[A reflection on the Gospel for the Mass of the Sunday after Christmas, the readings for that Sunday being found here.]
People look at the figure of Jesus and say many things:
God appeared to take on our humanity, but only appeared to do so.
Jesus was born a regular human, then possessed by God.
Jesus was born a regular human and stayed a regular human.
Jesus never existed at all.
In these and other statements, people try to avoid very uncomfortable ideas, depending on their comfort level with the metaphysical (none whatsoever to absolute). They all try to avoid a single, uncomfortable, and confrontational concept.
That concept is that an immortal, omnipotent, omniscient being would actually subject Their ultimate detachment to a human conception, human birth, human life, and human death, with all the suffering, inconvenience, danger, and abuse that entails.
Yet here is a passage written down from first-hand accounts of those who knew this Jesus of Nazareth, who walked with Him, who suffered with Him, who saw all that He did, who saw Him suffer unspeakably, who saw Him die, and who saw Him risen from the dead. They knew Him intimately, and concluded this was no ordinary mortal, but realized that He still was fully human. They saw His human frailty, but saw that He also possessed the Nature of the Eternal One.
The witness is emphatic. The Person of the Word, Which was fully God, Which was Life, Which was Light Uncreated, through Which all things were created, had taken flesh within the womb of a human being, the Uncontainable contained within a body developing within a human mother, and had become one of us and dwelt with us. God the Word came down humbly to be born, grow, develop, live, and die among us so that when Death could no longer contain Him Who is Life Eternal we also would share in that freedom from Death's permanent hold on our persons.
No appearance of God without real humanity could do this. No possession of a regular human could do this. No mere human could ever hope to do this. Were this not to happen, our redemption from Death and Corruption would not be possible. Yet it did happen. Mary of Nazareth conceived not by the regular methods but by the power of the Holy Spirit to bear and give birth to God Incarnate, so that Grace might flow unstopped and unchecked through us all.
The Word became human, and therefore God dwelt among us.
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