Wonder and Awe

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.