“In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son…”
- Hebrews 1:1, 2a
God speaks to us through His Son, a Son born into this world, a Son who is entrusted to earthly parents like any of us born into the world, a Son who cries and laughs like any other newborn. Jesus enters the world like each one of us, dependent upon others for survival. He was vulnerable to hunger and thirst, to cold and stress, to accident and mishap. In fact, if not for the protective love of His parents, Herod's armies would have found Him after His birth and killed Him.
"The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us," says St. John in his Gospel. The divine Word became a child: newborn, fragile, and vulnerable, and as dependent as we all are upon the love of others for survival. In the birth of Jesus, God reveals Himself and His plan for salvation – a plan that actually depended on human beings.
This God, who is all-powerful, who could simply destroy the world and start over again, will not. This God, who could demand our obedience, does not. This God loves us so much that He uses His power to make us His partners in our own salvation – fragile, willful human beings though we are. God sent His Son, born as an infant who was dependent upon Mary and Joseph for His very survival. They were entrusted with this precious baby's life.
It goes against all our worldly logic to imagine God as dependent upon us. Is it not part of the very definition of God that He is all-powerful, and needs no one and nothing else? But He chose to be dependent on others. How else do we explain this child given to the world? The gospels claim no special, extraordinary power for the infant Jesus. He gives no blessing from the creche, He performs no miracles as an infant, He speaks no words the world can understand. He is simply a baby like any other baby, who cries and is dependent upon others to be fed and cared for and held and loved, dependent upon others for His very life.
Yet, the Gospel continues: "We have beheld his glory..." The glory in the infant Jesus is that He is the Word, the message brought from God to humanity through His birth into the world. The glory of Jesus is that God's love is so great that God Himself would experience life in the world through His son. The glory is being invited to share in God's hope for us. The glory is sharing the work of creation with God, so that God's hope for us might become a reality in our world, and God's kingdom may come in our lives.
Mary and Joseph accepted the responsibility of being earthly parents for a baby sent from God. They held Him and cared for Him, listened to His cries, and learned to understand what was in His mind and His heart. They cared for this child and raised Him in love. They gave the child a home, and found new life and purpose in their relationship with the Divine Infant entrusted to them.
And the glory of the Infant Jesus lives among us, even to this very day. The story of Christmas is told and retold day after day as God invites us to share in the kingdom He has prepared for us through His son, because the story of Christmas is the story of how God's Kingdom enters our lives. We tell the story not only in words, but in the language that is beyond words: by how we live. Our example, how we live, is part of telling the story of God’s Love. His Love is Incarnate in Christ, certainly; and we are called to incarnate that love of God by our own actions and with our own words, because it is God’s great love that makes mankind whole.
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Painting: "The Nativity"
by Arthur Hughes (1831-1915)