Telling Our Story Again
Sister Elise Saggau, OSF
On Christmas, we celebrate the great mystery of the Incarnation. This story is really our story. It is the exact meeting point of God and human beings. We so often think of God as some kind of remote power that has somehow set this whole creation thing going and then stepped back to see what would happen. This is not a Christian view. It is impossible for God to step back from anything God has chosen to be involved with. At the very first moment of creation, God freely decided to get involved with all created being, including you and me. Whatever God does, God does with free, unconditional, absolute, and irrevocable love. This, of course, is difficult for us to understand because we, of ourselves, do not love like that. Yet every Christmas, we acknowledge and celebrate that God came among us as one of us so we could love like God and be like God and share God’s own life forever.
Christmas reminds us that we humans are essentially poor. Everything we are and have has been given to us by God in love. We are totally dependent on the God who lovingly and freely created us and who holds us in being. Christmas is a stark reminder to us of what we are before God. When we imagine this little newborn baby lying in utterly poor circumstances in Bethlehem, son of an equally poor mother, we are deeply moved. When we realize that this little human being is a full manifestation of the God of all creation, we are astounded. Such a realization can waken in us the most ardent and grateful love. It can make us want to laugh and sing and shout and weep. In this simple scene, the gospels come alive and are made present in a highly charged dramatic action. To know this story, to believe this story, is to become a participant in it, to play a role in it. Its power becomes irresistible.
At Christmas, then, we honor the amazing and profound reality of the Incarnation. God became human. God became the same kind of human that we are; there isn’t any other kind of human. God, in human flesh, was “at home” in a created, limited, and unfinished universe. We do not understand this. We speak these words, but they sound ridiculous. Yet we continue to contemplate the mystery, and it continues to teach us who we are and who God is.
We can say yes to this mystery because we believe in the Incarnation. We believe that all creation is so beloved of God that God is right here in it with us. We believe that the story, the adventure that we are in, has a good ending. We believe that the story matters, that we matter, and that matter matters. We believe that the whole universe is on its way to some splendid and unimaginable fulfillment.
In awe and wonder, then, we contemplate the mystery of God, the mystery of ourselves, the mystery of creation. As creatures, we accept our lives as gifts, as Christmas gifts. No one wants to squander a gift! So let us not engage in meaningless efforts to promote ourselves. Let us not mourn over past mistakes. Let us not allow our imaginings about the future to make us fearful. Let us gaze in wonder at how our God has entered into our human reality with us. Let us laugh and shout at the wonder of it all—God has chosen to be with US!! God wants to be with US as one of US!! God has come, and nothing again will ever be the same.
