Christmas and Incarnation: What Does It Mean? Christmas readings and thoughts

Christmas is about the Incarnation, the central mystery and most profound revelation of Christianity. God becomes a human person, Jesus / Joshua: Yeshu'a (Yehoshu'a: "Yahweh is salvation").

Stunning. We who grew up with it are too used to it, perhaps, and "pop" religion brings Jesus down to a magical free-escape ticket from Hell, an nonjudgmental hippie or guru figure offering the certainty of "rapture" or even a Pentecostal nirvana-state in which to lose one's self in here and now. But Christianity is not a "get out of jail card" for a Narcissistic self, and the Incarnation is the most stunning revelation – in any religion anywhere. If you don't "get" the Incarnation, you won't truly grasp the significance of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, both of which are dependent on the Incarnation.

The Incarnation is the most radical idea revealed to the world since Moses asked God His Name. The Incarnation is a teaching that stood Judaism on its head and split it in pieces from the moment Jewish leaders understood what Jesus of Nazareth was claiming, while Islam has ceaselessly – ceaselessly – fought against it with fire and sword and slavery and slaughter.

Christianity is unique to the three Monotheistic religions because it insists on the Incarnation, on God becoming Man. Judaism rejects this teaching with horror, as does Islam, to such an extent that Islam can be said to exist in order to deny the Incarnation. Islam exists on many levels, of course: politically as a Herrenvolk religion, designed to enable a few to rule masses of subjected peoples; it is an economy, too – and originally a slave economy: it emptied cites through slavery and closed trade in the Mediterranean except for slavery, in the process destroying the Late Ancient/Early Medieval European world, funding the Viking Age and reducing the Cradle of Civilization to a vast dustbowl; and finally Islam exists as a political and juridical system. But as a religion per se, from its oldest existent writings on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem down to its latest murder, Islam's main point is to deny the Incarnation.

Historical Christianity, traditional Catholicism and the Orthodoxies, teach that the Incarnation was necessary to transform our human nature by the Infusion of Grace the Incarnation made possible, for in taking on human Nature, God elevated it. God changed our natures. Transformed us – "pro multis", those of us participating in this Salvation through Baptism and the other Sacraments. In the process, the world itself and all that's in it is also transformed. The Lord God, through His Incarnation, is still creating, He is Re-creating. As St. Anselm (see further below) put it, Creation's "lost beauty [is] endowed with inexpressible new grace." Christians are re-created. This is Salvation. Faith isn't a "leap in the dark" of fevered belief, especially not belief against evidence, but one's conscious intellectual acceptance of the truths that the Universal Church, East and West, has taught from the beginning.

Christmas should not therefore be merely the celebration of "God's birthday", the birth of Yeshu'a in Bethlehem. It's nothing less than the source-point of Yahweh Is Salvation, the Re-Creation of Creation. As the 1962 Missal translates part of the Offertory from the Latin: "O God, who in creating human nature, didst wonderfully dignify it, and hast still more wonderfully restored it, grant that, by the mystery of this water and wine, we may become partakers of His divine nature, who deigned to become partaker of our human nature."

And the Incarnation must necessarily be about Mary, too, whose fiat made the Incarnation possible. Mother and Child are inseparable. Then, and now, at Christmas. And the Cross.

The God Whom earth, and sea, and sky
Adore, and laud, and magnify,
Whose might they own, whose praise they tell,
In Mary’s body deigned to dwell.

O Mother blest! The chosen shrine
Wherein the Architect divine,
Whose hand contains the earth and sky,
Vouchsafed in hidden guise to lie.

Blest in the message Gabriel brought;
Blest in the work the Spirit wrought;
Most blest, to bring to human birth

The long desired of all the earth.

O Lord, the Virgin-born, to Thee
Eternal praise and glory be,
Whom with the Father we adore

And Holy Ghost for ever more.

Text: Venantius Fortunatus 530-609 (As found in my Little Office of the Blessing Virgin Mary; see also: https://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/god_whom_earth_and_sea_and_s.htm for sheet music, etc.)

A few of the Incarnation's meanings as found in the New Testament: The Elevation of the human race, Theosis as the Greeks call it, is what Saint Paul calls being made a new creation in Christ. More than a metaphor, it is absolutely necessary and central to salvation.
•    God’s Incarnation didn’t lower God but rather elevates human nature, enabling…
•    "Theosis" (Divinization) which by grace – not by nature – is our incorporation into Christ, raising us up to participate in His Divinity (as St. Peter teaches in 2 Peter 1.4). Usually described in the Western Church as an Infusion of Grace, our natures are changed, whereas Protestantism teaches Imputation of Grace: i.e., God assigns or imputes grace to us but doesn’t actually divinize or change our nature. (Luther explained the Protestant teaching via his famous "manure pile covered in snow" metaphor. C.S. Lewis carefully disagrees with this central Protestant idea in the 10th of his Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer.)

This Theosis teaching is stated in many ways throughout the New Testament. Examples:

•    John 1:12 “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (Obviously, a new creation)
•    2 Cor 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (Again, a new creation) 2 Peter 1:4 might well put it best; see also Romans, 6:4, 7:6, 12:2; Galatians 3:27; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:8-12.

•    St. John refers to it explicitly. Gospel of John 3:3-8, the famous "born again" passages, read from the Historical Church's understanding instead of the Protestant one. One is born anew in Baptism, via the water and the Spirit, a new creation, born of the Spirit.

•    Two Old Testament examples: Isaiah 65:17; Ezekiel 36:25-26

•    Much is asked of this New Man, this New Creation. In general, note how Our Lord seems to demand the impossible of “ordinary” humans. In Matthew 5, during the Sermon on the Mount, Our Lord gives the Beatitudes, then says we are “salt of the earth” and “light of the world”, discusses how He has come not to do away with the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them. Christ discusses elevated behavior regarding anger, adultery, divorce, making oaths and not retaliating (“turn the other cheek”) and love our enemies. He ends with "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect." (5:48) That is something manifestly impossible for “normal” human beings to do.

•   We are not "normal"; as St Paul puts it "And such some of you were; but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of our God." (1 Cor 6:11; note the order: baptism first, then the work of sanctification/moral living, then justification.)

The New Testament shows what the first generation of Believers preached of this New Creation, while the Medievals repeatedly give a strong sense of the stunning quality of the Incarnation.

•    St. Athanasius: "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." (De inc. 54, 3: PG 25, 192B) and [CCC 460]

•    St. Thomas Aquinas: "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods." (Opusc. 57, 1-4) [CCC 460]

From a sermon by Saint Anselm, bishop (1033/4–1109)

Blessed Lady, sky and stars, earth an rivers, day and night – everything that is subject to the power or use of man—rejoice that through you they are in some sense restored to their lost beauty and are endowed with inexpressible new grace. All creatures were dead, as it were, useless for human beings or for the praise of God, who made them. The world, contrary to its true destiny, was corrupted and tainted by the acts of human beings who served idols. Now all creation has been restored to life and rejoices that it is controlled and given splendor by those who believe in God.

The universe rejoices with new and indefinable loveliness. Not only does it feel the unseen presence of God Himself, its Creator, it sees him openly working and making it holy. These great blessings spring from the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb.

Through the fullness of the grace that was given you, dead things rejoice in their freedom and those in heaven are glad to be made new. Through the Son who was the glorious fruit of your virgin womb, just souls who died before his life-giving death rejoice as they are freed from captivity, and the angels are glad at the restoration of their shattered domain.

Lady, full and overflowing with grace, all creation received new life from your abundance. Virgin, blessed above all creatures, through your blessing all creation is blessed, not only creation from its Creator, but the Creator Himself has been blessed by creation.

To Mary God gave his only-begotten Son, whom he loved as himself. Through Mary God made himself a Son, not different but the same, by nature Son of God and Son of Mary. The whole universe was created by God, and God was born of Mary. God created all things and Mary gave birth to God. The God who made all things gave himself form through Mary, and thus he made his own creation. He who could create all things from nothing would not remake his ruined creation without Mary.

God, then, is the Father of the created world and Mary the mother of the re-created world. God is the Father by whom all things were given life, and Mary the mother through whom all things were given new life. For God begot the Son, through whom all things were made, and Mary gave birth to him as the Savior of the world. Without God’s Son, nothing could exist; without Mary’s son, nothing could be redeemed.

Truly the Lord is with you, to whom the Lord granted that all nature should owe as much to you as to himself.

And from Saint Lawrence Justinian, bishop (Lorenzo Giustiniani, 1 July 1381 – 8 January 1456)

While Mary contemplated all she had come to know through reading, listening and observing, she grew faith, increased in merits, and was more illuminated by wisdom and more consumed by the fire of charity. The heavenly mysteries were opened to her, and she was filled with joy; she became fruitful by the Spirit, was being directed toward God, and watched over protectively while on earth.

So remarkable are the divine graces that they elevate one from the lowest depths to the highest summit, and transform on to a great holiness. How entirely blessed was the mind of the Virgin which, through the indwelling and guidance of the Spirit, was always and in every way open to the power of the Word of God. She was not led by her own senses, nor by her own will; thus she accomplished outwardly through her body what wisdom from within gave to her faith.

It was fitting for divine Wisdom, which created itself a home in the Church, to use the intervention of the most blessed Mary in guarding the law, purifying the mind, giving an example of humility and providing a spiritual sacrifice.

Imitate her, O faithful soul. Enter into the deep recesses of your heart so that you may be purified spiritually and cleansed from your sins. God places more value on good will in all we do than on the works themselves.

Therefore, whether we give ourselves to God in the work of contemplation or whether we serve the needs of our neighbor by good works, we accomplish these things because the love of Christ urges us on. The acceptable offering of the spiritual purification is accomplished not in a man-made temple but in the recesses of the heart where the Lord Jesus freely enters.

"Imitate her, O faithful soul." Indeed.

Christmas. As with so much else that is from God, it is a bit more than perhaps we bargained for. Merry Christmas to all.

An Préachán