Raised Up by Divine Condescension

(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Mass-Blog-for-the-Fourth-Sunday-of-Advent-2024.mp3)

The gift of divine incarnation broke all the rules of the human jungle. Rule one is that only the strong survive. That means the small and powerless become food for the large and powerful. Christmas reminds us that the supreme power of God rests in His temporary surrender of self for our timeless gift of unity. In his book, Thomas Aquinas, Spiritual Master, Bishop Robert Barron describes vividly the power of God’s Christmas gift to us: the self-emptying our Creator was willing to endure for our spiritual fulfillment:

“The supreme and surpassing reality by which the human being is radically transformed and given a new ultimate purpose is none other than the strange God who is powerful enough to become powerless, great enough to become small,” Barron writes.

Small and edible.

According to the law of our jungle, the only way for a creature to enter into the reality of another creature is to cede something of itself. Aquinas illustrated this by describing how a tiger takes into itself the being of an antelope: through attack, destruction and finally ingestion. The antelope cedes its being to the aggressor, “becoming” the tiger only by losing its identity.

By contrast, Aquinas tells us, when God “becomes” a creature, the creature is raised up, not diminished, brought to fulfillment, not overcome.

Barron concludes: “There is nothing greater than that God becomes human; there is no love more profound than this gift of divine condescension.”

That’s the immeasurable power emanating from the little town of Bethlehem, as in Sunday’s first reading, the prophet Micah quotes our Creator:

“You, Bethlehem-Ephrathah, too small to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel; … his greatness shall reach to the ends of the earth; he shall be peace.” (Mi 5:1-4a)

God’s peace isn’t forced on us through Jesus, but offered to us as a sacrifice, creating within us the desire to be one with the irresistible force of Divine Being. We are drawn to, not overcome by, the divine mission of fulfillment—as Jesus was, before embarking on his public ministry. Thomas Aquinas taught this as passionately as Paul did in his letter to the Hebrews. In Sunday’s second reading, Paul quotes Jesus’ prayer:

“Sacrifices and offerings, holocausts and sin offerings, you neither desired nor delighted in.” (Heb 10:5-10)

Those things are offered according to the law, Paul notes—by a feeling of obligation on our part, not of joy. God’s delight is our joyful desire for unity with His divine selfhood—which we come to know through Christ’s gift of the Eucharist.

Jesus taught us the way to that gift by housing the Holy Spirit and offering it up to God the Father via his very body and blood. We become related to this Holy Trinity by blood and share with each other the spiritual fruit of the same family tree.

On this last Sunday of Advent, we are invited to experience the same joy Jesus’ cousin John knew just before he was born:

“When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.’” (Lk 1:39-45)

In the womb, each of us is bathed in the spirit of I AM. But Jesus and John brought into our carnivorous world the life-preserving spirit of BECAUSE. Christ’s “BECAUSE” was to save us, and the Baptist’s “BECAUSE” was to make straight our pathways to that salvation. Our BECAUSE is to find a way to bring as many of us WITH us, back to the joy of I AM.  

–Tom Andel