Dec 23, 2015
It is the day before Christmas Eve and the Holy Night. The Church prays at Morning Prayer:
Your light will come, Jerusalem;
the Lord will dawn on you in radiant beauty.
You will see his glory within you.
After four weeks of Advent with its intense longing for the Savior, we now rest in the certainty of fulfillment. Emmanuel, God-with-us, greatly desires to come close to every man, woman, and child and remain close to all.
Crowned with Glory and Honor
The doctrine of man and woman as made in the image and likeness of God is one of the most important and most beloved verses in all of Scripture (Gen 1:16). Psalm 8 paraphrases Genesis: "You have made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor" (v 5).
Paraphrasing the two previous verses, the Eastern Church Fathers never tired of summing up two great mysteries of Christianity: the Incarnation and the Nativity. Jesus Christ assumes our nature, and we share in his:
God condescended
to become a human person
that we men and women
might become as God.
In another well-known proverb, St. Irenaeus of Lyons (d 2nd c.) proclaims God's glory and the glory of his image:
The glory of God is
man and woman fully alive,
and the glory of man and woman is
the contemplation of God.
St. John of the Cross, the great Spanish Carmelite, mystic, and poet, best expresses the mystery before which we kneel in two of his Romanzas, the Incarnation and the Birth. They summon us to prayer as we kneel before the mystery of God-made-man.
The Incarnation
Now that the time had come
when it would be good
to ransom the bride
serving under the hard yoke
of that law
(Story continues below)
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Click herewhich Moses had given her,
the Father, with tender love,
spoke in this way:
"Now you see, Son, that your bride
was made in your image,
and so far as she is like you
she will suit you well;
yet she is different, in her flesh,
which your simple being does not have.
In perfect love
this law holds:
that the lover become
like the one he loves;
for the greater their likeness
the greater their delight.
Surely your bride's delight
would greatly increase
were she to see you like her,
in her own flesh."
"My will is yours,"
the Son replied,
"and my glory is that you will be mine.
This is fitting, Father,
what you, the Most High, say;
for in this way
your goodness will be more evident,
your great power will be seen
and your justice and wisdom.
I will go and tell the world,
spreading the word
of your beauty and sweetness
and of your sovereignty.
I will go seek my bride
and take upon myself
her weariness and labors
in which she suffers so;
and that she may have life,
I will die for her,
and lifting her out of that deep,
I will restore her to you."
Then he called
the archangel Gabriel
and sent him to
the virgin Mary,
at whose consent
the mystery was wrought,
in whom the Trinity
clothed the Word with flesh.
and though Three work this,
it is wrought in the One;
and the Word lived incarnate
in the womb of Mary.
And he who had only a Father
now had a Mother too,
but she was not like others
who conceived by man.
From her own flesh
he received his flesh,
so he is called
Son of God and of man.
The Birth
When the time had come
for him to be born,
he went forth like the bridegroom
from his bridal chamber,
embracing his bride,
holding her in his arms,
whom the gracious Mother
laid in a manger
among some animals
that were there at the time.
Men sang songs
and angels melodies
celebrating the marriage
of Two such as these.
But God there in the manger
cried and moaned;
and these tears were jewels
the bride brought to the wedding.
The Mother gazed in sheer
wonder
on such an exchange:
in God, man's weeping,
and in man, gladness,
to the one and the other
things usually so strange.
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