Ineffable

Minutes after midnight on Christmas, I tried to post a few words, but found the effort futile. I am not confident this will be much more successful.

This Christmas I am overwhelmed by God's ineffable love and majesty. It all started a few days ago with Elizabeth Scalia's piece at First Things. Any post titled "Benedict's Christocentrism" is guaranteed to get my attention. All theology, indeed all life, must be Christocentric. Christ is the author of all things. In Him we live and move and have our being. Naturally, then I am drawn to anyone who openly proclaims and lives this truth. In that piece, Scalia cited a text with three sentences that captivated me. "We must change our idea that matter, solid things, things we can touch, are the more solid, the more certain reality. Therefore, we must change our concept of realism. The realist is the one who recognizes the Word of God, in this apparently weak reality, as the foundation of all things [and] builds his life on this foundation, which is permanent."

She did not, however, cite the source for this, but a quick search led me to ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI AT THE OPENING OF THE 12th ORDINARY GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS, and there came the next piece of being overwhelmed. The Holy Father writes, "All is created from the Word and all is called to serve the Word. This means that all of creation, in the end, is conceived of to create the place of encounter between God and his creature, a place where the history of love between God and his creature can develop. 'Omnia serviunt tibi'. The history of salvation is not a small event, on a poor planet, in the immensity of the universe. It is not a minimal thing which happens by chance on a lost planet. It is the motive for everything, the motive for creation. Everything is created so that this story can exist, the encounter between God and his creature."

Pause and let the immensity of that truth overtake you. The infinitely complex subatomic structure of the physical world, the far-flung luminous glories of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field have all been spoken into existence by the breath of love. It is extravagance beyond all possible reason or ability to comprehend. It is extravagance that matches the equally unreasonable extravagance of God's love that allowed Himself, His Son, to become one of us so that through His death we could be united with Him. We are left without words in the face of the ineffable, having recourse but to the feeble piling up of superlatives that sound like a child's pure, enthusiastic babble, to which our heavenly Father simply smiles and says, "I know, my child. I know."

And that is just the physical aspect of the immensity of God's love. Consider now the spatio-temporal and metaphoric arrangement of the Incarnation. Jesus, the bread of life, was born in Bethlehem, which is literally the house of bread. The One Who told us to eat His flesh was first placed in a manger, which derives from the word "to eat." The Good Shepherd is the pastor of His flock, literally the one who feeds. And when did this all take place? It was in a divinely ordered arrangement of time pregnant with meaning. Tradition tells us that the Annunciation was on March 25, as was the death of our Lord. St. Augustine points out that the womb that held no other was like the tomb that held no other. A conception on March 25 leads to a birth on December 25, exposing the lie that our holy day is but a baptized pagan celebration. The biblical evidence shows this as well.

When I ponder these things, my knees grow weak, dropping me to a proper posture of awe and reverence. My body becomes slack, and my heart swings open to embrace the fullness and the immensity of the One Who has embraced me.

Gloria in excelsis Deo!