Knowing that God not only knows but experienced what it was to be a human being, composed of blood and flesh and bone, limited by all the things that limit us, should give us patience with our weakness and joy in our strength. In our prayers for help, we can say, “You know what it’s like,” and be confident that he does. But we can also look to the end of the story and know that by being one of us, he was able to raise us up to overcome those limits—and the final limit of death itself. As St. Irenaeus put it so well, “He became human so that we might become divine.”
Knowing that God not only knows but experienced what it was to be a human being, composed of blood and flesh and bone, limited by all the things that limit us, should give us patience with our weakness and joy in our strength. In our prayers for help, we can say, “You know what it’s like,” and be confident that he does. But we can also look to the end of the story and know that by being one of us, he was able to raise us up to overcome those limits—and the final limit of death itself. As St. Irenaeus put it so well, “He became human so that we might become divine.”
The Advent name for God is Emmanuel. We sing it over and over in the familiar hymn, “O come, O come, Emmanuel.” The name means “God is with us” and comes to us from the prophet Isaiah. Matthew’s Gospel reminds us that Jesus was a fulfillment of this prophecy, God with us in the flesh, born a human baby, like us in all things. It’s an echo of the more exalted language of the prologue of John’s Gospel, which tells us that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Scripture scholars tell us that the second half of John’s Greek phrase translates literally as “pitched his tent among us.” This was an image that a first-century, semi-nomadic people would understand. In the Old Testament, God’s presence among the people was often described as a messenger or angel of the Lord. But the revelation of the incarnation is that now it is God himself in our midst and one of us. It’s difficult for us to grasp this concept. Perhaps this is why Matthew and Luke make such a point of describing the baby in the manger visited by shepherds, the child receiving gifts from the magi.
Perhaps this is why we have such a resonance with Christmas. We understand the great gift of life in a newborn child. There’s a purity in a newborn, a sense of both innocence and ancient wisdom, that gives us a glimpse of God. Knowing that God not only knows but experienced what it was to be a human being, composed of blood and flesh and bone, limited by all the things that limit us, should give us patience with our weakness and joy in our strength. In our prayers for help, we can say, “You know what it’s like,” and be confident that he does. But we can also look to the end of the story and know that by being one of us, he was able to raise us up to overcome those limits—and the final limit of death itself. As St. Irenaeus put it so well, “He became human so that we might become divine.”
The holiday season with its hustle and bustle and seemingly endless activities places demands on our bodies as well as our spirits. We can, if we like, imagine Jesus in the busy days of his preaching and teaching and healing ministry. If we do, we may also hear him calling to us and saying, “Come aside and rest for a while.” Because we know that he knows what it is to feel tired and need to be rested and refreshed.
“In contemplating a beautiful work of creation consider that, in itself, it is nothing. Let your thoughts soar to the great Hand that produced it; place all your delight in Him saying: “O my God! Sole Object of my desires! Universal Source of all good things! How delightful it is to consider that the perfections of creatures are but a faint image of Thy glory!” When you behold the verdant trees or plants and the beauty of flowers, remember that they possess life only through the will of that Divine Wisdom that, unseen by all, gives life to all things. Say to Him: “O Living God! O Sovereign Life! Thou delight of my soul! From Thee, in Thee and through Thee all things on earth live and flourish!” The sight of animals should lift your mind and heart to the Author of sensibility and motion. Say with respect and love: “Great God, Unmoved Mover of all things, how I rejoice when I consider the eternity of Thy existence, incapable of the slightest change!” When the beauty of mankind impresses you, you should immediately distinguish what is apparent to the eye from what is seen only by the mind. You must remember that all corporeal beauty flows from an invisible principle, the uncreated beauty of God. You must discern in this an almost imperceptible drop issuing from an endless source, an immense ocean from which numberless perfections continually flow. How my soul is ravished when I consider that Eternal Beauty, the Source of every beautiful thing!”— Dom Lorenzo Scupoli, p.68
“The will of God gives to all things a supernatural and divine value for the soul submitting to it. The duties it imposes, and those it contains, with all the matters over which it is diffused, become holy and perfect, because, being unlimited in power, everything it touches shares its divine character. The entire virtue of all that is called holy is in its approximation to this order established by God; therefore nothing should be rejected, nothing sought after, but everything accepted that is ordained and nothing attempted contrary to the will of God. .When God requires action, sanctity is to be found in activity.”—Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade, p. 15
“Our Lord’s love shines out just as much through a little soul who yields completely to His Grace as it does through the greatest . . . Just as the sun shines equally on the cedar and the little flower, so the Divine Sun shines equally on everyone, great and small. Everything is ordered for their good, just as in nature the seasons are so ordered that the smallest daisy comes to bloom at its appointed time.”— St. Therese of Lisieux, p. 4-5
What does it mean to be sacred—to be woven, warp and weft, of divine fabric? For one, it means that all the raw material of this world and all the human and other-than-human creatures of this world are divinely given gifts, deserving of reverence and respect for their place in the Great Economy, and therefore not simply expendable. To be sacred also means to participate fully—even if not consciously—in the ongoing dance of relationships, which are the fundamental divine reality, as good Trinitarian theology claims. To be sacred means that everything and everyone (human and non-human) can be a conduit and a container for beauty and meaning. Everything, if we just learn to see with the right eyes, is shining like the sun. And it means, in an important way, that ownership and possession are ultimately a fiction.
I imagine it will take me longer than the rest of my life truly to meet the world as its own subject rather than as the object of my own plans and priorities. But slowly, slowly, I’m learning. Whenever I take a meandering walk, or watch the hummingbirds at our feeder, or just sit under the trees on our front lawn, feeling the Earth beneath me and the breeze on my skin, I feel that my own roots are growing deeper, intertwining with those of the trees, and all seeking a common Source: the divine power that holds everything together. The more time I spend, agendaless, in and with the rest of nature, the broader and deeper grows my sense of connection, my sense of kinship, the feelings of love and the commitments of love. Though native to us, that bond must be nurtured, and its primary nutrient is time. Time is the good soil in which relationships grow and flower. Time, given with presence rather than preoccupation, is the greatest gift. There is no substitute.
“Whenever that sacrifice of Christ is memorialized in the Church, there is an application to a new moment in time and a new presence in space of the unique sacrifice of Christ Who is now in glory. In obeying His mandate, His followers would be representing in an unbloody manner that which He presented to His Father in the bloody sacrifice of Calvary. After changing the bread into His Body and the wine into His Blood: He gave it to them (Mark 14:22). By that communion they were made one with Christ, to be offered with Him, in Him, and by Him. All love craves unity. As the highest peak of love in the human order is the unity of husband and wife in the flesh, so the highest unity in the Divine order is the unity of the soul and Christ in communion.”— Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, p. 401-2
From ancient times the Easter octave, culminating on the 8th day, has been centered on the theme of God’s mercy and forgiveness. The final day of the octave celebration of Easter is meant to be a day of thanksgiving to God for his goodness to mankind through the Paschal mystery, that is, the Passion, death, and Resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ. The Second Sunday of Easter was named Divine Mercy Sunday by Pope St. John Paul II following a request from Our Lord in his private revelations to St. Faustina Kowalska. On this day Jesus promised to open the floodgates of his inexhaustible mercy and shower abundant graces on those who participate in this feast day. A plenary indulgence is granted (under the usual conditions of sacramental confession, Eucharistic communion, and prayer for the intentions of the Holy Father) to the faithful who, in any church or chapel, in a spirit that is completely detached from the affection for a sin, even a venial sin, take part in the prayers and devotions held in honor of Divine Mercy, or who, in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament exposed or reserved in the tabernacle, recite the Our Father and the Creed, adding a devout prayer to the merciful Lord Jesus.
