The Incarnate Word
On the mystery of God being born of a woman
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.”—John 1:14
I am profoundly annoyed by secular Christmas culture. Santa, the shopping frenzy, the compulsory cheer—I can’t stand it. Secular Christmas in America is a celebration that has no reason. In a country with fewer and fewer disciples of the Lord, how could it?
I hold this seasonal annoyance in tension with the remarkable fact that on this very day two thousand and twenty-five years ago, the incomprehensible, unlimited, almighty, and ever-living God was born of a woman and became man. The Creator of the universe wrapped in swaddling clothes. How could this possibly be true?
And yet it is.
This is a deep mystery, in the original Christian sense of the word: a divine truth that is utterly beyond anything we completely grasp. Indeed, what would it even mean for finite creatures like you and me to fathom the magnitude of the One in whom we live and move and breathe and have our being taking flesh within his own creation? Such a form of intelligibility is necessarily impossible.
While we may not be able to understand this event, we can participate in it. Christmas comes from Christ’s Mass, the Divine Liturgy of the Nativity of the Lord. In celebrating the Eucharistic sacrifice of the God-man, we can enter into His Incarnation by receiving Him in Holy Communion, by bringing His earthly flesh into our own.
Let us recognize this objective reality today. Let us worship Jesus Christ, fully divine and fullyy human.