus, as a baby, a child, an adult, a man dying on the Cross, a God restored to life, a savior with us until the end of time.\

Have a blessed and wonderful Christmas.

Jesus: Liar, Lunatic, Legend, Mystic, or Lord?

The following comes from Dr. Peter Kreeft at Strange Notions:

For Catholics, the doctrine of Christ's divinity is central, for it is like a skeleton key that opens all the other doctrines. Catholics have not independently reasoned out and tested each of the teachings of Christ received via the Bible and the Church, but believe them all on his authority. For if Christ is divine, He can be trusted to be infallible in everything He said, even hard things like exalting suffering and poverty, forbidding divorce, giving his Church the authority to teach and forgive sins in his name, warning about hell (very often and very seriously), instituting the scandalous sacrament of eating his flesh—we often forget how many "hard sayings" he taught!

When the first Christian apologists began to give a reason for their faith to unbelievers, this doctrine of Christ's divinity naturally came under attack, for it was almost as incredible to Gentiles as it was scandalous to Jews. That a man who was born out of a woman's womb and died on a cross, a man who got tired and hungry and angry and agitated and wept at his friend's tomb, that this man who got dirt under his fingernails should be God was, quite simply, the most astonishing, incredible, crazy-sounding idea that had ever entered the mind of man in all human history.

The argument the early apologists used to defend this apparently indefensible doctrine has become a classic one. C.S. Lewis used it often, e.g. in Mere Christianity, the book that convinced Chuck Colson (and thousands of others). I once spent half a book (Between Heaven and Hell) on this one argument alone. It is the most important argument in Christian apologetics, for once an unbeliever accepts the conclusion of this argument (that Christ is divine), everything else in the Faith follows, not only intellectually (Christ's teachings must all then be true) but also personally (if Christ is God, He is also your total Lord and Savior).

The argument, like all effective arguments, is extremely simple: Christ was either God or a bad man.

Unbelievers almost always say he was a good man, not a bad man; that he was a great moral teacher, a sage, a philosopher, a moralist, and a prophet—not a criminal, not a man who deserved to be crucified. But a good man is the one thing he could not possibly have been according to simple common sense and logic, for he claimed to be God. He said, "Before Abraham was, I Am", thus speaking the word no Jew dares to speak because it is God's own private name, spoken by God himself to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14). Jesus wanted everyone to believe that he was God. He wanted people to worship him. He claimed to forgive everyone's sins against everyone. (Who can do that but God, the One offended in every sin?)

Read the rest here!

Lose Yourself: Finding Freedom in Mary’s Risky Yes

The following comes from The Catholic Exchange: 

Did she really say that? Did she really mean it? I keep turning back to Luke 1:38, “And Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.’” I take a few minutes to present myself before God in silence. When my mind wanders, I return to the spirit of Mary’s words. How can my heart prepare him room?

Then it hits me.

Only as God’s handmaiden did Mary became the God-bearer.

I want to ask you: when did the New Covenant start? Where was the special place where God became man, “not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by the taking of manhood up into God”? It all started in the womb of the virgin Mary. She is the genesis, the cradle, the fountainhead of Christ’s humanity. She is the place where, as John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and tabernacle among us, and we beheld his glory.” Mary gave herself—body and soul—to God: and as God’s handmaiden, Mary became the God-bearer.

Now, the incarnation is not like a game of Monopoly. We can’t pull out the board and arrange the pieces and do it all over again. But gentlemen, I want to suggest to you that Mary was just the beginning of what God wants to do in all of us—make us God’s handmaidens. You and me. People who, like Mary, can hear Christ and then say Yes to Christ. So it is that Jesus says in Luke 8:20, “My mother and brothers are those whohear the word of God and do it.”

St. Paul puts it in more muscular terms. He says he is “a slave for Christ” (Rom. 1:1). The way of manliness, for Paul, is “not by way of eye service, as men-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart” (Eph. 6:6).

Brothers, if we do not become God’s “handmaidens,” God’s slaves, our lives will be barren, childless, Godless. But if we imitate Our Lady, the ever Virgin Mary, and we hold nothing back—if we say only Yes! to God—we would “conceive” Christ within us, and show his New Covenant to the world.

How can we hear God’s word? He tells us: “The Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Lord” (1 Sam. 3:21). God reveals himself by his word. If you want him, you begin with his word. God also reveals himself through his Church. “But when they believed Philip as he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women” (Acts 8:12). When they believed Philip they were baptized. God reveals himself through his Church. To hear God’s word, we must start by seeking him in Scripture and the Church.

How can we, as men of Christ, say Yes to God’s word? When we think only of how we might get hurt, or have been hurt, we do not risk saying Yes to God. We grasp for the wrong things (like control) and come up empty. We do not risk the Gospel, and so we never really know the Gospel. We only know our fears. But gentleman, our Blessed Mother reminds us that we were made for more than worry. Sometimes the manliest thing to do is let go.

Let go. 

Read the rest here.

Archbishop Aquila: The joy of Christmas is contagious

The following comes from The Denver Catholic Register:

A group of atheists recently bought a billboard in Times Square and asked the provocative question: Who needs Christ at Christmas? They answered their own question with a one-word answer—nobody.

That is an interesting take on the holy day that is named, quite aptly, after Christ himself.

According to the billboard, Christmas can now be about anything you want it to be. For example, they suggested, it can simply be about family, friends, presents, parties and hot chocolate.

Christians obviously do not agree with this, but the atheists bring an important point to the forefront of the public debate. In recent years Christmas has been accompanied by a “war on Christmas,” which is rather strange: What does the world have to fear from the belief that God so loved humanity that he became a child and dwelt among us?

Just this month, in an exclusive interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa, Pope Francis spoke with laser-like precision on the essence of Christmas. “It is the encounter with Jesus,” he said.

“God has always sought out his people, led them, looked after them and promised to always be close to them,” he continued. “This is a beautiful thing. Christmas is God’s meeting with his people.”

The appeal of the message of Christmas, even to non-believers, is present all around us. The encounter of Christ with his people sparks an incredible outpouring of joy, of consolation, of generosity and of hope. This can be quite contagious.

The parties, the presents, the gatherings with friends and family, and yes, even the hot chocolate, are wonderful demonstrations of this joy that dwells in our hearts. Nobody throws a party when they are fearful of the future. We don’t give presents if there is no movement of joy and love in our hearts.

These wonderful aspects of Christmas don’t define the holy day, but rather they are a part of Christmas because we know that God is with us and for us; there is reason to rejoice.

We Christians have a great responsibility to let everyone know that Christmas is about the infinite mercy of God, especially because this reality is what unleashes the deepest joy anyone could experience. And for those who don’t share the Christian belief, everyone should be at peace celebrating even the concept that there is hope in such a love.

To Christians, I encourage you to remember, as Pope Francis reminded us in the aforementioned interview, that “Christmas is joy, religious joy, God’s joy, an inner joy of light and peace.” We must be witnesses of such joy, and we must contemplate the great mystery of God, who came to dwell among us.

“With Christ,” he writes in “Evangelii Gaudium” (The Joy of the Gospel), “joy is constantly born anew.”

The Pope used the word joy in his letter more than 50 times, underlining the absolute centrality of joy in the life of a Christian. He invites Christians to “a renewed personal encounter with Jesus to Christ.” He urges us to listen intently to God’s voice in our hearts, and to experience the “quiet joy of his love.”

To non-Christians, I urge you to take another look at Christmas. Look at it again with fresh eyes. Look at what we celebrate: let the eyes of your souls go past the presents, the trees, the fat Santa and red-nosed Rudolph, and stop at the center of the manger. Listen to the everlasting message of love and peace, and you will know what Christmas is all about, the God who loves you eternally even if you do not wish to receive that love. It’s a message that benefits us all.

Most Rev. Samuel J. Aquila, S.T.L.
Archbishop of Denver

A Child is Born

The Heart of the Catholic Thing

The following comes from Word on Fire:

What is the Catholic thing? What makes Catholicism, among all of the competing philosophies, ideologies, and religions of the world, distinctive? I stand with John Henry Newman who said that the great principle of Catholicism is the Incarnation, the enfleshment of God. What do I mean by this? I mean, the Word of God—the mind by which the whole universe came to be—did not remain sequestered in heaven but rather entered into this ordinary world of bodies, this grubby arena of history, this compromised and tear-stained human condition of ours. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14): that is the Catholic thing.

The Incarnation tells central truths concerning both God and us. If God became human, without ceasing to be God and without compromising the integrity of the creature that he became, God must not be a competitor with his creation. In many of the ancient myths and legends, divine figures such as Zeus or Dionysus enter into human affairs only through aggression, destroying or wounding that which they invade. And in many of the philosophies of modernity, God is construed as a threat to human well-being. In their own ways, Marx, Freud, Feuerbach and Sartre all maintain that God must be eliminated if humans are to be fully themselves. But there is none of this in the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. The Word does indeed become human, but nothing of the human is destroyed in the process; God does indeed enter into his creation but the world is thereby enhanced and elevated. The God capable of incarnation is not a competitive supreme being but rather, in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, the sheer act of being itself, that which grounds and sustains all of creation, the way a singer sustains a song.

And the incarnation tells us the most important truth about ourselves: we are destined for divinization. The church fathers never tired of repeating this phrase as a sort of summary of Christian belief: Deus fit homo ut homo fieret Deus (God became human so that humans might become God). God condescended to enter into flesh so that our flesh might partake of the divine life, that we might participate in the love that holds the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in communion. And this is why Christianity is the greatest humanism that has ever appeared, indeed that could ever appear. No philosophical or political or religious program in history—neither Greek or Renaissance or Marxist humanism—has ever made a claim about human destiny as extravagant as Christianity’s. We are called, not simply to moral perfection or artistic self-expression, or economic liberation, but rather to what the eastern fathers calledtheiosis, transformation into God.

I realize that an objection might be forming in your mind. Certainly the doctrine of the incarnation separates Christianity from the other great world religions, but how does it distinguish Catholicism from the other Christian churches? Don’t Protestants and the Orthodox hold just as firmly to the conviction that the Word became flesh? They do indeed, but they don’t, I would argue, embrace the doctrine in its fullness. They don’t see all the way to the bottom of it or draw out all of its implications. Essential to the Catholic mind is what I would characterize as a keen sense of the prolongation of the Incarnation throughout space and time, an extension of it precisely through the mystery of the church. Catholics see God’s continued enfleshment in the oil, water, bread, imposed hands, wine, and salt of the sacraments; they appreciate it in the gestures, movements, incensations, and songs of the liturgy; they savor it in texts, arguments, and debates of the theologians; they sense it in the graced governance of Popes and bishops, they love it in the struggles and missions of the saints; they know it in the writings of Catholic poets and in the cathedrals crafted by Catholic architects. In short, all of this discloses to the Catholic eye and mind the ongoing presence of the Word made flesh, namely Christ.

Newman said that a complex idea is equivalent to the sum total of its possible aspects.  This means, he saw, that ideas are only really known across great stretches of space and time, with the gradual unfolding of their many dimensions and profiles.  The Incarnation is one of the richest and most complex ideas ever proposed to the mind, and hence it demands the space and time of the church in order fully to disclose itself.  This is why, in order to grasp it fully, we have to read the Gospels, the Epistles of Paul, the Confessions of St. Augustine, the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, the Divine Comedy of Dante, John of the Cross’s Ascent of Mt. Carmel, The Story of a Soul of Therese of Lisieux, among so many other master texts.  But we also have to look and listen.  We must consult the Cathedral of Chartres, the Sainte Chapelle, the Arena Chapel, the Sistine Ceiling, Bernini’s Ecstasy of Ste. Teresa; the church of the Holy Sepulchre, Grunewald’s Crucifixion, the soaring melodies of Gregorian chant, the Masses of Mozart, and the motets of Palestrina.  Catholicism is a matter of the body and the senses as much as it is a matter of the mind, precisely because the Word became flesh.

Fr. Robert Barron comments on The Nativity of Luke's Gospel

Pope Francis: Jesus is God-with-us

The following comes from Vatican Radio:

At his weekly General Audience, Pope Francis turned his attention to the Feast of the Nativity. “This our encounter,” he said, “is taking place in the spiritual climate of Advent, made even more intense by the Novena of the Holy Nativity that we are living in these days, and that leads us to the Christmas holidays.” The Holy Father reflected on the Nativity of Jesus, “the feast of confidence and hope, that overcomes uncertainty and pessimism.” The reason for our hope, he said, is this: “God is with us, and God still trusts us.”
“God has willed to share our human condition to the point of making himself one of us in the Person of Jesus, who is true man and true God.” But even more surprising, he said, is that Jesus becomes man not in “an ideal world, an idyllic [world], but in this real world, marked by so many things, good and bad, marked by divisions, wickedness, poverty, arrogance and wars.” In this way God shows that He is merciful towards humanity, and filled with love for us. “He is God-with-us: do you believe this?” Pope Francis asked the crowd. When they responded “Si!” the Holy Father continued “But let us make this confession: Jesus is God-with-us! All together: Jesus is God-with-us!” And he thanked the faithful for their enthusiastic response.
The birth of Jesus, the Pope said, brings us the good news that we are loved “immensely and individually” by God – and God not only helps us to know this love for each of us, but also gives and communicates this love to us.
Pope Francis concluded his Audience by pointing out two considerations we can take away from these considerations on the Nativity of Jesus: The first is that God reveals Himself not as one who remains on high and dominates the universe, but as one who humbles Himself. This shows us that in order to be like Him, we must not put ourselves above others, but must humble ourselves and serve others. He had strong words for Christians who refuse to humble themselves: “It is an ugly thing,” he said, “when you see a Christian who doesn’t want to humble himself, who doesn’t want to serve, a Christian who struts about everywhere: it’s ugly, eh? That is not a Christian: that’s a pagan!”
The second consideration is that, if Jesus has become one of us, than whatever we do for a brother or a sister, we do for Him. “Jesus Himself reminds us: He who has fed, welcomed, visited, loved one of the smallest and poorest of people, has done it for the Son of God.”
Pope Francis concluded his catechesis with greetings for the various groups who attended the Audience in Saint Peter’s Square, noting in particular pilgrims from England, Australia and the United States. He also had a word of thanks for members of the group “Up with People” for their musical entertainment during the audience.

Below, please find the complete text of the English-language summary of the Pope’s remarks, followed by his greetings for English-speaking pilgrims:
Synthesis: Dear Brothers and Sisters: In these last days of Advent we prepare ourselves spiritually to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Christmas is a feast of joyful hope, for God has become one with us in the person of his Son, true God and true man. He showed his love for us by becoming part of our world, with all its conflicts, its suffering and its poverty. Jesus is truly Emmanuel: God among us. This is the great “gift” which he brings: a divine love which heals and transforms our hearts, overcoming all uncertainty and pessimism. Our joyful contemplation of the mystery of Christmas should make us realize that, as God has become one of us, we too are called to become like God: humble, close to others, especially the poor, and ever attentive to their needs. This Christmas, let us ask Mary, Mother of Jesus and our Mother, to help us see in our neighbour the face of Jesus, God made man. May we be in this world a ray of that light which shone forth from Bethlehem, bringing the joy and peace to the hearts of all men and women.
Greetings: I greet all the English-speaking pilgrims present at today’s Audience including those from England, Australia and the United States. I thank the members of “Up with People” for their musical entertainment. Upon you and your families I invoke God’s blessings of joy and peace!

Pope Benedict: The face of God revealed in Christ

(Vatican Radio) Torrential rains swept St Peter’s Wednesday as pilgrims huddled in queues waiting to enter the Paul VI hall for the weekly audience with Pope Benedict XVI. In his catechesis the Holy Father continued his series of lessons on the Year of Faith, focusing this week on God’s Revelation of Himself to humanity in Jesus Christ.

“During the Christmas season we celebrated the mystery of the Incarnation as the culmination of God’s gradual self-revelation to Israel, a revelation mediated by those great figures such as Moses and the Prophets who kept alive the expectation of God’s fulfilment of his promises. Jesus, the Word made flesh, is truly God among us, “the mediator and the fullness of all revelation” (Dei Verbum, 2). In him, the ancient blessing is fulfilled: God has made his face to shine upon us (cf. Num 6:25). As the Incarnate Son, the one mediator between God and man (cf. 1 Tim 2:5), Jesus does not simply speak to us about God; he shows us the very face of God and enables us to call him our Father. As he says to the apostle Philip, “whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). May our desire to see the Lord’s face grow through our daily encounter with him in prayer, in meditation on his word and in the Eucharist, and thus prepare us to contemplate for ever the light of his countenance in the fullness of his eternal Kingdom”.