Christmas - A time for intimacy with the Lord


CHRISTMAS – A TIME FOR INTIMACY WITH THE LORD
Mario D’Couto
            On looking at the title, one may get the impression that only Christmas is the season for having an intimacy with the Lord. But that was just the beginning. Our Lord Jesus Christ invites us to have a relationship with Him every day.
            Last year, I had done a course called the ‘post-critical philosophy of God’ and if I could summarize the whole course in just a phrase, it is just this, “Life is not so much about us seeking God but rather God seeking us” and I think that the season of Christmas brings out this message strongly.
            In the past, Christian theologians shaped their concept of God by Greek ideas of complete perfection. Since God was totally complete in His own being, God was absolutely immutable. Whatever happened to creation did not cause the least change in God. God’s ‘being afflicted’ was written off as anthropomorphism, a human way of speaking about God. However, over the years, the understanding has changed. Today, theologians have grasped the new clarity that Jesus’ own passion and death illustrates how much God was on the side of the underdogs, of all those rejected and all who suffer pain. Thus God very much shares in the suffering of His creation, especially for us His children as Fulton Sheen once said, “The purpose of Christ coming into this world was to die for our sins.”
            When I look at scripture, I find a similar line of thought. If we look at the Old Testament, we could perhaps deduce that the image of God for the Israelites was that of a strict disciplinarian, who was waiting with a ‘big cane’ to punish each one for his or her sins and shortcomings. On the other hand, when Our Lord came into this world, He spoke about the love of God and this brought about a new lease of life into the people of Israel. J. Moltmann, in his book, “De taal der Bevrijding”, says something nice in this regard,
God showed Himself in the Man whose last words were, ‘My Lord, My Lord, why have You forsaken Me?’ God emptied Himself in the pain of love and died voluntarily a death of desperation. What did God do in that despised human being? God took upon Himself all the contempt we carry. In the suffering and dying of Jesus, God bridged the distance between us and Himself, so that no one can say, ‘See God doesn’t care!’
            If I were to compare the size of a tiny stone to the environment or to the surroundings, it would not make a difference and precisely because it is insignificant. We are like that tiny stone when we compare ourselves to the whole reality of the world and the universe – INSIGNIFICANT. But the beauty lies in the fact that God Almighty has chosen to have a relationship with each of us and just as we put many stones together, we can make a brick and by putting many bricks together, we can build a house, so it is the same with us. God shares a unique relationship with each of us differently and He brings us together to form His own Body, the Church. This is something liberating given the fact that even though you and I have so many failings and shortcomings, yet the Lord chooses to have a relationship with each of us. Now this does not mean that we can go to the other extreme where one can say that if God shares a relationship with me despite my weakness, then I can go on doing what I like. That is madness! I think what is important is to be genuine about oneself and work on it. If one were to adopt such a standpoint, it would only be an act of pride and as we all know, pride is the root cause of all sin. God works more on our weaknesses than on our strengths. Allow me to highlight some examples from scripture which testify to it,
  • Ø  Adam and Eve sinned not because of their weakness but because of their strength. It was their proud defiance to be like God that brought them down.
  • Ø  It was the pride of a group of men and women who thought that they could challenge God by building a huge tower, “The Tower of Babel.”
  • Ø  Many Kings in Israel’s history were suppressed due to their trust in their own strengths. Ex: King Saul.
  • Ø  Even during Jesus’ time, He hated the Pharisees not because He did not like them but because they were closed to the message of God for they thought of themselves as ‘Puritans’ or ‘Unblemished lambs’ and depended on their own strengths.

            My prayer and wish for us is that as we draw closer towards the feast of Christmas, that Christ may be born in our hearts, not just on 25th December 2011, but everyday and that we may always cherish the relationship He has called to share with each of us.    

Popular posts from this blog

In the world yet not of the world

Image
  IN THE WORLD YET NOT OF THE WORLD MARIO D’COUTO           Being in the world and yet not of it is something that can be a struggle, at least for me and what I mean by that is in as much as we desire to be good and to do good, God is not going to put a glass jar over us and say that just because we choose to love Him and follow Him more closely, that He is going to shield us from the temptations of this world. To make things clear though, this is not to say that the world in itself is bad or evil nor are the things found in the world either but how we deal with it is what will make us or break us. We all have responsibilities and important things that need our attention. If we are not careful though, our hearts and minds can be consumed with the task of keeping them afloat. Rather than centering ourselves in Christ and letting the other elements of our lives take their rightful place around that center, we can end up shifting our attention fr...
Read more

The Gift of Life

  THE GIFT OF LIFE  Mario D’Couto  The above video may seem to put human existence in a rather pessimistic way as if to say that our lives did not really matter and while no doubt there is some element of truth in it, I still feel that if lived well, there is meaning and purpose to our lives and that none of our lives is some sort of haphazard creation.  As I celebrate my gift of life tomorrow, I suddenly began to think that if we compare ourselves to the vastness of the universe and everything else that exists in it, we may perhaps be nothing more than a tiny dot floating on the surface of the earth and yet in as much as such a thing may appear insignificant, the One who created everything chooses to have a personal relationship with that tiny dot, that is, ourselves. This is something truly uplifting, which gives meaning and purpose to our lives and our existence. At the same time, it is also a reminder for us to stay grounded especially in those moments when w...
Read more

Are you creative?

Image
  ARE YOU CREATIVE? Mario D’Couto                         Can you imagine a world without creativity? What would the world look like if there was no creativity? Well, for all we can expect, it would be pretty boring and dull. There would be no speech, no songs, no tools, no ideas such as love, freedom or democracy. It would be an existence so mechanical and impoverished that none of us would want to be a part of.             To achieve the kind of world we consider human, some people had to dare to break the thrall of tradition. Next, they had to find ways of recording those new ideas or procedures that improved on what went on before. Finally, they had to find ways of transmitting the new knowledge to the generation to come. Those who were involved in this process we call creative. What we call culture or those parts of our selves that we internalized from the social...
Read more