The God in the Manger

One

Beauty and the Union of Opposites

One way of describing beauty is to say that it is the unification of what is naturally separate. We love the thrill of seeing two things which we don’t normally associate with each other coming together. Each one of the arts shows us this unification of what is separate, this convergence of opposites.

In music, we love a duet in which the woman’s high voice blends with the man’s low voice. In stories, we have the basic fairytale form of a poor farmer’s boy marrying a princess, or a poor housemaid marrying the King’s son. In color, artists have designed a color wheel, so that they can combine colors from the opposite ends of the spectrum.

When the division, the separation, between two unrelated or distant things has been overcome, we have an insight into the primordial unification of reality which we call beauty, which is why nothing is more beautiful than the Christ-child in the crib at Bethlehem – because nowhere else is division so absolutely overcome.

Two

The Baby Who Unites Divinity and Humanity 

When Jesus comes, He not only brings together what is naturally separate, but what is naturally separated to an infinite degree. He brings together the infinite, all-powerful God, and the weak but lovable goodness of human nature. 

All through the ages of Christianity, we have celebrated this beauty, this shocking bridging of what is infinitely separate. We celebrate the God in the manger.

All the Christian hymn writers celebrate the strangeness of it all: the woman who gives birth to Her creator, the master of the Universe who looks up at the cattle and the sheep, the all-powerful One allowing His arms to be wrapped up tightly in swaddling clothes. This is the supreme moment of beauty because it is the supreme moment of union between Creator and Creature. It is when God shows us that He has become one of us. 

Three

The Baby Who Unites All Creation

Jesus doesn’t just unite creatures to their Creator, He also unites all creatures together with one another in Him.

Again, we see in that manger at Bethlehem the strange and bewildering beauty of opposites united. Angels come into the Christmas story, along with beasts and the silent star. Mary and Joseph represent the supreme unity between spouses, between man and woman, and by being chaste parents they also unite in themselves the opposite vocations of parenthood and celibacy. The Shepherds represent the poor, uneducated Jews and they worship side-by-side with the rich, learned Gentile astronomers.

This is the beauty of the world God made and Christ came to save, a cosmos of differences, but all united in a common recognition of the Lord made man. 

From now on, the true celebration of diversity will always reside in the Catholic Church, where the universality of the world and of humanity comes together in honor of Christ.

Four

The Christian Call to Unite Divinity and Humanity

Bethlehem is where we first see the mystery of the Incarnation: Jesus Christ, fully God and fully Man. So the vocation of every Christian from now on will be to unite what is human with what is divine, to live fully at the natural level and the supernatural level.

We see this in the saints. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, with her social service and her joyful smile, even as she underwent the spiritual battles of the dark night. St. Philip Neri, who read humor books and loved practical jokes, and went into long ecstasies in prayer. St. John Bosco, who founded schools for boys and did magic tricks on the street, and who beheld visions of divine secrets. St. Augustine, perhaps the greatest genius who ever lived, an intellectual beyond compare and a convert whose spiritual self-examination would inspire people millennia later.

We have to do the same thing. We have to live a fully human life. We are called to laugh and love and work and exercise and eat and get involved politically and enjoy our free time. But we also have to live a life fully dedicated to God. Everything we do must be for His honor. All our choices must be directed to union with Him, sanctity and heaven must be the final goal in all of it.

We never separate our humanity from our spirituality. Everything we are on the human level must be for love of God and must express the fact that our top priority is always His will.  

Then our humanity will be like Christ’s, we will be completely human by being completely united to God. 

Five

Unifying all Creation in Christ

It is also our job as worshippers of the Christ-Child to work at unifying all creation, to love the poor in their spiritual danger and the rich in their spiritual danger, to pray to our guardian angels and to be good stewards of the earth, to love our spouses and encourage vocations in our families. To recognize the good in everyone, and in every viewpoint, but also to recognize that no person and no position can ever be complete unless everyone is brought to lay themselves and their achievements before the Newborn King.

In the end, the message is pretty simple. Christ can unite everything. And He’s the only one who can unite everything. He unites God and Humanity. He unites man and woman, rich and poor, angel and sheep, Jew and Gentile, learned and illiterate. So if we would share in this beauty, and if we would have others share in it, our task is equally simple. We must keep close to Christ, lead others to Him, and all will be very beautiful.

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