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While the celebration of Easter stands as the high point of the Liturgical Year, it is Christmas that speaks more to the heart and imagination... and to the Faith of most Catholics. More than the heartwarming story of the Babe of Bethlehem, the beauty of Church décor, the familiarity of Christmas Carols, the constancy of Tradition in a changing world, the affirmation of families gathered across great distances, there is a loveliness which supercedes and transcends all of this and defines the deepest meaning of Christmas.
At Christmas we celebrate the great principle of Catholicism — that which makes our faith distinctive among all the competing philosophies, ideologies and religions of the world. It is the Incarnation and Birth of Jesus Christ, the enfleshment of God. By this is meant that the Word of God (as Saint John the Evangelist describes Jesus)... the Co- eternal Second Person of the Holy Trinity... the mind by which the entire Universe came into being... did not remain sequestered in heaven, but rather transcended the Abyss, and entered into this ordinary world, making holy the sinful and tear-stained human condition.
As Saint John tells us: “The Word was made flesh and made His dwelling among us.” This is the heart of the Christmas message. The Lord’s Incarnation reveals the central Truth concerning both God and us: God became human without ceasing to be God, and without compromising the integrity of the Creature that He became — fully human and fully divine — in the person of Jesus Christ.
Certainly, there are many ancient myths and legends wherein divine creatures, such as Zeus or Dionysius enter into human affairs through aggression, destroying or wounding the humanity which they invade. And in many modern philosophies, God is construed as a threat to human autonomy and well-being. In their own ways, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as the lesser minds of contemporary atheism, all maintain that God must be eliminated if humans are to be fully free and fully themselves.
But nothing like this is brought forth in the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation: God enters His Creation not to destroy it in anger, but to redeem it in divine love. In the Incarnation of Christ, God condescended to enter into human flesh so that our human bodilyness and personhood might partake of the divine life — that we might participate in the divine love that holds the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in communion.
No form of secular humanism can come close to this claim: not the ancient Greeks, and their notion of moral perfection... not the Renaissance, with its introduction of artistic self- expression... not Marxist humanism, with its economic liberation attained through socialism.
We are called to what the Early Church Fathers called theosis: a Greek word meaning transformation into God. While the Orthodox Churches and the Protestant denominations hold to the conviction that the Word became flesh, it is Catholicism that embraces this doctrine in its fullness. Essential to the Catholic mind is what might be characterized as a profound sense of the prolongation of the Incarnation throughout space and time — an extension made possible through the mystery and the miracle of Transubstantiation, at the heart of the Church’s self-knowledge.
The Incarnate Lord is just as present in the Holy Eucharist: Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, as He was in the stall at Bethlehem. But there is also something of the physicality of human persons and the natural elements so dear to the practice of Catholicism, in which the prolonged presence of Christ is made manifest:
-in the water, the oil, the bread and wine, and the salt of the sacraments...
-in the words, gestures, incense and hymns of the Liturgy...
-in the graced governance of popes, bishops and priests...
-in the chant and the silence of the monasteries...
-in the struggles of the missionaries...
-in the tearful prayer before a lighted votive candle in a hushed and darkened church...
-in the great cathedrals crafted by Catholic architects, artists and workers.
In all of these, the Risen Christ, who sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven, remains with His people in a suspension of time, and an expansion of space. The Incarnation is one of the richest and most complex ideas ever proposed to the human mind, and hence the time and space, the physicality and use of natural elements is employed by the Church in order to fully disclose this mystery.
Our faith allows for a celebration in words, imagery and more, of the God who takes infinite delight in bringing His beloved people to fullness of life. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ’s claim to speak and to act in the very Person of God sets Him apart from all other philosophers, mystics, teachers or religious founders. His Resurrection from the dead ratifies His divine identity. This is why Saint Paul referred to Jesus as “the icon of the invisible God.” By this he meant that Jesus is the sacramental sign of God: our privileged way of seeing what God looks like.
The Church that Jesus founded is, then, not so much an organization as a Mystical Body. The purpose of the Church, now, is to make saints... to make people holy... to make its members Christlike. This is done through our history and Tradition, our Teaching and liturgy, our sense of “communio,” that is, belonging to one another, in order to introduce our members, and through them, the world, to the Person of Jesus Christ, and empower them to develop a relationship with Him.
Intimacy with Jesus is what Christian discipleship is all about, with the Kingdom of God first in the minds of His followers. It has been said that we become what we worship, whether it be secular notions of money, power, or popularity... or the ultimate reality of the incarnate God whom we have gathered to worship tonight. There is that theosis, that transformation into God. This invitation to intimacy with Christ our Savior means that Man doesn’t have to hide from God, as Adam did. Now God can be seen through Christ’s human nature, elevated as it is, in the hypostatic union of the humanity and divinity of Christ.
G. K. Chesterton once said that no man can love anything unless he can get his arms around it. Thus, the cosmos is too big, making contemporary attempts at oneness with the Universe meaningless and of no value. But once God became the Babe of Bethlehem, was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in in a manger, we can say, “This is Emmanuel. This is God-with-us.” Here is a mystery we can get our arms around in love, and our minds around in faith.
By Christ’s reaching down to frail human nature and lifting it up to the wondrous prerogative of union with Himself, human nature became dignified. And so, we make tonight, not a sentimental journey back to Bethlehem, but a transcendental pilgrimage. We do this in two ways:
1) The Sacred Scriptures for the day remind us of the fulfillment of God’s ancient promises to send a Messiah and Savior, who has now come to life in Bethlehem. And...
2) The name “Bethlehem,” from the Hebrew “House of Bread,” takes on supernatural meaning in the celebration of the Eucharist.
In the Eucharistic bread, consecrated into the Body of Christ, Our Lord fulfills His promise to remain with us until the end of time, making the Church a new “house of bread,” a sacramental Bethlehem. And so, we consecrate ourselves to Him as we receive the Eucharist worthily, in the State of Grace.
On this holy night, we join Mary and Joseph in gazing upon the Christ Child, who presents to us the human face of God. In Christ, the mercy of God is made visible, and in our humanity we receive His mercy. By being born at Bethlehem, the eternal Son of God has entered into the history, not only of the world as a whole, but also the history of each person, making the proclamation of the angels come alive for us: “Today is born in the City of David, a Savior, who is Christ and Lord.”
This is why, not just at Christmas, but each and every Sunday, we come to meet Him who has come to us in faith and in love, and sing from the heart the angels’ song,: Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.”