It has been said quite aptly and theologically correctly that God
may save us unilaterally, but he chooses to respect our decision to want to
cooperate and accept this great un-deserved offer of salvation with our free
will. All attempts at explaining why
there is evil in the world despite there being a God who loves and wants to
save ultimately comes back to this principle.
Christmas is a lavish display of how small God is willing to be and
the extent he goes to show his love for us.
He diminishes himself in order for us to be engulfed and enveloped by
his mercy and love, the effects of which are not unlike how an earthquake
caused by the slight shifting of the earth’s tectonic plates miles below the
surface of the ocean may result in the tremendous force of a tsunami later
on. The only difference is that unlike a
tsunami which causes untold amounts of chaos and destruction, this tsunami of
God’s love that began as a tiny spark in the womb of Mary, is set to become the
tidal wave of love that wants to wash over and envelope the entire human race
in order for it to truly live, grow and flourish.
Tsunamis don’t give you a choice.
Tsunamis do not respect anything.
Everything it is path is obliterated and subject to its tremendous
force. This is where the syllogism
ends. God’s love, incarnate in Jesus
Christ at Christmas, gives us a lot of room for choice and is utterly
respectful of human freedom. The only
thin God’s love is interested in obliterating and rendering powerless are the
effects of evil and sin.
Looking that the infant Jesus at Christmas, it hardly invites us to
consider this aspect of Christianity’s awesome reality. We are too easily distracted by the bucolic
sentiments that surround the Christmas crib or Nativity scene. This is the wonder of Christmas, which seems
to be easily missed by the millions throughout the world who observe Christmas
with nostalgia or a “happy holiday” event.
I’ve written reflections in the past on my sentiments about
celebrating Christmas merely on a superficial level with it being a mere
holiday event, or wishing each other the non-descript greeting of “compliments
of the season”.
It could be because I’m getting on in years, or it could be that I
am beginning to truly believe that God does write straight with crooked lines
that I am not so uptight about these things as I was in my more earnest and
younger days as a priest of God. As
longa s one isn’t a naysayer, or an outright atheist who angrily dismisses the
existence of a loving God, but if one allows goodness to thrive and promotes
this in and through one’s being, I am convinced that there is really no saying
how much God can do to enlarge one’s heart from a spark of goodness within.
This was something that dawned upon me recently when I was visiting
the Notre Dame Cathedral in the city of Paris, France. I was blessed to be able to vacation in the
city, and went into the church one day for my evening prayer, also known as
Vespers, the official prayer of the Church.
This Cathedral is probably on every visitor’s must-see list, and that
evening, Notre Dame was really ‘packing them in’. I joined in this long queue in the cold
winter night air that made its way past security to enter the nave.
The Catholic Priest in me made an immediate beeline to the Blessed
Sacrament chapel, which was not really easy to locate. I had to encircle the nave twice before I
realized that I had passed it on my initial attempt.
When I had completed praying Vespers, still seated in my pew, I
realized that all the while that I was praying there, I was the only one in
that small chapel. Meanwhile, hundreds,
if not thousands of tourists were walking around with mouths agape, some craning
their necks to take in the awe-inspiring interior of this behemoth of a
church. Others had their noses buried in
their guidebooks, taking selfies, chatting with one another, and some had their
earphones in their ears that provided a guided commentary explaining the
features and significance of what they were seeing. But for the most part, they simply filed past
the Blessed Sacrament, oblivious to the fact that the true awesomeness of the
Cathedral lay not so much in the physical structure of the building, but that
the Lord himself is truly present there in the Tabernacle of that Chapel.
“Was God offended with what was happening?” I asked myself quietly. Probably not.
He took a great chance at Christmas to come to us in such a hidden and
under-appreciated form – a tiny infant that was so dependent on human
care. This was something so easily
bypassed by anyone walking by that manger in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. It shouldn’t surprise anyone then if people are
strolling by a Blessed Sacrament chapel in something as majestic as the Notre
Dame Cathedral in Paris if they too pass him by once again.
It’s probably a macrocosm of what has been happening all over the
world, what with Christmas being celebrated as a holiday more than as a holy
day.
The first persons to hear the message of the truth of the Bethlehem
baby were shepherds. As a priest of God,
I too, am a shepherd, and I see with a renewed vision my task to bring God’s
love in a new and real way to those who in life are like those thousands of
tourists in the Notre Dame – looking but not really seeing, and living lives
oblivious to the fact that God is indeed in the world and among them.
As you read this, dear reader, I wish you a most blessed Christmas,
and may real Christmas joy be in your heart.
