A Christmas message
A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
Mario D’Couto
If a woman was responsible for the fall of humankind,
should she not play a great role in its restoration? And if there was a lost
Paradise in which the first nuptials of man and woman celebrated, might there
not be a new Paradise in which the nuptials of God and man would be celebrated?
As the fall of man was a free act, so too the Redemption
had to be free. What is called the Annunciation was actually God asking the
free consent of a creature to help Him to be incorporated into humanity. This
is not to say that the Son of God existed only at this point of time. He is the
Word. The Gospel of St. John clearly explains this where He writes,
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. (John
1:1-5)
The Word of God who is Pure and Eternal found no place to
lay His head when He became human. Bishop Sheen explain this beautifully in the
following words,
There was no room in the
inn …… there was room for the daughters of the rich merchants of the East;
there was room for those clothed in soft garments, who lived in the houses of
the King; in fact, there was room for anyone who had a coin to give the
innkeeper but there was no room for Him Who came to be the Inn of every
homeless heart in the world.
The above passage is a clear explanation of the picture
of humankind. In the book of Revelation, it is written, “Behold, I stand outside the
door” (Revelation 3:20). This is to say that we have the choice to
allow the Lord to come in or not to welcome Him. The painter of the picture,
“The Light of the World” by William Holman Hunt shows that there is no handle
on the outside of the door and this was intentionally done by the artist to
represent the obstinately shut mind of humankind. It is up to us to open the
door and allow Our Blessed Lord to come in. He will never force Himself
inside. Incidentally, the first people
who were to know about the arrival of the Lord of Lords were ordinary shepherds.
In the filthiest place in the world, a stable, Purity was born. He, Who was
later to be slaughtered by men acting as beasts, was being 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. Men bowed down before it as before God. The ox in
the stable were now present to make its innocent reparation, bowing down before
God.
The inn could be seen as an allegory for all the worldly
affairs, the popular and the wealthy while the stable was seen to be a place
for the outcasts, the ignored and the forgotten. Pride is like the poisonous
version of strength. In scripture we find the downfall of many people not
because of their weakness but because of their strengths. Let us look at some
of them,
·
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.
·
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.
·
Many Kings in Israel’s history were
‘suppressed’ due to their trust in their own strengths.
·
Even in Jesus’ time, He rebuked the
pharisees not because He did not like them but because they were closed to His
message for they thought that they were the so called ‘Puritans’ or the
‘Unblemished lambs’ and depended on their own strengths.
Time and again, scripture affirms that when God worked
with His people, He always chose the weak and the insignificant. Abraham and
Sarah begin the lineage of revelation, but they are hardly the stuff of epics;
neither do they come across as moral paragons. Isaac, their son, is portrayed
as a dupe, while grandson Jacob steals his claim to the divine mission and in
various other ways, proves himself a rogue and a scoundrel. Moses appears
somewhat later and while popular tradition portrays him as a folk hero, a
careful reading of Exodus reveals an unstable personality. The judges and Kings
who thereafter emerge to lead the holy nation have a way of emanating from
dubious backgrounds and their foibles seem to be recorded with relish. Samuel,
for example, is depicted as being rather on the order of a football star who
has played without his helmet too often. Eli is revealed as an overindulgent
parent. The eventually mad king Saul seems to have been selected more on the
basis of height than heredity, while David’s origins are those of a minor son
without so much as a claim on the family inheritance. Even the prophets who
served as God’s oracles are by ordinary standards, a questionable lot. Amos
could be described as an unemployed nurseryman with a grudge, Hosea a willing
cuckold, Elijah a wetter of manic – depressive tendencies, Elisha a man of
mental instability. Indeed, the prophetic ministry as a whole and in particular
the wandering ‘school of prophets’, seems more a travelling sideshow of freaks
than emissaries of the most High.
Why go far, even the 12 apostles of Our Blessed Lord were
not the best of men. A careful reading of the Gospels and the Acts of the
Apostles will give you an in – depth look at the characters of the Apostles and
how they lived. Yet God writes straight on crooked lines. Is there anything
that is too hard for God? (Genesis 18:14) God is able to raise up
children of Abraham from even stones (Matthew 3: 9).
In this regard, we may say that in tracing the ancestral
lineage of Christ, the genealogy goes beyond the Hebrew background to include a
few non – Jews. There may have been a good reason for this, as well as for the
inclusion of others who had not the best reputation in the world. One was
Rahab, a foreigner and a sinner (a prostitute); another was Ruth, a foreigner
though received into the nation; a third was the sinner Bathsheba whose sin
with David cast shame upon the royal line. Why should this be the case, given
the fact that Christ was God and was a descendant from King David? Possibly it
was in order to indicate Christ’s relationship to the stained and the sinful,
to harlots and sinners and even to the Gentiles who were included in His
Message and Redemption. This is to say that Christ’s salvation was for the
whole of humanity and not just for a selected group of people.
Compulsion earns hate, not love. Where there is no
freedom, there is no growth. In fact, the English historian Lord Acton once
remarked that God so loved freedom that He even permitted sin in order to
secure it. God’s love makes it approach clad in the rags of weaknesses. This
was what St. Paul understood when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 1: 22 – 29.
This therefore
calls us on our part to throw open our weaknesses where the divine power can
manifest itself. A clear example of this is found in Mark 10: 51 – 52 wherein
Jesus heals the blind man. But before He healed the blind man, He asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” to
which the man replied that he wanted to see. On reading in between the lines,
this passage of scripture is of a deep theological significance, it signifies
God’s power and man’s vulnerability.
There is an incident in the life of Symeon, the New
Theologian, a Byzantine Christian monk and poet who was canonized a saint in
the Eastern Orthodox Church. He was a person who was said to be far ahead of
his time. He was so well versed with scripture and the writings of the Fathers
of the Church that he could strike out in a new direction. It was probably
because of this that he was unpopular with the theological establishment of his
time. This can be found in the meeting of theologians which took place in 998
A.D. in Constantinople. The Patriarch Sisinnius II presided over this meeting.
This was a time when speculative thinking flourished in the Orthodox Church,
with all its ornate oratory, its hair - splitting definitions of terms and
subtle reasoning. Some famous men attended the meeting. One of them was Stephen
of Nicomedia, who was supposed to be the Patriarch’s own theologian. With all
his authority, he launched a full – scale attack on Symeon the New Theologian.
In short, the attack was that he was an incompetent theologian and probably
even a ‘heretic’ according to them due to the things that he taught which they
thought were false and bizarre.
Responding to their accusations, Symeon the New
Theologian said that while they made such intellectual assertions they missed
the most important thing. They forgot the Person of whom they were discussing
as Symeon himself puts it beautifully, “What use is it discussing about God if you
are not consciously aware of His presence? What value have theoretical
distinctions between the Divine Persons if we do not know the difference
between them by experience? You are blind men talking about the type of metal a
coin is made of while you are unable to see the coin itself! You have not felt
the Divine Light within your hearts, yet you dare to discuss the intricate
mysteries of the Trinity! You quote Scripture – but remain unaware of its
intrinsic meaning. Only persons with the Holy Spirit, only those taught by God
Himself, can teach theology to others.” From these words, we see that
Symeon the New Theologian was pointing to a far greater reality. Why, even the
Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, a man revered not just in the intellectual
world but also as a man of God in the Church, said when he had the beatific
vision about his own work, the famous, “Summa Theologica” “All this is straw”. True
wisdom does indeed come from above and it surpasses all human understanding
which can only be got in communion with Him.
Every time we celebrate the birth of our Blessed Lord, it
is a reminder to us of the inauguration of a new humanity, as the adopted
children of God. The nearer Christ comes to a heart, the more it becomes
conscious of its guilt; it will then either ask for His mercy and find peace,
or else it will turn against Him because it is not yet ready to give up its
sinfulness. Thus, He will separate the good from the bad, the wheat from the
chaff. Man’s reaction to this Divine Presence will be the test: either it will
call out all the opposition of egotistic natures or else galvanize them into a
regeneration and a resurrection.
Bishop Fulton Sheen beautifully explains this phenomenon
in his book, “Life of Christ” in the
following words,
“Simeon was practically calling
Him the ‘Divine Disturber’, Who would provoke human hearts either to good or
evil. Once confronted with Him, they must subscribe to light or darkness.
Before everyone else they can be ‘broadminded’; but His Presence reveals their
hearts to be either fertile ground or hard rock. He cannot come to hearts
without clarifying them and dividing them; once in His Presence, a heart
discovers both its own thoughts about goodness and its own thoughts about God.
This could never be so if He were just a teacher. Simeon
knew this well and He told our Lord’s Mother that Her Son must suffer because
His life would be so much opposed to the complacent maxim by which most men govern
their lives. He would act on one soul in one way and on another in another way,
as the sun shines on wax and softens it while shining on mud and hardening it.
There is no difference in the sun, only in the objects on which it shines. As
the Light of the World, He would be a joy to the good and the lovers of light;
but He would be like a probing searchlight to those who were evil and professed
to live in darkness. The seed is the same, but the soil is different, and each
soil will be judged by the way it reacts to the seed. The will of Christ to
save is limited by the free reaction of each soul either to accept or reject.”
As we celebrate the Birth of Our Blessed Lord, my prayer
and wish is that while we celebrate, we may always allow Him to be born in our
hearts. He is waiting for us to open the door. Wishing you a happy Christmas
and a blessed new year.
