Bairbre CahillSo is the New Year starting for you with a diet or, like me, are you still celebrating the Christmas season right up until January 6? (After that there will be no more mince pies and caramel squares!) I’m often struck by the sense of anti-climax people sometimes experience at this time of year. “All that preparation and then it is all over in a day!” In terms of the Christian understanding we celebrate the season of Christmas for a full 12 days and even then, we may pack the crib and the Christmas tree away, but we are invited to celebrate the meaning of Christmas each and every day.
Christmas is about Incarnation. For a very long time I presumed that Incarnation and Nativity meant basically the same thing and so I associated Incarnation just with Christmas where we celebrate the birth – the Nativity – of Jesus. Incarnation, as I have come to realise, is about that and so much more.
I was working with a group recently and the word Incarnation came up. One woman spoke up – “I’ve always heard the word Incarnation, but to be honest I don’t really understand what it means.”
I thanked her for expressing what a lot of people may have been thinking. Then I asked the group what they thought the blessings of having a body are. Their response – we can reach out to each other, hug each other, enjoy food, play, enjoy the created world, be tender and show our love and care, serve each other. In the midst of it all the woman who had spoken first announced, “Wait a minute, I’ve got it, this is Incarnation!”
She was spot on. God’s desire to be with us was made real in Jesus – in his birth in Bethlehem as well as in every meal he shared, every person he touched, every word he spoke and tear he shed, in his joys and his sufferings. The phrase we know so well from John’s Gospel (1.14) “The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us” can be translated also as “He pitched his tent among us” – he meets us in our humanity. Our physical, bodily experience in life opens up an encounter with God.
Challenging
More challenging is the fact that in Baptism we become part of the body of Christ. That means we now share a responsibility for making Jesus as present in our world through our lives as he was when he walked the roads and paths of Jerusalem, Nazareth, Galilee and Samaria. We are to be the ongoing incarnation. So as we move into this New Year what are the values that we incarnate? What is expressed in the daily realities of our lives? Do we bring the Gospel to life through the choices we make and the relationships we build?
We can get tangled up in big words and complicated ideas but really what it comes down to is this – how do we love as Jesus loved? I think that is an idea that children really understand. Children are less abstract than we are as adults. Ask children what faith is about and they will tell you it is about loving people and loving God. A good question to pose after listening to the Gospel at Mass on Sunday or when faced with choices as a family is simply “How can we live more like Jesus?”
Pope Francis opened a Year of Mercy on December 8 and has invited us all to be “messengers of mercy” bringing “a revolution of tenderness” into the world. We are invited, in this New Year to incarnate – to make real in our world – the love of God. Now that is not something to pack away in a box with the tinsel till next Christmas!