Christmas celebrated on the brink of the new Millennium was different and not only Christians sensed this. The secular media sent nervous little "messages", seemingly trying to put us "in our place".
As 2000 AD loomed, we were reminded that there are "other dating systems", not just the Christian system. Much was made of what our own historians have long known: the Sixth Century monk who tried to make the birth of Christ match the Roman dating system got it slightly wrong. So what?
We were confronted by politically correct moves to abolish AD, (the "Year of the Lord") and BC ("Before Christ"), in favour of the bland CE ("Common Era") and BCE ("Before the Common Era"). That just might succeed in getting Jesus Christ off the world calendar until you make CE mean "the Christian Era". Surely that would be much more offensive than naming centuries after a rough coincidence with his birth.
Whatever way we looked at it, Christmas linked to the new Millennium reminded everyone that you cannot get Jesus Christ out of time. He was a real historical figure. There is more historical evidence and information about Jesus of Nazareth than any of his contempories. Yet Christmas 1999 reminded believers of much more than this.
THE GOD WHO IS INVOLVED
For us, the birth of Jesus is not merely the arrival of some great and noble human teacher. In Jesus, God has literally become one of us. This is the Incarnation, the visible "coming into flesh" of the unseen God.
The Incarnation is radically historical and specific. God steps into the unfolding of human history. At a point of time, in a specific place, Nazareth, our human nature was united to the divine nature in one Person. Jesus in his mother's womb, Jesus born at Bethlehem is God and Man: one Person, two natures. God, in Jesus, has a human face, hands, and feet - and a human heart.
A Christian is able to say to Jesus: "I believe you are God. I believe you are Man." That is the bottom line. Belief in the Incarnation is essential to being a Christian.
At a more intimate level, God incarnate penetrates our lives, calling us to believe, to share his grace, to say "yes" to his offer of future glory. God enters our family life, the parenting and raising, nurturing and educating, all the tender love of this smallest human community. And God gets involved in our social and political life. But that is where the Christmas glitter flakes away and the Incarnation becomes uncomfortable.
GOD IN THE WORLD
This God who is involved comes too close for comfort. That is where Christianity is both attractive and challenging. This God who takes up our "frail flesh" meets us here and now in bruised and battered people: the poor and the marginalised, all who hunger and struggle for justice, all who claim a place at the banquet of life.
The religion of the Incarnation is very much a "this world" or "hands on" religion. God taking flesh in Nazareth eats bread earned by the sweat of his foster father's brow, bread kneaded by his mother's hands. This "down to earth" God can be encountered today, in kitchens, factories, schools, streets, offices, parliaments, shops, prisons - anywhere. Our God is accessible, still with us. God is in solidarity with us - Emmanuel, God-with-us.
This is why the Christian who says to Christ, "I believe you are God and Man", is then called to accept what Jesus taught. That act of faith also is meant to express wanting to be converted to live according to a new way of life. God close to us is God wanting to relate to us. This is at the same time God wanting us to relate to one another in a new way.
GOD OF OUR DIGNITY
Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033 -1109) and many theologians after him asked, "Why did God become man?" The basic answer is: to save us from sin and death. Crib and cross are inseparable. There is no Christianity without redemption. The major message of the New Testament is just that, the "good news", Gospel, of redemption, forgiveness, reconciliation, peace and pardon.
Catholic Christianity goes further than this. God also took flesh to "divinise" us. Union with Jesus in the sacraments raises us to divine life, now and for eternity. This raising to divine life, grace, really changes us here and now. We are united to God Incarnate in sacrament and prayer, above all through the union of the Eucharist.
However there is a further reason why God became man: by becoming one of us God tells us who we are.
The Incarnation says something about us as persons and it is good news. In spite of our fallen wounded condition, in spite of mountains of crimes, notably during this blood-drenched century, God tells us that human beings are basically good. The optimism of the Incarnation is God saying, "If I can take your flesh and unite myself to your nature, are you not worth it?"
Today people need to be reminded of their value as persons. When, thanks to "New Age" fantasies they hear more about "reincarnation" than the Incarnation, they need the truth that each of us is a unique, unrepeatable person. The value and purpose of the one life each of us has on planet Earth is affirmed by the Infant of Bethlehem. When human rights are ripped away and human dignity is scorned or degraded, one Child in a manger affirms the value of every person, born or unborn.
The Second Vatican Council taught that by taking our humanity, in a certain sense, the Son of God has united himself to every person (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 22). The Infant of Christmas belongs not only to us but to them, indeed to every human person.
THE NEW AND PERFECT WAY
However the Millennium Jubilee was a time for repentance. Mother Church offered her children a generous pardon for sins and remitted the effects of sin in our lives. In March 2000 our Holy Father Pope John Paul II also asked pardon for Christian crimes, blunders and scandals, that mar the history of the Church because of the weakness of her members. But there is hope in Christian repentance. Christ tells us that we are not prisoners of the past. He is the Way forward beyond the past, the only One who can liberate us from what has happened and direct us into the future.
© Published by permission of Msgr. Peter Elliott 2001