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December 27, 2021From the earliest moments of our life stretching to even when we were taking shape in our mother’s womb, we were already beginning to receive information through our senses, first through touch and then through the other senses as we begin to develop. The moment we are born into this world, most of us have access to our five senses and we come to know and understand this world that we live in. Our senses are such an integral part of who we are that without them, navigating the world around us becomes challenging. Hear these words from the letter of St. John:
What was from the beginning,
what we have heard,
what we have seen with our eyes,
what we looked upon
and touched with our hands
concerns the Word of life —
for the life was made visible
What we have heard, what we have seen and looked upon, and what we have touched with hands is precisely what Christmas is all about. God, who is higher than the heavens and who is unknowable, comes to earth and becomes knowable. God becomes flesh. We can see the face of God. We can touch him with our own hands, we can hear him with our own ears. Now some of us may wonder, when have we heard or have seen Christ, when have we ever touched him with our hands? We of course rely on the testimony of those who have seen God in the flesh, but there is something here that is worth exploring. Heaven embraces earth, and it is also truthful to say that Earth is united to heaven. Through the incarnation, grace floods our nature, the very "love of God poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit." It is the coming of this love that inflames and inspires our life of faith. To this point we know from John that "God is love, and whoever dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him." St. Augustine speaks beautifully to this understanding when he acknowledges, “God offers us a short route to the possession of himself. He cries out: Love me and you will have me for you would be unable to love me if you did not possess me already." We would not be able to truly love apart from the incarnation. Heaven would be far from us, but no more. God makes himself known to us and makes this lowly, weak nature the temple of his grace.
Where have we seen Christ? Where have we touched him or heard him? Every time that a parent lovingly takes care of their child or to rock him or her to sleep, there is Christ, for that parent holds in his or her hands the very nature that God made his temple. Every time we feed the hungry or clothe the naked, we feed and clothe Christ, for we clothe and feed this weak and lowly human nature that God has loved to be one with it. Shall we not bestow the same honor and love to our nature that God bestowed on us? Though he may not appear to us as he does on our icons or on our statues, dare we to be like the beloved disciple: to see and to believe. We have seen him, touched him, and heard him, and he is nearer than we could have ever hoped for in every heart who lives in this love that flooded our own humanity.
