God's Greatness - Part 2

God’s Greatness – Part 2

Cl. Mario D’Couto SDB

            The canticle of Philemon 2:6 -11 beautifully portrays the whole mission of Jesus in a few verses, which was to pay the price for the sins of humankind. Christ Jesus became one like us in all aspects except sin. In one of my previous articles entitled “God’s greatness,” [Please refer to the ‘Old posts’] I had written about a reflection made by Giovanni Papini where he speaks about how God could be born in one of the filthiest places, one could imagine. Fulton Sheen writes something similar in his book called, “Life of Christ.”

            In one of the filthiest places in the world, a stable, Purity was born. He, Who was later to be slaughtered by men who would act as beasts, was born among beasts. He, Who would call Himself the “‘Living Bread’ descended from Heaven,” was laid in a manger, literally, a place to eat. Centuries before, the Jews had worshipped the golden calf and the Greeks, the ass. Men bowed down before them as before God. The ox and the ass now were present to make their innocent reparation, bowing down before their God.

            There was no room for them in the inn, but there was room in the stable. The inn is the gathering place of public opinion, the focal point of the world’s moods, the rendezvous of the worldly, the rallying place of the popular and the successful. But the stable is a place for the outcasts, the ignored, and the forgotten. The world might have expected the Son of God to be born – if He was to be at all – in an inn. A stable would be the last place in the world where one would have looked for Him. Divinity is always where one least expects to find it.

            No worldly mind would ever have suspected that He Who could make the sun warm the earth would one day have no need of an ox or an ass to warm Him with their breath; that He Who scriptures, clothed the fields with grass, would Himself be naked; that He, from Whose hands came planets and worlds would one day have tiny arms that were not long enough to touch the huge heads of the cattle; that the feet which trod the everlasting hills would one day be too weak to walk; that the Eternal Word would be dumb; that the Omnipotence would be wrapped in swaddling clothes; that Salvation would be in a manger; that the bird which built the nest would be hatched therein – no one would have ever suspected that God coming to this earth would ever be so helpless. Divinity is always where one least expects to find it.

            If the artist is at home in his studio because the paintings are the creation of his mind; if the sculptor is at home among his statues because they are the work of his own hands; if the father is at home among his children because they are his own, then surely, argues the world, He Who made the world should be at home in it. He should come into it as an artist into his studio, and as a father into his house; but, for the Creator, to come among His creatures and be ignored by them; for God to come among His own and not be received by His own; for God to be homeless at home – that could only mean one thing to the worldly mind: the Babe could not have been God at all. Divinity is always where one least expects to find it.


            Such was the greatness of our Lord and Master. How true were the words of our Lord, “Take My yoke upon you. Let Me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart and you will find rest for your soul.” (Matthew 11:29) He really lived His humility right until His death on the Cross. 

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