CHRISTMAS MESSAGE .... +JOHN I. OKOYE

MAY THE MERIT OF CHRIST’S BIRTH DEEPEN IN YOU THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE MYSTERY OF INCARNATION, AND MAKE YOU BECOME A WITNESS OF GOD’S INCARNATION, BY SHARING THIS LOVE AND JOY TO OTHERS ESPECIALLY SOCIETIES’ REJECTS. HAPPY CHRISTMAS +JOHN I. OKOYE

CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

“Behold, a virgin shall conceive and give birth to a son and shall call him IMMANUEL” (Isaiah 7:14). From this passage of the prophecy of Isaiah we are led into the heart of the mystery of Christmas, a mystery which John captures in the immortal words: Et verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis (and the word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us).

But what exactly do we celebrate at Christmas? Obviously, we celebrate the birth of Christ. But there is more to this; the cause for joy at Christmas flows not simply from this birth but more importantly, from what this birth implies for us and for salvation history. We are celebrating God’s love for humanity; the love which made the Divine to assume our humanity for our salvation.

The very purpose of God’s creation of man was for man to share in the divine life. God wills that men “should have access to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit and thus become sharers of the divine nature…God… wants to communicate his own divine life to men he freely created….” (CCC 51; 52). This God’s self-revelation which began at creation, and continued through the words of the prophets and in the history of God’s people, is brought to completion in the Son, the Word made flesh. In Jesus Christ and in his sending of the Spirit of the Father and the Son, revelation reaches its culmination (Cf. Benedict XVI, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Verbum Domini, par. 20).

At Christmas therefore, we celebrate the great mystery of the Incarnation – the mystery by which God takes up our human nature for our salvation. Through this Incarnation, humanity has been granted access to the Trinitarian communion; God has communicated himself perfectly and totally to man. In this way, man is privileged to share in the Divine life. This deification which begins at the incarnation, reaches its perfection in the paschal mystery of Christ. St. Ireneus expresses this teaching beautifully: “In his immeasurable love, He became what we are in order to make us what He is”, again, “There was no other way for us to receive incorruptibility and immortality than to be united to incorruptibility and immortality. But how could we be united to incorruptibility and immortality without incorruptibility and immortality first becoming what we are, the perishable putting on imperishability, the mortal putting on immortality so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, III 19, 1). In the incarnation God reaches out to humanity through humanity in order to bring man into the divine embrace. We therefore celebrate God’s becoming one of us. We can see him, touch him, and hear him speak in our own language. The incarnate Word has become our brother and our friend.

What then should be our response to this unmerited love of God to us at Christmas? Our very first response must be to awaken ourselves from a secular and merely materialistic understanding of Christmas to its truly profound theological import. A second step in this response is to take a cue from the very first witnesses of God’s Incarnation – the shepherds. The first thing that we are told about them is that they were on the watch (Lk. 2:8) – they could hear the message precisely because they were awake. In other words, we must be awake and vigilant to hear the Divine message. What does it mean to be awake? To wake up means to leave the private world of one’s own to enter the common reality, the truth that alone can unite people. To be awake then means to develop a receptivity for God who himself is Truth. This opening up of self and acceptance is nothing more than faith. “Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed” (CCC 150). When we are open and awake to God, only then can we experience the full joy and love of Christmas. Furthermore, this openness to God invariably opens us up to our neighbors, for faith, even though a personal act, is never an isolated act – I believe together with the community of believers. In other words, at Christmas we not only experience the joy and love of God, we become instruments of the dissemination of this love and joy – spreading them to whomever we meet and wherever we go.  

Furthermore, as we mentioned already, the Word became flesh to be our model of holiness and humility. The story of the condescension of God brings about a shocking novelty in our understanding of what really constitutes greatness. In worldly understanding, greatness would consist in the acquisition of power and wealth, but divine wisdom turns this understanding on its head. Greatness according to divine wisdom doesn’t consist in acquisition of power and wealth, rather it consists in humility and service. Jesus himself demonstrated this by his kenosis– though he was God, he did not count equality with God. Rather, he emptied himself and took the form of a servant (cf. Phil. 2: 6-10). Christians are called to imitate this humility and self-giving of Christ. We can do this by showing love to others especially societies’ rejects. It is a period of love and sharing. Let us make efforts to show love to others.

I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! +John I. Okoye