At the Annunciation, the archangel Gabriel revealed the Incarnation of Christ to Mary:
The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
Luke 1:30-33
And Mary’s fiat ushed in the era of our salvation…
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14
Several years ago, just before Christmas, I was contemplating the Incarnation. Maybe I was admiring the crèche after Mass, perhaps thinking about the readings or the homily, when I was overwhelmed by just how profound the Incarnation was. The Father sent His only Son to empty Himself of the glory of heaven to take on human flesh, suffer, and die to save us. Christ’s willing and complete humility is what so struck me, and the strangeness of such a thing. It filled me with wonder, and it still does today!
Later, while studying for a theology degree, I learned this was Christ’s kenosis – His voluntary self-emptying and the veiling of His glory to take on human form…
who, though he was in the form of God,
Philippians 2:6-8
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
At Christmas, the Incarnation is made manifest to the world. The human race had been waiting in darkness, since the days in Eden when God cursed the serpent and promised a savior…
“Because you have done this,
Genesis 3:14-15
cursed are you among all animals
and among all wild creatures;
upon your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
Christ has come, He is near us, yet our Advent continues…
But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.
2 Peter 3:13
as does our suffering, but now it is redeeming…
I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.
Colossians 1:24
as does our pride and sin.
At my parish, the crèche is at the front of the altar. When the priest elevates the Eucharist, you can view the three profound moments of Christ’s humility simultaneously – His kenosis first made manifest as a helpless child in the crèche, His utter humiliation and death in the crucifix, and His body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist – resting in the sinful hands of men, utterly vulnerable to desecration. How deep our pride is in contrast, even the most humble among us!
Humility, in fact, is impossible for us except for the grace brought about by His perfect humility. The Christian life is in ever striving to surrender our prideful wills to the Divine Will of the Father and to conform our stony hearts to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, through an ever-deepening life of prayer in the Holy Spirit. Anyway, that is the grace I ask of God daily.
At CAPPA, we are grateful for our members – for the ability to connect with and support each other at a time when it is difficult to be Catholic and work in medicine. I pray CAPPA will grow into an organization that can provide the community, education, and advocacy to live that vocation with the religious freedom needed to care for patients as if we were caring for Christ Himself, because in Him every person is reflected. The secular world, so focused on its prideful autonomy, cannot understand this, while a disabled and frail world longs for it.
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