God With Us
Fr. Donald Macdonald, SMM
God With Us
In one of the many children’s nativity plays I have attended, Joseph recently carried the baby Jesus to the crib and placed him there, but not to Mary’s satisfaction. While carols were sung, and the angels, shepherds and wise men played their parts, Mary quietly sitting aside the crib, discretely tried to maneuver the child with her foot.
A day or so earlier, I was with these children in school. They were alive with the excitement of Christmas. I found myself alone with a six-year-old girl who quietly began to cry. “I have to talk to someone,” she said. She had come home from school one Friday afternoon and was hurriedly taken north to live with her mother and her aunt. “I even had to leave my little bird behind”.
She had no time to say goodbye to her friends at school where she was very happy. Most at all, she was worried about her brother. I asked his age. “Twenty,” she said. “but I don’t know where he is. The last time he phoned, he ran out of money and couldn’t finish the call. I think he is ill, and Dad says he can’t find him”.
Reflecting Real Life
I thought of this during the nativity play in the packed church. The unsentimental Mary and the hurt girl were in the Christmas story, especially in the Mother and Child.
Likewise it is through Mary that we who are nothing, may become like God by grace and glory. We accomplish this by giving ourselves to her so perfectly. And so completely as to remain nothing, as far as self is concerned. And to be everything in her, without any fear of illusion
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“Emmanuel” (which means, God with us)” (Mt. 1:23), is found not in the Temple, nor in some spectacular manifestation on Mount Sinai, but in the most ordinary circumstances, valid in any culture at any time. Mother, child and foster father were in a stable, “because there was no place for them in the inn” (Lk. 2:7). Circumstances over which they had no control dictated that they be there – “In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus . . .” (Lk. 2:1) – so they found themselves as a poor family in an overcrowded town. They had to take what they could get. No thunderbolt came from heaven to ease the situation.
That “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth . . .” (Jn. 1:14) in such a context, gives immense depth to that reality. It is a fact not simply an analogy. This is part of our experience and of the six-year-old girl and her family.
In an ideal world, babies would not be at risk from insensitive parents and children would never be hurt by the complexities of an adult world. But we do not live in such a world. If the Christmas story represented only the ideal perhaps it would not register so deeply. There were people at the nativity play in the crowded church who would not be there for Mass or a formal religious service. There was an appeal and a reality at the core of the Christmas story, presented by children and carols, which drew them, offering a hint of what life is about.
Reflect In The Ordinary
They know that they do not live in an ideal world. They glimpse that the Gospel knows this too. But God is here with us, reflected not in the obviously spectacular but in the ordinary. Mary, her child and her situation can be understood by anyone who has grown up in the world of the six-year-old girl. Literally overnight, life can change. Understanding, therefore, makes it easy to approach Mother and child. As a human experience, then, ‘heart speaks to heart’ might best describe what is happening. It may register at the deepest level of human consciousness.
Reflecting Glory
As well as echoing the experience of anyone capable of feeling, for those blessed with the insight of faith, the nativity play offers a glimpse of what God is really like in this same imperfect world – “we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father” (Jn. 1:14).
John’s verb suggests someone enthralled by what he sees of God in Christ. It is a transfiguring experience. Glimpsing what God is like in Christ . . . near, approachable and wonderful, really sharing our lives on earth . . . the evangelist cannot take his eyes from Christ.
The wonder of it all is heightened in that, despite centuries of prophetic preparation, no one was prepared for the fact of Mary giving birth in a stable. There were none of the preparations which would have been made if a President or Queen was coming to a small town. Everything they were likely to see would be freshly painted and the local dignitaries and people would welcome them as best they could.
God in Christ came like any of us into a world which went on its way regardless of the wishes of his mother and foster father. As a new-born infant, Jesus literally had no say. He is wholly vulnerable and dependent. To glimpse this is a grace. This is what God is like, really present in our everyday world and in the experience of the six-year-old girl.
Pray For Insight
At first glance there is little here to suggest that in this child, in his mother’s arms, is in fact “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for the glory of thy people Israel” (LK 2:32). Yet so it was. The real presence transcends the real circumstances. The ordinary and perhaps shocking, has within it, if we are graced to see it, the wonder and glory of God at one with us.
We should pray for such light to enable us to translate everyday life into the Gospel. God is present in wonder, love and challenge. If in see this, we adore. It takes our breath away. “Put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you as standing is holy ground” (Ex. 2:5) is our experience too, as we glimpse God’s glow in a mother and child. We can look on such reality and feel for them from deep within our human consciousness. We may enter deeper still through the insight of faith.
In so far as this becomes part of our experience, we come alive to the glory of God in our daily life and may develop a mind of instinctive, habitual adoration. It is no nine day wonder. It is our response to life from the insight of faith. Increasingly, we become like what we see.
We should too be open to challenge. God may not act nor be found in the predictable paths where I mat expect (and confine?) him. We can be too set in our ways, no longer open to surprise and wonder.
Giving Ourselves
This all takes place in the present moment, in the world of unsentimental Mary of the nativity play and the hurt child. The Word becoming flesh in such a context highlights such a child in the company of real people. The practical response in the light of the Gospel is to ask “what am I to do here”? I am challenged to do something practical, to respond to and reflect the hidden (except to the eyes of faith) presence of God in Christ.
For faith and life to blend in this way, we would do well to open ourselves to the influence of the Mother of the Child “who kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2:19). Her insight now into the glory of God can only enlighten us to try to see and respond to the glory of God on the face of Christ, as life presents itself to us.
St. Louis Marie de Montfort believed that the path has been given us already. “He Who is deigned to come down to us who are not and turn our nothingness into God, or He Who Is. He did this perfectly by giving and submitting himself entirely to the young Virgin Mary, without ceasing to be in time He Who Is from all eternity. Likewise it is through Mary that we who are nothing, may become like God by grace and glory. We accomplish this by giving ourselves to her so perfectly and so completely as to remain nothing, as far as self is concerned. And to be everything in her, without any fear of illusion”. (TD 157).
