In the Sacred Liturgy of the Nativity of Our Lord, there is a special set of readings for each Mass at Christmas: we hear about Jesus’ sacred and royal genealogy from Matthew at the Vigil Mass; in the night we reflect on Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem and the announcement of the angels in the shepherds’ field; at dawn we follow the shepherds to the manger to adore Him; and in the daytime we meditate on St. John’s prologue, in which is revealed that Jesus is the Word of God made flesh to dwell among us. It is, quite simply, too much to take in, and this spread of Scriptural passages communicates just how marvelous this event really is. Jesus’ birth in the flesh is a magnum mysterium – it is a great mystery. Nothing like it had ever happened before, nothing like it will ever happen again. All the ages have been waiting for this moment and had pointed to it through veiled signs. The heavens burst open with rejoicing as He arrived on our earth. A lowly infant is arrayed in divine majesty. In Him, God joined Himself to man, so that man might join Himself to God. In the Word made flesh God spoke once and for all, “because while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). And by His grace and truth we have been given the chance to become who we are created to be: sons and daughters of God. God became like us so that we might become like God.
There is a prayer that the priest recites quietly during the Mass as he mingles a small drop of water with the wine in the chalice. As he performs this rite, he prays: “by the mingling of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled Himself to share in our humanity. This prayer offered while mingling the water and wine is but an echo of the mystery we celebrate at Christmas. Today we celebrate the humility of God that makes possible the glory of man. We honor the mystery of our salvation, in which God united to His divine nature a human nature, so that He could be “like us in all things but sin” (Heb 4:15). He took on our nature in order to redeem our nature, and redeem our nature He did: on the Cross, in the body the Virgin Mary bore, He would pay the price of our salvation. That moment on Calvary is already foreshadowed even in the tender moments of His birth: He was laid upon a wooden manger, pointing to the wood of the Cross; He was wrapped in swaddling clothes, symbolizing the linen of His burial; in those first moments, He thirsted for His Mother’s milk, much as He would thirst in the last moments of His agony. As we celebrate this Christmas mystery, we do so impressed by the knowledge that He came for no other reason but to do His Father’s will, which was that He should become man and save us from our sins. “Today is born our Savior, Christ the Lord” – our response at the Mass in the Night, when we sing the refrain of faith that in Jesus, born an infant in a stable in Bethlehem, the Redeemer of the world has come.
Christ humbled Himself to share in our humanity, so that we may come to share in His divinity, or to put it another way, “God became man so that we might become God” (St. Athanasius). In other words, Jesus opens the way for us to be deified, “participators in the life of God”. He does this by bringing grace and truth. When we live according to the grace and truth of Christ, the truth He came down from Heaven to bring, which He entrusted to His Church to be handed down from generation to generation, we become like God, because we become like Christ Who is God. In becoming man, Christ took on a human soul, and so our souls must mirror the soul of Christ; He took on a human heart, and our hearts must reflect His heart; He took on a human mind, so our minds must reveal His mind; and He took on a human body, so we must live in our bodies as He lived in His body. He shares now eternally our nature – soul, mind, heart, body – and to dwell eternally with Him we must conform our nature, everything that we are – soul, mind, heart, body – with the grace and truth that has been revealed in Him. This is how we come to share in His divinity, by living in our humanity as He lived in His. The true gift of Christmas is that, in Christ, God gave Himself entirely to us so that, in Christ, we could finally give ourselves entirely to God. This is the most important gift exchange there could ever be. May God bless you in the week ahead, may He bless you and your family with comfort and joy this Christmas season, and may Mother Mary lead you more deeply into the Sacred and Merciful Heart of Jesus. I remain,
Affectionately yours in Christ,
Fr. Hess
