Author Note: The
dioceses of the United States all observe the feast of Epiphany on this
day. In an effort to maintain the
congruity of the Twelve Days of Christmas I am returning to the earlier
practice of reflecting on the Second Sunday After The Nativity. I will offer a reflection on Epiphany on its
proper day of January 6.
Sirach 24:1-2, 8-12;
Psalm 147:12-15, 19-20; Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-18; John 1:1-18
… he chose us in him
before the foundation of the world…
Ephesians 1:4
Merry Tenth Day of Christmas!
Christmas is all about the mystery of the Incarnation, which
is that the Word of God, who is God from all eternity, took on flesh and became
human in the Baby Jesus. St. John’s
famous prologue leads us into this mystery: “In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
We can become so familiar with those words that they begin
to lose meaning for us. The beginning is
defined by God, not the other way round.
He doesn’t come into being at the beginning. Rather, He always existed and the beginning
comes into being through Him.
Before there was anything there was God, Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. The Father is eternally the
source. The Son is eternally
begotten. The Spirit eternally proceeds
from the Father and the Son. There was
never a time when this was not so. The
Son, also known as the Word, was the means by which everything came into
being. Genesis records that God spoke
and creation began. What He spoke was
the Word and so through the Word it all was created. As St. John says, “Without him nothing came
to be.”
One wonders with fascination what communication took place
amidst the members of the Blessed Trinity when crafting a plan of salvation for
humanity. It is beyond us. In fact, what St. Paul tells us is that this
plan was already firmly established before the foundation of the world. God had already devised the solution before
the problem of sin actually existed. “Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ
with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as he chose us in him, before the
foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.”
Think about it- before God created anything He was purposing
that each one of us would be His in Christ.
When one reads Genesis 1:1, it is necessary to insert Ephesians 1:4: “In
the beginning God [chose us in Christ and] created the heavens and the earth.” Before He uttered, “Let there be light,” He
chose you and me to be His in Christ.
While there was chaos and no creature existed whatsoever He was already
laying a foundation for us to be in Him.
“In the fullness of time,” Paul writes to the Galatians,
Christ was born into the world. He is
the fullness of God and makes visible and tangible to us all that God is. But there’s more. He becomes human so we can become divine; we
can become gods.
Was there an ache in the heart of God for us even before
creation? Theologians would say no, for
God is complete in Himself and in need of nothing. True!
But does that mean He couldn’t choose us to enter into this eternal communion
of love? No. In fact, this must have been the case. For if God was already thinking of us before
He did anything then this must be so.
The purpose of God coming down to us is so that He could bring us up to
be with Him and in Him.
With such foresight and planning it becomes laughable to
worry about anything. We’ve just come out
of what most people would define as the most horrific year we have lived
through. With the onset of the global
pandemic, all of the things that followed, and the sickness and death
experienced by virtually everyone at some level, most were relieved to see 2020
come to an end. However, what does 2021
hold? The possibilities are
endless. To borrow a line from Dickens’
Tale of Two Cities, it could be the best of times or the worst of times. Should we be concerned? Perhaps!
Should we be worried? Absolutely
not! For the God who chose us to be in
Him before time began has surely seen all that awaits us and equally has plans
in place for every contingency. It could
very well be the best Christmas gift we have received to be freed from all
worry and anxiety and rest secure in the loving arms of our all seeing, all knowing,
all wise, and all powerful God.
So it is that we read in Sirach, “Wisdom sings her own
praises and is honored in God… Before all ages, in the beginning, he created
me, and through all ages I shall not cease to be.” If we think of Wisdom as the first of God’s
creations then she plainly stands in for all that God has prepared to save us
from our sins, make us to be children of God, and fit us for eternal communion
with Him in love. God Himself sings over
us [Zephaniah 3:17].
This is Christmas!
This is why the Babe in the manger is so special. It’s not just sentimental, or worse,
commercial. It is deeply spiritual, which
is to say, it is real.
How do we respond?
Again, the rest of the world has already returned to “normal living”. But we are called to a new normal. We are called to be transformed by the themes
of Christmas so that they are lived in us and through us all year long. If God was planning all of this before the
foundation of the world it speaks of a love beyond all imagination. And what’s more, as we enter into this love
we discover something so unspeakably wonderful.
Merry Christmas!
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