The Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas
Today we hang on the last day of the Christmas Octave. We stand at the turning point between two significant dogmas within our faith. This past Sunday was Christmas and tomorrow is the feast of Mary, the Mother of God. The temptation with dogmas sometimes is to set them aside in favor of another part of Jesus’ message. However, I think we should avoid setting aside either dogma or Jesus’ messages that direct our lives toward love.
Both of the dogmas surrounding today are principally about the identity of Jesus. Christmas is the central celebration of Christ’s incarnation and the Mother of God originates in the defense of Christ as one person who is fully human and fully God. Both of these feasts have the incarnation of Jesus as their center of gravity. That is reflected in today’s readings from 1 John and John’s gospel.
These readings put a strong emphasis on the truth of Jesus’ identity. A stance that can sometimes be uncomfortable or controversial. It is at those times that it can be tempting for us to appeal to the spirit of Christmas, or the spirit of Jesus’ messages over and above the statements. To place, in some ways, love against truth.
However, what these feasts tell us and today’s readings affirm is that, how we apply truth is governed by love and truth gives credibility to love. I see this particularly in the dogma of the incarnation.
Jesus’ call to self-emptying love is known to many. It is an essential part of the Christian message. However, it is not some pie in the sky idea, but gains credibility when held alongside our dogma. The call to pour ourselves out in love is not made by merely a religiously astute peasant, but by the one who chose to go from being the Son of God to the son of a peasant. He chose to pour himself out in love, even to the point of pouring out his own blood.
The dogma is important, not so that I can be right and you can be wrong, but so that we may know that the love we all seek in our hearts is possible. That we can be loved so deeply that someone who is so far above us would come to meet us where we are and that He wouldn’t protect himself in some kind of two-faced fashion, but fully embrace our state of being to the point of calling a human woman his mother. If we can be loved like this, then we can love like that as well.
Today we stand between two dogmas that remind us truth and love don’t supplant one another, but instead support one another.
- Spencer Hargadon