Father Chet, December 2003
The Incarnation is the mystery of God in human flesh which we celebrate each Christmas.
A Christian mystery is not like a brick wall which is impossible to penetrate. Rather our Christian mysteries are bottomless wells of truth. It is impossible to exhaust the infinite truth contained therein.
Each Christian mystery invites us to reflect and meditate upon it and go ever deeper and deeper into it. By means of such prayerful reflection, we can discern more and greater insights into each of these mysteries.
God invites us to use our minds and intuition to learn new truths in each Christian mystery. We are then to act upon our insights in our daily lives.
Mystery of Bethlehem
Each Christmas we are invited to reflect upon the mystery of the Incarnation. As we study this mystery, we will find new insights of truth regarding God. We will also find deeper understanding of our relationship of love with God and our fellow human beings.
We should study and reflect upon all the details of Jesus’s earthly life as found in the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, whether for the first time or the thousandth.
Then, as we prayerfully consider each detail, we need to remind ourselves that this Jesus is God in human flesh. This is how God acts as a human being. This is how God wants us to act.
Jesus is the supreme model which we must study, reflect upon and then try to follow in faith and trust.
Human Side of Jesus
In The Human Side of Jesus (The Open Door, 2001), I imagine how the human nature of Jesus met each crisis and each event in his public life.
We believe that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. In 451, the Council of Chalcedon insisted upon this truth without any mixture of the two natures. By studying the human side of Jesus we learn how we should act and react in our own lives.
Through such a prayerful reflection of the human events of the life of Jesus, we may penetrate ever deeper into the mystery of the Incarnation.
On the first Christmas the angels sang. “Peace on earth and good will to all.” Let us all pray for the end of violence and peace everywhere on earth .
May you have a Blessed Christmas and a New Year filled with many graces