On this Sunday we commemorate the events
immediately prior to Christmas, especially the incarnation, which is not only
an event, but the “mystery kept secret for long ages, but now manifested” to
us, as Saint Paul says in the second reading.
The content of this celebration is the same as
that of the Annunciation (March 25); even the readings of that solemnity are
taken up on this Sunday, in its three-year cycle of readings (this year, the
gospel of the annunciation).
The angel announces to Mary that she will
become the mother of the Son of God. Which means: the Son of God will become
man. John, in the prologue of his gospel will say: “And the Word became flesh.”
Hence the term incarnation. We do not say humanization, but incarnation,
to stress its physical reality. Christ is not a ghost; he is a real man, made
of flesh and blood. The Church confesses her faith in this mystery saying,
“Jesus Christ is true God and true man.”
The angel also announces to Mary how she will
become the mother of the Son of God: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and
the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” In the Creed we say that Jesus
Christ “was conceived by the Holy Spirit” (conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto).
In order to become the mother of the Son of God, it is not necessary for Mary
to lose her virginity and to have intercourse with her spouse; the conception
will be the fruit of a divine intervention. The reference to Elizabeth is not
for saying how the conception will happen, but only to show that nothing is
impossible for God: if it was possible for a barren woman to get pregnant, it will
also be possible for a virgin to become mother.
In the words of the angel there is another
reference: “The Lord God will give him the throne of David his father.”
Incarnation does not mean that the Son of God becomes an abstract man, as it
were disembodied, sexless, stateless, without a history, as the present-day
culture likes very much. The Son of God becomes a concrete man, who joins a specific
people with its own history and culture. Indeed, he is the fulfillment of that
history: the whole history, before him, was directed toward him.
David wanted to build a house for the Lord. At
that time the Lord answered him: It is not you that will build me a house; I
will make you a house; I will give you an offspring. Now, not only the promise
of God is fulfilled, but also David’s desire: with the incarnation, God establishes
his dwelling among us; Christ is the temple of God among men.
Q
