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From the Prologue of the Gospel of John “we come to know our Lord Jesus Christ in his divinity as the author of all creation, in his humanity, as the restorer of the decayed humanity” (Augustine). John, with the synthetic, precise expression: “And the Word became flesh” perfectly expresses the extremes of the dogma of the Incarnation, in which is contained all the reality of God and man.
Christmas is first and foremost a celebration of this mystery of the Incarnation of God, a mystery that together with that of the Unity and Trinity of God, represent the essence of Christian faith. The incarnation has been scandalous since the beginning of Christianity, causing within it the first heresy, docetism, against which Tertullian fought: “They pretended that Christ was a ghost, because they believed an unbelieving God made flesh incredible. They mourned what it was: meat without meat, man without being a man. Therefore a Christ God without being God “.
The word of the Gospel leads us to the mystery that transcends all intelligence at the same time that it calls us a concrete event, indeed the central event of history, which has since distinguished itself in a before and after Christ.
“The ability to astonish human intelligence is here completely overcome and the fragility of human understanding does not see how one can think and understand that this great power of divine majesty, this Word of the Father, this Wisdom of God for which it is all that is visible and invisible has been created, it could have existed, as one must believe, in the narrow limits of a man who appeared in Judea, penetrating into the womb of a woman born as a child “(Origen).
For the fallen Adam, the only chance to rise again to God was that God would lower himself to him, “descending from heaven, he became incarnate in the bosom of the Virgin Mary.” This promise-truth permeates every page of Divine Revelation: “All the work contained in the Sacred Books announces in words, reveals with facts, fixes with exemplary figures the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Throughout the times, through all the prophecies, everything has been given to us for the knowledge of the future incarnation “(Ilarius of Poitiers).
Yet, “who came before, though not corporally, in each of the saints, and later came visibly to us” (Origen) “the world did not recognize him” (Jn 1:10).
How should we give precedence to the eternal Word, the Only-begotten Son of God made flesh? With faith, adoration and contemplation. Believing, contemplating, worshiping, certainly not pretending to understand the mystery that surpasses all intelligence: “Touching God in thought with somehow is a great happiness: understanding it is absolutely impossible” (Augustine).
Christmas is the beginning of a journey that Jesus, the true Son of God and true Son of Mary, will walk on the streets of men. The eternal Word of God has become flesh to come to live among us, driven solely by the love that wants the salvation of all, salvation symbolized by light: “The people who walked in the darkness saw a great light on those who they inhabited a dark place in the dark earth “(Is 9: 1). The appearance of this light identifies with “our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Tt 2.13), whose light is the irradiation of the glory of the Father. With him, “the grace of God has appeared, a source of salvation for all men” (Tt 2:11).
Looking at the Holy Night in which God has become man, the Christian faith exclaims: “Here it began, here God himself has come out tacitily from the tremendous splendor in which he dwells as God and Lord and has come to us; he went silently into the hut of our earthly existence. Only those who turn off earthly lights at least a bit, which usually prevent them from seeing the stars of the sky, only those who in this silent night of the heart listen to the call of the ineffable and change the closeness of God speaking through their silence, as long as we know how to listen to him, only he celebrates Christmas without degrading him to a worldly feast “(Rahner).
