December 22, 2002

The “shortest” day of the year now passes, along with Advent, and the Holy Church celebrates the Eternal Light of Christ that came into the world on a specific day in a specific place. All things grow out of date unless they are centered on that crucial date when God came to us in Christ “reconciling all things to Himself.”

The Advent mysteries of Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell introduce the human consciousness to a profound sense of the meaning of life. As the light is best appreciated in contrast to the dark, so is life best lived in contrast to sin and death. These considerations challenge the natural tendency to be slothful about the most important things, and consequently Christianity saves us from superficiality. That superficiality is abundant at Christmas time, in holiday “kitsch” and banal attempts at festivity.

To pinpoint the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, Saint Luke makes a point of saying that Caesar Augustus was emperor and Quirinius was the Syrian governor. He traces the ancestry of Jesus back through the whole of human history to the first “man” which is what “Adam” means. St. Matthew emphasizes the genealogical connection the other way around, ending up with Jesus as the heir of the patriarchs and prophets from Abraham and David. In other words, this happened in history to change history and to change us. First of all, it happened. It was not a myth made up to illustrate a theory. Various religions, as ideas, change ideas about life. Christianity, being more than a religion and in fact being the truth that all religions have sought, changes life itself. And all as the result of the Word that made the world, becoming a visible part of earthly life. Pope Gregory the Great wrote:

“For unless the new man, by being made in the likeness of sinful flesh, had taken on himself the nature of our first parents, unless he had stooped to be one in substance with his mother while sharing the Father’s substance and, being alone free from sin, united our nature to his, the whole human race would still be held captive under the dominion of Satan. The Conqueror’s victory would have profited us nothing if the battle had been fought outside our human condition. But through this wonderful blending the mystery of new birth shone upon us, so that through the same Spirit by whom Christ was conceived and brought forth we too might be born again in a spiritual birth; and in consequence the evangelist declares the faithful to have been born not of blood, nor of the desire of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God.”

Fr. George W. Rutler