Memorial of Saints Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops and Doctors of the Church
Just one week ago we celebrated the Incarnation, our God robed in flesh. The Holy One could have incarnated as a mighty warrior, a glorious emperor, one cloaked in fame and fortune. Instead God incarnates as a tiny child. Is there anything more helpless and dependent than a newborn?
The Incarnation goes on. It has been said that
the Divine became human so that the human might become Divine. In John 1:14 the Greek literally reads that “the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.” The Word moved into the neighborhood. The God who tented with Israel in the wilderness now, in Christ, pitches his tent with us. In Jesus, God is one of us. That’s an astonishing claim, so astounding that it must be true.
How might this truth be “enfleshed” as we enter a new year with fresh opportunities and new experiences? “Big Teresa” (of Avila), named so as to not confuse her with little Therese of Liseux, offers a way with her familiar and inspirational and incarnational words:
Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks, to do good. Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.
“God’s work on earth must truly be our own” (John F. Kennedy). The God who shares our flesh commissions us to do just that. And there’s plenty of work to do. Although our liturgical year still offers us one more week of Christmas, it seems appropriate, in light of our share in the work of God incarnate, to remember once again the poem “Work of Christmas,” with these ending verses of Howard Thurman’s beautiful work:
The work of Christmas:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.
Could there be better new year’s resolutions than these? Let’s get to work.
-Timothy J. Cronin