For our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became Man.
There are a few I don’t like about the new translation of the Nicene Creed. Is it technically more accurate to say “consubstantial with the Father” rather than “one in being”? Sure! Some people might even be inspired to look up what the heck “consubstantial” means instead of merely mentally translating it into “one in being.” Unfortunately, the birth narrative contained in the new translation simply doesn’t do Christmas justice.
The new translation changes one word—just a single one. Instead of saying Jesus “was born” of the Virgin Mary, we now say Jesus “was incarnate” of the Virgin Mary. To mention that God was incarnated in Jesus is theologically more descriptive, and it paints a really nice contrast between how we picture most of us as being “ensouled” flesh, while Jesus is a soul in-fleshed (carne being the Latin word for “meat” or “flesh”).
But whatever its theological and linguistic merits, there’s one thing substituting “born” with “incarnated” doesn’t do: it doesn’t make us think of babies. See, we normally think of babies as being born, not incarnated. And that’s the point of Christmas! That Jesus was born. That God came down to Earth in the form of a child—a baby.
I know we talk about God coming to Earth as a child so often in the Catholic Church that we can forget its significance, but think about that for a moment. Jesus was a baby. A crying, smelly baby who Mary had to clean up after and patiently coax through the process of crawling, awkward toddling, and finally walking. A baby who was absolutely awestruck when he discovered his hand and his shadow. In coming to Earth as a baby, the Creator of the Universe exchanged omnipotence for dependency, and omniscience for ignorance.
This was not an accident by God, or a necessity. God didn’t need to come as a baby. He could have “incarnated” as a 30-year old, gone seen John the Baptist, run his preaching circuit around Judea for three years, and then done his whole salvific crucifixion-resurrection thing. It would have been more efficient, and probably a lot easier. I mean, if given the choice, I’m not sure I would be a baby again—somehow all the best blackmail pictures of me come from when I was a baby. I’m sure all the Angels and Saints in heaven still joke about what crazy-adorable things Jesus did as a child.
That is what today is about: that God chose to come as a baby. In case we ignored His words, “whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3), we are reminded every year with the sight of God in a manger. And the manger calls us to humble ourselves as did this Child of God—the baby Jesus. We are called to crawl through life with the wonder and awe that accompanies the child as he discovers what seem to us absolutely mundane and ordinary. For, as Joan of Arcadia reminds us, even the most common tree is a miracle through God’s eyes.
My Christmas prayer is that no matter how wearying our life may get, and as comfortable and tempting cynicism may be, that we all remember that God was born into this world as a Child. I pray that we respond to God’s call to see the world through the eyes of His baby—to be as dependent on our Father and as awestruck at His creation as this Holy Child.
Merry Christmas.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Real Life
Yesterday, while I was busy stressing over my property professor's about a take-home exam based on Coleridge's Kubla Khan and a Mongolian revolt from China, a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, and shot 26 people. Victimes included the principal, his mother, and 20 children between 5 and 10 years old.
Maybe it was because both my mom and my sister are teachers, and the thought of someone carrying a gun into a school of all places is personal, but it was a jolt that reminded me that no matter how "stressful" life gets in my own little bubble of the world, real life goes on, and the world doesn't stop. I can really have no words at this point aside from those I wrote regarding the Aurora shootings, but I wanted to break my hiatus and come out of my law school finals hibernation to post the following thoughts that Archbishop Chaput, the then-Archbishop of Denver (and current Archbishop of Philadelphia), wrote in 1999 in the wake of the murder of 12 students at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado. Other thoughts specifically on the Newton shootings come from Fr. James Martin, Cardinal, and the Pope.
Ending the Violence Begins With Our Own Conversion
Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Denver
He descended into hell.
Over a lifetime of faith, each of us, as believers, recites those words from the Creed thousands of times. We may not understand them, but they're familiar. They're routine. And then something happens to show us what they really mean.
Watching a disaster unfold for your community in the glare of the international mass media is terrible and unreal at the same time. Terrible in its bloody cost; unreal in its brutal disconnection from daily life. The impact of what happened this past week in Littleton, however, didn't fully strike home in my heart until the morning after the murders, when I visited a large prayer gathering of students from Columbine High School, and spent time with the families of two of the students who died.
They taught me something.
The students who gathered to pray and comfort each other showed me again the importance of sharing not just our sorrow, but our hope. God created us to witness His love to each other, and we draw our life from the friendship, the mercy and the kindness we offer to others in pain. The young Columbine students I listened to, spoke individually -- one by one -- of the need to be strong, to keep alive hope in the future, and to turn away from violence. Despite all their confusion and all their hurt, they would not despair. I think I understand why. We're creatures of life. This is the way God made us: to assert life in the face of death.
Even more moving was my time with the families of two students who had been murdered. In the midst of their great suffering — a loss I can't imagine — the parents radiated a dignity which I will always remember, and a confidence that God would somehow care for them and the children they had lost, no matter how fierce their pain. This is where words break down. This is where you see, up close, that faith — real, living faith -- is rooted finally not in how smart, or affluent, or successful, or sensitive persons are, but in how well they love. Scripture says that "love is as strong as death." I know it is stronger. I saw it.
As time passes, we need to make sense of the Columbine killings. The media are already filled with "sound bites" of shock and disbelief; psychologists, sociologists, grief counselors and law enforcement officers -- all with their theories and plans. God bless them for it. We certainly need help. Violence is now pervasive in American society — in our homes, our schools, on our streets, in our cars as we drive home from work, in the news media, in the rhythms and lyrics of our music, in our novels, films and video games. It is so prevalent that we have become largely unconscious of it. But, as we discover in places like the hallways of Columbine High, it is bitterly, urgently real.
The causes of this violence are many and complicated: racism, fear, selfishness. But in another, deeper sense, the cause is very simple: We're losing God, and in losing Him, we're losing ourselves. The complete contempt for human life shown by the young killers at Columbine is not an accident, or an anomaly, or a freak flaw in our social fabric. It's what we create when we live a contradiction. We can't systematically kill the unborn, the infirm and the condemned prisoners among us; we can't glorify brutality in our entertainment; we can't market avarice and greed . . . and then hope that somehow our children will help build a culture of life.
We need to change. But societies only change when families change, and families only change when individuals change. Without a conversion to humility, non-violence and selflessness in our own hearts, all our talk about "ending the violence" may end as pious generalities. It is not enough to speak about reforming our society and community. We need to reform ourselves.
Two questions linger in the aftermath of the Littleton tragedy. How could a good God allow such savagery? And why did this happen to us?
In regard to the first: God gave us the gift of freedom, and if we are free, we are free to do terrible, as well as marvelous, things . . . And we must also live with the results of others' freedom. But God does not abandon us in our freedom, or in our suffering. This is the meaning of the cross, the meaning of Jesus' life and death, the meaning of He descended into hell. God spared His only Son no suffering and no sorrow -- so that He would know and understand and share everything about the human heart. This is how fiercely He loves us.
In regard to the second: Why not us? Why should evil be at home in faraway places like Kosovo and Sudan, and not find its way to Colorado? The human heart is the same everywhere — and so is the One for whom we yearn.
He descended into hell. The Son of God descended into hell . . . and so have we all, over the past few days. But that isn't the end of the story. On the third day, He rose again from the dead. Jesus Christ is Lord, "the resurrection and the life," and we — His brothers and sisters — are children of life. When we claim that inheritance, seed it in our hearts, and conform our lives to it, then and only then will the violence in our culture begin to be healed.
In this Easter season and throughout the coming months, I ask you to join me in praying in a special way for the families who have been affected by the Columbine tragedy. But I also ask you to pray that each of us — including myself — will experience a deep conversion of heart toward love and non-violence in all our relationships with others.
Maybe it was because both my mom and my sister are teachers, and the thought of someone carrying a gun into a school of all places is personal, but it was a jolt that reminded me that no matter how "stressful" life gets in my own little bubble of the world, real life goes on, and the world doesn't stop. I can really have no words at this point aside from those I wrote regarding the Aurora shootings, but I wanted to break my hiatus and come out of my law school finals hibernation to post the following thoughts that Archbishop Chaput, the then-Archbishop of Denver (and current Archbishop of Philadelphia), wrote in 1999 in the wake of the murder of 12 students at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado. Other thoughts specifically on the Newton shootings come from Fr. James Martin, Cardinal, and the Pope.
Ending the Violence Begins With Our Own Conversion
Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Denver
He descended into hell.
Over a lifetime of faith, each of us, as believers, recites those words from the Creed thousands of times. We may not understand them, but they're familiar. They're routine. And then something happens to show us what they really mean.
Watching a disaster unfold for your community in the glare of the international mass media is terrible and unreal at the same time. Terrible in its bloody cost; unreal in its brutal disconnection from daily life. The impact of what happened this past week in Littleton, however, didn't fully strike home in my heart until the morning after the murders, when I visited a large prayer gathering of students from Columbine High School, and spent time with the families of two of the students who died.
They taught me something.
The students who gathered to pray and comfort each other showed me again the importance of sharing not just our sorrow, but our hope. God created us to witness His love to each other, and we draw our life from the friendship, the mercy and the kindness we offer to others in pain. The young Columbine students I listened to, spoke individually -- one by one -- of the need to be strong, to keep alive hope in the future, and to turn away from violence. Despite all their confusion and all their hurt, they would not despair. I think I understand why. We're creatures of life. This is the way God made us: to assert life in the face of death.
Even more moving was my time with the families of two students who had been murdered. In the midst of their great suffering — a loss I can't imagine — the parents radiated a dignity which I will always remember, and a confidence that God would somehow care for them and the children they had lost, no matter how fierce their pain. This is where words break down. This is where you see, up close, that faith — real, living faith -- is rooted finally not in how smart, or affluent, or successful, or sensitive persons are, but in how well they love. Scripture says that "love is as strong as death." I know it is stronger. I saw it.
As time passes, we need to make sense of the Columbine killings. The media are already filled with "sound bites" of shock and disbelief; psychologists, sociologists, grief counselors and law enforcement officers -- all with their theories and plans. God bless them for it. We certainly need help. Violence is now pervasive in American society — in our homes, our schools, on our streets, in our cars as we drive home from work, in the news media, in the rhythms and lyrics of our music, in our novels, films and video games. It is so prevalent that we have become largely unconscious of it. But, as we discover in places like the hallways of Columbine High, it is bitterly, urgently real.
The causes of this violence are many and complicated: racism, fear, selfishness. But in another, deeper sense, the cause is very simple: We're losing God, and in losing Him, we're losing ourselves. The complete contempt for human life shown by the young killers at Columbine is not an accident, or an anomaly, or a freak flaw in our social fabric. It's what we create when we live a contradiction. We can't systematically kill the unborn, the infirm and the condemned prisoners among us; we can't glorify brutality in our entertainment; we can't market avarice and greed . . . and then hope that somehow our children will help build a culture of life.
We need to change. But societies only change when families change, and families only change when individuals change. Without a conversion to humility, non-violence and selflessness in our own hearts, all our talk about "ending the violence" may end as pious generalities. It is not enough to speak about reforming our society and community. We need to reform ourselves.
Two questions linger in the aftermath of the Littleton tragedy. How could a good God allow such savagery? And why did this happen to us?
In regard to the first: God gave us the gift of freedom, and if we are free, we are free to do terrible, as well as marvelous, things . . . And we must also live with the results of others' freedom. But God does not abandon us in our freedom, or in our suffering. This is the meaning of the cross, the meaning of Jesus' life and death, the meaning of He descended into hell. God spared His only Son no suffering and no sorrow -- so that He would know and understand and share everything about the human heart. This is how fiercely He loves us.
In regard to the second: Why not us? Why should evil be at home in faraway places like Kosovo and Sudan, and not find its way to Colorado? The human heart is the same everywhere — and so is the One for whom we yearn.
He descended into hell. The Son of God descended into hell . . . and so have we all, over the past few days. But that isn't the end of the story. On the third day, He rose again from the dead. Jesus Christ is Lord, "the resurrection and the life," and we — His brothers and sisters — are children of life. When we claim that inheritance, seed it in our hearts, and conform our lives to it, then and only then will the violence in our culture begin to be healed.
In this Easter season and throughout the coming months, I ask you to join me in praying in a special way for the families who have been affected by the Columbine tragedy. But I also ask you to pray that each of us — including myself — will experience a deep conversion of heart toward love and non-violence in all our relationships with others.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Blog on Hold
Please forgive the law student studying for finals. The downside of law school: 100% of one's grades are from the 4 final exams that occur over the space of 7 days. My final final is December 21st, and, assuming no ancient Mayan predictions come true, regular blogging shall resume subsequently.
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