God’s True Dwelling Place

Fr Thomas Malipurathu, SVD

A 14th century Gothic church in the Spanish city of Barcelona has a famous mural painting in its central nave depicting the scene of the Annunciation. The artist has painted it on three successive panels. The first panel shows the scene we are most familiar with: the young virgin in a kneeling position with the angel Gabriel standing nearby in the gesture of announcing to her the awesome divine message. The second panel depicts the whole heavenly host waiting in rapt, reverential attention for her response. They are waiting with bated breath as it were, with the trumpets, lyres, harps and cymbals ready in their hands. Then the third panel portrays the moment Mary has given her consent; the whole celestial court breaks into an ebullient celebration of singing and dancing and leaping in joy. The spirited merry-making was accompanied by the blowing of trumpets, the clashing of cymbals and the strumming of lyres and harps.

The artist's intention was arguably to highlight the staggering significance of Mary's giving her consent to the divine invitation to be the mother of the Redeemer. Her act of acceptance and what would subsequently result from it—the birthing of the Messiah—would turn out to be the most consequential event in human history. So consequential that even the calendar would be reinvented to accommodate that redoubtable happening.

 The Core of the Story

The Annunciation story appearing as part of the Infancy Narrative in the Gospel of Luke (Lk 1:26-38) is one of the most familiar biblical passages for most Christians. The fact that some of our frequently recited prayers such as the Angelus and the Hail Mary are derived from it adds to the passage's familiarity.

Most of us are inclined to consider the Annunciation story as a blow-by-blow account of a sublime angelic vision that took place in the Nazareth home of the Blessed Mother. But like the rest of the heart-warming stories of Luke's Infancy Narrative, this one also is the fruit of a deep theological reflection on the call of Mary and on the inscrutable mystery of the Incarnation. God becoming a human being is truly the ultimate of mysteries, which defies all human logic.

Christmas reveals the Disponibility And Vulnerability of God

Fr Errol Fernandes SJ

God did not create the world and leave it to its own design. God constantly intervened when the world was out of orbit. In the past, God's intervention had been through prophets, messengers, kings and queens (Heb 1:1). The fact was that none of these could bring the world back to what it was meant to be. God, then, had to choose a radical way, a way that had never been tried before. When God chose to be incarnate in the world, it was a master stroke. The Incarnation could not have been the brainchild of anyone but God. However, even as God chose this way of insertion into the world, God was choosing disponibility, vulnerability and dependence.

Disponibility: The adjective "disponible" is often translated as "available" and sometimes as "capable of being placed, arranged or disposed of as one wishes." It is the latter meaning which applies to the Incarnation of Jesus. As a matter of fact, disponible is explained by Paul in the self-emptying Christological hymn in his letter to the Philippians (Phil 2:5-11). Here, disponibility is seen as "kenosis" which means holding nothing back. It means giving one's all, and even after one has given all, to want to give more. In this hymn, the point that Paul makes is that not only did God in Jesus become human, but even as a human being, He became a slave. He went even further, and accepted death to save the whole of humanity. His death on a Cross and His Resurrection brought salvation, union and hope to a broken and hopeless world. At the end of the hymn, it appears that BECAUSE He was obedient and did God's will, He was given the name above names. The truth, however, is that He had this name and power and glory, EVEN BEFORE the Incarnation. This means that NOTHING was added to Him or His name. He did what He did merely from love. His disponibility was just that – a self-emptying, expecting nothing in return.

The Relevance of God's Coming into Our World

Fr Anthony Charanghat

Cristmas cards once carried the warmth and blessings of the season. Yet today, in our digital age, sending such greetings feels somewhat old-fashioned. Beyond their familiar triteness, there is the added dilemma of deciding to whom and what kind of cards we ought to send.

To be sure, we write to those likely to send us a card in return. We hasten to prepare our lists—no matter the cost of stamps or the ever-rising prices of fancy cards. It is a pity, however, that so many of these expressions of Christmas goodwill rarely reflect the true message of Christ's birth in a humble manger.

Many seem more concerned with playing Jim Reeves' Blue Christmas. People delight in painting their homes with falling snow, adorning them with glittering stars, as though the cribs they craft might win the parish's best prize.

Yet in this season, we must remain aware that the stranger knocking at our door should not be met with an angry cry of "No room!" A simple and foolproof test for Christmas is this: When last did I or you - reach out a helping hand to someone in need? Is your heart and home open to those who seek compassion?

Any unanswered knock on our door may well be an ignoring of Christ. If He is not born in your heart and home this Christmas, then what happened in Bethlehem long ago has not yet taken root within you.

Zechariah was struck speechless for doubting God's promise that he and Elizabeth would conceive after long years of sterility. And Mary, who believed, conceived and proclaimed the fulfilment of God's promises to Israel.

Before God's messenger Gabriel appeared to Mary, he visited Zechariah with a startling promise—one echoing that first made to Abraham centuries before: that the son he would raise was destined to lead people back to God.

Dear Jesus, Sorry, my December is a bit of a mess

Evita  Roche

Dear Jesus, I don't really know how to start this letter, except by admitting something I've been trying to hide from You all month; my December is a bit of a mess.

Actually, scratch that. It's a LOT of a mess.

Between end-of-year pressure, last-minute gift hunts, two forgotten novenas, three unfinished Advent reflections, the office leave request that is still "pending approval," the decorations at home that are half-done and an entire playlist of Christmas carols that I use as an emotional background track to drown out my own thoughts… I've somehow managed to put everything important in December exactly where I didn't want You to be: at the bottom of the list.

And I know, I know you're not offended. You're not sitting in Heaven rolling Your eyes, because your girl can't get her spiritual life together before Christmas. But I also know You deserve more than the crumbs I've been handing over in the name of "I'm busy." More than rushed prayers and distracted "Amen's" squeezed between tasks.

So this letter is my way of saying:

Jesus, I'm sorry. And I miss You.

I know You came into a messy world, on a messy night, in a messy stable that nobody even thought was worthy of the animals it held. Maybe that's why I'm writing to You now, from the middle of my own unstable stable.

Because honestly, some days I feel exactly like that place: cluttered, cold, unprepared, chaotic, and not very holy. You stepped into a place like that without hesitation. You didn't wait for Mary and Joseph to finish tidying. You didn't ask for better décor. You didn't need things to look festive. You chose it. It didn't bother You. Isn't that crazy? You, God Himself, weren't above the dirt floor or the smell or the noise. You weren't waiting for the stable to be "Instagrammable."

Let the Lord work wonders!

Gemma D'Cunha

I go back to the mid-1980s, when my husband Ivan was posted in Delhi and we were living in the newly constructed Arjun Vihar military cantonment, in New Delhi. Life was comfortable, but the absence of passing vendors was sorely felt. Various small thefts were attributed to them, so they were shooed off the premises. It was cumbersome going all the way to the marketplace, sometimes only to buy a few sour limes. 

Came the bright day when an enterprising young man from the adjacent jhuggi opened a small vegetable stall under a flamboyant neem tree. It was not long before his stall began spreading like the branches of the tree. Business was flourishing, with practically all occupants of the 160 new flats patronising him. By and by, fierce competition raised its head in the form of another vegetable stall, under the gulmohur tree. Loyalties were now divided. By nightfall, the wilting leaves of leftover palak and methi were being given first aid in the form of a generous spraying of water. The final outcome was that both stalls generally grew smaller, and more compact. They co-existed, as it were. 

Next to appear on the scene were a couple of fruit carts, stationed at a small distance from each other. In the beginning, both seemed equally popular, but it was not long before the price variance was discovered and discussed. The information that Cart No. 2 charged a clean Rs two extra per kilo on every fruit, became common knowledge. Ladies made a deliberate detour around his cart and headed for Cart No. 1.

Journeying into the timelessness of communion

Christopher Mendonca

The early Church wisely refrained from "crystallizing"

what we now routinely call "The Peace and Joy of Christmas."

It was a few centuries before the date of Jesus' birth

was arbitrarily fixed, not so as to establish a historical reality,

but rather to commemorate the primordial experience

of Mary's journeying into Timelessness on behalf    of mankind.

The Incarnation is not a discrete event in time.

It is rather a celebration of Timelessness, which,

in a supreme act of kenosis, allows the WORD

to emerge from its Silence,

only so that those who hear it in Time

can journey back into Timelessness.

Origen put it succinctly when he said,

"Jesus was sent not only to be recognised, but to remain hidden." 1      

"The Incarnation is a mystery

even more inconceivable than any other.

By taking flesh, God makes Himself understood

only by appearing more incomprehensible.

He remains hidden… even in the disclosure.

Even when manifest, He is always the stranger."2                     

If this is the understanding of the Incarnation,

so prominent in early Christianity, it follows

that the celebration of Christmas is meant to be

not so much an event, but a point of departure.

Even as we celebrate the LORD's presence in history,

we are being asked to experience ever more deeply

the Mystery that must be allowed to steadily unfold within us.