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Reflections On Call

A Christmas Meditation

The Church’s Liturgy of the Hours (Divine Office) includes readings from various saints and important theologians for each day of the year. The reading for Christmas Day is from Saint Leo the Great, who served as pope from 440 to 461. Leo was a very influential person in the history of the Church for a number of reasons. He is famous for his “Tome” – a theological “letter” about the person of Christ that was read at the Council of Chalcedon (451) and which helped the Church in its struggle to formulate a balanced teaching about the true divinity and true humanity of Christ. In his sermon for Christmas, Leo included the following reflections:

Dearly beloved, today our Savior is born; let us rejoice. Sadness should have no place on the birthday of life. The fear of death has been swallowed up; life brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness. No one is shut out from this joy; all share the same reason for rejoicing. Our Lord, the victor over sin and death, finding no [person] free from sin, came to save us all. Let the saint rejoice as he [or she] sees the palm of victory at hand. Let the sinner be glad as he receives the offer of forgiveness…. In the fullness of time, chosen in the unfathomable depths of God’s wisdom, the Son of God took for himself our common humanity in order to reconcile it with its creator….

Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom. (Sermo 1 in Nativitate Domini)

Many people struggle with sadness during this time of year, especially those who have lost loved ones in death, who are grappling with illness themselves or in their families, or who are separated from people they love. I think of my nephew and godson, Jim Ryan, who is serving in Afghanistan and who will be far away from his wife and two little daughters this Christmas. And there are thousands of people like Jim in our world. It is easy to read the newspaper or watch the television news and come away with a feeling of deep sadness in the face of the persistent deprivation and never-ending conflict in our world.

Nevertheless, we too are invited to rejoice as we remember and celebrate the birth of our Savior. As Leo wrote, this is “the birthday of life.” We celebrate the mystery of the incarnation – the astounding truth that the Son of God assumed our common humanity in order to reconcile us with our Creator and with one another. God chose to save us not by sweeping in from the outside with the legions of heavenly armies, but from within our very human experience – by becoming one like us. This child who was born to Mary and Joseph in poverty, in utter vulnerability, is the one we call Savior and Lord. He is the one who would become completely vulnerable again as he was nailed to a cross. In his vulnerability and humble service, Jesus showed us the human face of God; he displayed for us the inexhaustible depths of God’s love. He also manifested the possibilities of humanity, as he exemplified what it means to live as a true child of God.

This celebration leads us to ponder Leo’s words, “Christian, remember your dignity.” The Second Vatican Council said this about the dignity that has been bestowed on humanity because of the incarnation: “Human nature, by the very fact that it was assumed, not absorbed in him, has been raised in us also to a dignity beyond compare. For by his incarnation, he, the Son of God, has in a certain way united himself with each [human being]. He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will and with a human heart he loved” (Gaudium et spes, 22).

We are summoned to remember the dignity that we have been given through baptism, in which we became a member of the Body of Christ. Each of us, no matter what our situation in life, has a profound personal dignity that is rooted in the indomitable love of God. We are challenged to look at life and to make our choices from the perspective of the dignity that we have as daughters and sons of God in Christ. Much of the sadness in the world is the result of our failure to recognize the dignity of one another. We are called to remember our own dignity and to manifest it by affirming the dignity of each person God places in our lives. The mystery of the incarnation shows us that because of Christ God has in a certain way united himself with every human being. May we recognize the presence of God in each person we meet and manifest to them the love of God that was poured out on the world in Christ.

Fr. Robin Ryan, cp

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Reflections On Call

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