When I was a child, I questioned God about the event of today’s Gospel reading. As a child, it did not seem right to me that innocent children should die because Jesus was born. I remember puzzling over it for years. As a child, I had a child’s understanding of the Incarnation. My picture was one of a lovely Christmas card: a perfectly clean stable, beautiful stars in a clear sky, and well-dressed worshipping shepherds and kings. The death of children did not fit with my picture. Maturity and today’s first reading from 1 John give me a more complete and complex view of Christmas and the Incarnation it celebrates.
Incarnation
As a child, I did not know the word “incarnation.” As an occasional worshipper at a small not-Catholic Church I had never heard of “God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father–” the words we say every Sunday and major feast in the Creed.
We say those words, but what do they mean? How could God be contained and grow in the womb of a woman—even an immaculate one? How could “the Word,” present from the beginning of time, through whom all things came to be, as of the Incarnation be conceived and born as a human child in a poor family? Actually, to think HOW that could happen is beyond my ability to consider.
But I do consider WHY, and the way that the WHY mixes with how. I John gives us a way to think about the why:
Beloved:
This is the message that we have heard from Jesus Christ
and proclaim to you:
God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.
What do we mean, “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all?” How does that fit with the death of the Holy Innocents described in today’s Gospel?
This is where it takes maturity to understand. Jesus was born, and the boy babies under age two In the vicinity of Bethlehem were killed. But it was not God who killed them. Today’s scripture says, “Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him” and “When Herod realized that he had been deceived by the magi, he became furious. He ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi.”
Herod’s choice to do evil killed the children.
Bad things happen. I hear people say, “That must be God’s will.” Well, yes, it must be within God’s permissive will, because God didn’t stop it. God does not stop the presence of evil. That is not how he chooses to save us. But God does not cause the evil.
God chooses to save us by being incarnate—by being one of us and being in the midst of evil (darkness) with us as light—as goodness.
Jesus the Light Entered into Darkness
Think about today’s Christmas Gospel scene that is not the Christmas card image. God chooses for himself to come into the world in the night, away from Nazareth where he surely would have had some cradle of his own. For about two weeks right before his birth he traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem, probably riding in his mother on a donkey. Then Joseph is told to take his family to Egypt. As I researched how long this might take, I learned that to go all the way to Egypt as we know it would have taken weeks. However, Egyptian territory, out of Herod’s reach, would only have been about 40 miles away from Bethlehem. So the Holy Family may have traveled a long or short way—but they traveled as refugees under a death threat. Not an easy way to go.
God incarnate chose to enter human life in the middle of confusion, poverty, trouble, and discomfort. Even so, evil reacted as evil does: with violence, unconcern for truth, and disrespect for law, God, and people.
Evil is of the darkness.
God is of the light. God is the light.
The light is God’s goodness—which, through the Incarnation LIVES in the midst of evil, of darkness. As John tells us today, it lives through us:
If we say, “We have fellowship with him,”
while we continue to walk in darkness,
we lie and do not act in truth.
But if we walk in the light as he is in the light,
then we have fellowship with one another,
and the Blood of his Son Jesus cleanses us from all sin.
“If we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and the Blood of his Son Jesus cleanses us from all sin.”
Applications
Just before Christmas we learned that a local senior low-income residence had no one to cook for its residents on Christmas day. It was a quick, “everybody bring what you can and we’ll trust the Lord there will be enough” kind of meal we put together. There was plenty of food—and plenty of help. Whole families came—enough that there were as many of us as there were residents. We didn’t serve them Christmas dinner. We ate Christmas dinner with them. It was a glorious experience of Incarnation, God-with-us all.
Yet, the day after Christmas as I made communion rounds , I heard several stories of great loneliness—as people may have had food, but no family who spent Christmas day with them.
Darkness. Darkness of our American culture which separates out the elderly, lives in homes the fragile cannot climb the stairs to enter, and sends a lovely pot of flowers with best wishes.
Darkness. The long night of families where old wounds and wars get relived every time people get together. Darkness, where people settle for getting even, rather than getting together.
Then there is the darkness of too much alcohol, children on drugs who refuse to come for Christmas dinner, and of children surrounded by cool stuff while their parents fight.
“If we walk in the light and have fellowship with one another, the Blood of His Son cleanses us from all sin.”
Darkness in Division
A final, great piece of darkness to me: division in the Church. From a bit of a distance, I try to understand it. Understanding the Incarnation is much easier. That God would come among us, to be with us in all things but sin, to show us how to live AS WELL AS saving us by his death—that is great mystery to me, but wonderful mystery I can embrace.
When I get myself to read or listen to those who divide, they seem to be saying “Personal holiness is what matters. To please God we must follow the rules. We must focus on Catholic Truth.”
Others say, “Mercy is what is important. Serving the needs of the poor, the fallen away, the caught in evils of the world is what must be done.”
Darkness says it’s either-or. Darkness can mislead even very good people. We can believe that how we see things is right—the only right.
Light says it’s both-and-“walking in fellowship with one another.” As Fr. Denis said at St. Meinrad, “The Holy Spirit is in the tension.”
The Both-And of the Incarnation: In Jesus, in Saints
At its core, the Incarnation means “both-and.” Jesus was both God and man. He came for rich and poor, holy scribe and public sinner. He is personal holiness and merciful outreach.
Jesus was born in the midst of the evil world, the poor, the away from God, the needy. He spent the three years of his active ministry healing ALL, teaching ALL, giving special leadership training to a few—but a few whose backgrounds stretched across the Jewish culture and soon expanded to the Greco-Roman world. Yet he was holy. People tried and tried to trip him up, but he was holy.
Jesus was both-and.
I must admit, for me merciful outreach is where I feel at home. I embrace it and its disciplines readily. But as I age, I also recognize there is much for me to learn from those who are beacons of personal holiness. So, more and more, I turn to lives of the saints.
Throughout the centuries, the saints have lived lives of both-and—personal holiness and sacrificial self-giving for others. Remember the saying of the little girl who was enthralled by the windows of the cathedral: “Saints are the people the light shines through.”
How can I walk in fellowship with others in the light today to build the Kingdom of God by reaching out while becoming holy?
Prayer:
Today, Lord, let me be your Light in the darkness of my corner of the world. Give me joy, that I may radiate you. Give me love, that I may see and serve those in darkness around me, especially those in the darkness of loneliness or fear. Give me peace, that I may rest in you enough that I may not be dismayed by others’ opinions, if those opinions seem not of you. Give me patience with myself, because, though I want to be a great street light, this morning I feel like a tiny candle. Let me not be discouraged as today I learn how to be Light like you. Amen.
