Not long ago, a good friend who called himself an "agnostic of good faith" attracted attention in a colloquium on Christianity which focused on who Christ really was. He said: "Christ, for Christians, is God. He's God! God! God!" A definite amazement spread among the attendants upon seeing the emphasis with which that non-believer referred to Jesus, the Christ. It was an almost naïve amazement tinged with something resembling shame or embarrassment. The situation described is at the same time both real and unusual. The whole auditorium confessed itself Christian, but on hearing the central mystery of the faith spoken from the mouth of someone who doesn't believe it could do nothing but be amazed.

Yes, today us Christians are amazed when we recognize who Christ is. So much time has passed since that scene in the region of Caesarea Philippi in which Jesus asked his disciples: "Who do people say this Man is?" They answered "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." And to the question "And you, who do you say I am?", Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God." [1] Of course, afterwards came the triple negation, child of weakness, but the testimony of Caesarea Philippi was a true confession of faith. Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, is God. The beautiful words with which the prologue of the Gospel of Saint John begins expresses this reality in an extraordinary way: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God." Further on it adds: "And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth." [2]

In these times of generalized confusion and weakness, in these times of collective flight from God, when the very persons called to testify remain silent, we shouldn't find it strange that a group of Christians are troubled by hearing, from the mouth of an agnostic, the logical consequence of their own faith: the belief that Jesus is God. When in so many so-called Catholic schools faith in Christ has been substituted by moralizing jargon or by anthropological or sociological explanations; when the very entities entrusted with watching over the formation in the faith of a sector of the People of God foment obscure and controversial texts that potentially are fundamentally negative for the correct understanding of the faith; when erroneous theological foci are divulged without anything being done to avoid the diffusion of error; nobody, in all fairness, can find the surprise caused upon hearing that Jesus is God strange.

This year, 1975, in December, one more anniversary of God's coming into the world is celebrated. The commercial phenomenon of Christmas threatens - as always in this consumerist society - to obscure the true meaning of the mystery of the birth of Jesus. However, the believer who strives to open himself to the action of grace with the hope of being able to repeat one day with the Apostle, "yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me," [3] cannot cease to dispose himself to living the central mystery of his faith a little more. The Word became flesh. God himself became man. The Second Person of the Trinity became man.

On Christmas us believers should center our interior vision on the event of the Incarnation. "This plan of revelation," the Second Vatican Council tells us in its document on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum , "is realized by deeds and words having in inner unity: the deeds wrought by God in the history of salvation manifest and confirm the teaching and realities signified by the words, while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them. By this revelation then, the deepest truth about God and the salvation of man shines out for our sake in Christ, who is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation." [4] The mystery of the Incarnation, in itself, as well as its context, are an important key to living the Christian commitment more fully.

In the first instance we must remember that the initiative comes from God. The hinge of the mystery is not man but God. The salvific reality appears here as theocentric, from where it would follow that all grasping of the said reality on the part of the human intellect must illuminate itself in God who reveals Himself. The passage of the Gospel of Saint Luke of the annunciation of the birth of Jesus does nothing but confirm this. The Virgin Mary receives the divine message and disposes herself to accept it: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to your Word." [5] Man is addressed by God and invited into a commitment. In his freedom the human being may or may not accept such a commitment. Upon it, of course, depends his eternal destiny. Man is not the center, it is God who is the center; in terms of initiative, in terms of action, and in terms of finality. Man's task, humble in itself, is empowered - becoming gigantic - upon being made the cooperator of divine action. The very frame of the event is fundamental to the intelligibility of the Message. Nothing is in excess, all that manifests itself is of fundamental importance. The Gospel, its words, its acts, is not supplementary nor a matter of indifference. On the contrary, all of it is eminently significant.

The very reality of the Incarnation appears as something marvelous that goes beyond everything imaginable. It is a mystery, which is to say that any understanding of it can never be exhaustive. But this also indicates that something of its meaning is understood, that is, that man receives a message by the event itself and by the efficacy of its results. The Incarnation, the event by which the Second Person of the Trinity becomes man, appears as a reality veiled in mystery. Nevertheless, its significance and richness are such that it illuminates human realities and orients them towards their transcendental plenitude. Joined to its elevating dynamism and alongside its mysterious dimension, the Incarnation symbolizes a whole series of values that permit an understanding of the relationship of man with God, of man with himself, with others, with the cosmos.

In this way, for example, the world, which for some religions and philosophies is essentially evil, illusory, and deceiving, is given back its meaning. The Word, on becoming flesh, values the world. Things are created by God as good. The world in itself was good. Man in his freedom made it bad. Fallen nature is that which produces this distorted and deceptive image of the world. The dynamism of the Incarnation, in line with that of the Creation, reveals the positive reality of the world at the same time that it signals the possible deviation, the imbalance introduced by sin. Man must not reject the world, he must rather lead it towards its true end. An echo of the already-but-not-yet reality of the Kingdom is perceivable in this. To be in the world, to combat it in its deviated aspects, and to take care not to be of the world. The world as idol is that which is condemned. The world possessor of a force which separates man from his end, from the fulfillment of God's will for him, is that which is rejected. The world as the environment of man's realization according to the divine designs is what is rescued and valued. The Incarnation makes man aware of his physical-psychical-spiritual nature, values this nature, and gives it its proper due. It also makes clear that the rejection of the world as an environment doesn't make any sense, just like the exclusivistic valorization of the worldly found in the materialistic ideologies of yesterday, today, and always. Karl Jaspers finds this Christian reality that joins two apparently opposing principles as strange. One may find it strange, perhaps, since it is certainly easier to sacrifice one of them, a permanent temptation. But the truth is, things are as they are and not as they most easily present themselves to us. Christianity offers itself as an integrity of meaning that grants the key to the life of man in the world, and it is thus that it presents itself, as it must, totally distant from the law of like/dislike [6] which we tend to be so accustomed to.

Christmas is a feast of joy, but it is also an occasion for a little reflection. It's a beautiful occasion to think about the meaning of the Incarnation, it's significance and consequences, trying to open ourselves to grace in order that we may capture its dynamism and that it may allow us to see ourselves conformed - day by day - with Jesus Christ, Our Lord. This way our joy will be greater.

1975

Notes

[1] Cf. Matthew 16:13-16.

[2] Cf. John 1:1-2, 14.

[3] Galatians 2:20.

[4] Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum , n. 2.

[5] Luke 1:38.

[6] Translator's note: The law of like/dislike is the principle that we accede to when we choose to live and act and make decisions according to our caprices or feelings, to what makes us comfortable or uncomfortable, gives us pleasure or displeasure, rather than according to the objective demands of a given situation or an objective moral reference, an ideal.

Notice: These articles have been translated by members of the Christian Life Movement and have not been revised by the author.

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