A merry Christmas to all. Let's approach the mystery of the Incarnation together, with a hushed attentiveness to the reality that is only beginning to unfold in the world, even now, thousands of years later. Let us consider what manner of child this is, and what sort of woman is his mother:
The Virgin, harboring a mystery under her heart, remains in profound solitude. In a silence that almost causes the perplexed Joseph to despair. Incarnation of God means condescension, abesement, and, because we are sinners, humiliation. And he already draws his Mother into these humiliations. Where did she get this child? People must have talked at the time, and they probably never stopped. It must have been a sorry state of affairs if Joseph could find no better way out that to divorce his bride quietly. God’s humanism at once begins drastically. Those whose lives God enters, those who enter into his, are not protected. They have to go along into a suspicion and ambiguity they cannot talk their way out of. And the ambiguity will only get worse, until, at the Cross, the Mother will get to see what her Yes has caused and will have to hear the vitriolic ridicule to which the Son is forced to listen.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
On behalf of your friends and family members here in Bethlehem, you are remembered here in prayer this holy night.
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