Fr. Don’s Weekly Letter ~ 29 December 2024

Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,

Creator and creature, divine and human... look and see that already in Jesus creation is being restored, to be completed on the Cross and empty tomb, but well underway. Why? because God is Love, and Jesus is love incarnate, completely humble, helpless, and absolutely, irresistibly loveable. We study more about the how as time unfolds. Time is the invention of human science, which seeks to explain the unexplainable.

The world needs to see anew this unfolding story of salvation, not as some kind of problem to be solved, but as an act of love from God, who is Love Itself.

Let’s reflect on what we have seen. Theologians often refer to Jesus as the second Adam and Mary as the second Eve. Like a reboot of the system. Part of this includes the understanding of the early century Fathers of the Church that we are all intimately interconnected: God created us as one unity not as humans, but as humanity. In language that is now misunderstood as non-inclusive, it is easier to use men, and Man (capital M meaning mankind). God made us one and everything we do, good or evil, somehow touches every person in humanity, past, present, future. Think of the saints and how we still benefit from their virtue and holiness. We pray for our ancestors and have the power to alter the course of their final disposition. Also consider the generational damage that our social, corporate, and environmental sins have on all. The sin of one touches all, as did the original sin of the first Adam.

If we fast forward to the exulted, the ancient blessing of the Easter candle at the Easter vigil, we hear chanted:
“O wonder of your humble care for us!
O love, O charity beyond all telling,
to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!
O truly necessary sin of Adam,
destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
O happy fault
that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!”

The only thing that can undo the original sinfulness of Man is the absolute sinlessness of God become Man. Similarly, the yes of Mary, the second Eve, reboots the no of Eve. In the manger lies a new being completely, truly God, truly Man.

In our desire to relate to what is happening, we often like to imagine ourselves in that circumstance. In our meditation at this moment, however, we can’t imagine ourselves infants, and certainly not as God. We can only imagine what it must have been like to behold this miracle Child as Mary who certainly couldn’t explain any of this, or as Joseph, who was holding onto the lifeline of faith with what he was told by an angel.

So what we have seen in Bethlehem started literally with creation. Did God know all of this was going to unfold like this?

This is where many people fall into the misunderstanding about predestination. If God had all this planned out -- original sin, incarnation, redemption -- what does it matter? Do my choices matter?

There are a few pillars of thought that need to come together at once. Of course, God’s will was totally free to share himself and create. God made Man with a totally free will to choose him, and therefore imperfect. Otherwise, love would be meaningless. Many would say that despite the fact that God foreknew what happens, he didn’t tamper with the free will of Adam and Eve, or of Mary the Mother of God, or the free will of his own Son in offering himself on our behalf, for us and for our salvation.

You must remember that for God, there is no time. This is a hard one to wrap your mind around. God sees all of it all at once. Can you try to imagine what it looks like if creation and redemption and salvation are all in one infinitely small moment? It unfolds for us because we have invented time to chart seasons and cause and effect. We record things as history. One thing necessarily must follow the other. But not with God.

And it is perfectly okay not to be able to explain it. An old friend long ago liked to say it isn’t true because the Church says it’s true. The Church says it is true because it is. Some things permeate and endure through it all, through all time: what is good, or true, or beautiful. The point is not not to get stuck on how it happens, but why? And the only answer can be Love.

And so this infinite, perfect Love which keeps us all in being is now seen in the beautiful face of a human child.

The Lord be with you.