Adopted

“God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”  Galatians 4:4-5

We do not know the name of Saint Paul’s father.  This may strike you as trivial, a trick question for the daily double on Bible Jeopardy, but I think there’s deep theological significance in this important omission.

We know a great deal about Saint Paul, because he intertwines bits of his biography into his teaching.  Scholars can date his missionary journeys down to the month, and he names dozens of his friends and associates scattered around the Mediterranean world.  He tells us that he came from the city of Tarsus, that before he met Jesus he was a member of the Pharisee sect within Judaism.  We know that Saint Paul’s father came from the ancient tribe of Benjamin, and that he was a Roman citizen, a fairly unusual fact for Jew of this time, and a fact on which the drama of his son’s later life turned.

But Saint Paul never names him.  In that respect he is unlike almost every major figure in the Old Testament. 

The Christmas Cow

“The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.”  Isaiah 1:3

My mother’s nativity set is porcelain.  It was a rather optimistic choice for a family of three curious boys, and the figures received their share of battering over the years.  None of them so much as the cow.  The cow in the Michael family nativity set is missing at least one horn.  The glaze is scuffed off in a few places, and the hindquarter has a long brown seam, carefully mended with adhesive after a precipitous fall.

That was my fault.  When I was four or five I went through a cow stage.  Some boys memorize the starting lineup for their favorite baseball team or the Air Force fighter plane fleet.  But growing up in the country, with two farmers for grandfathers, my obsession was cows.  I knew all the breeds, where they had originated, which local farmers raised which kinds.  I could tell you the strong points of Guernsey milk and Angus steaks, and I knew all about those “hairy coos” in the Scottish highlands.   

And Christmas is the perfect holiday for a little boy drawn to cattle.

He Speaks in a Baby's Cry

“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”  St. John 1:18

God speaks to His people.  This is where all Biblical religion begins, with a God who knows us and who addresses us, who wishes us to know Him and the truth about Him.  He has spoken, our Epistle lesson says, “at sundry times and in divers manners.” 

All things began with His speaking, “let there be,” and it was—by the Word, Saint John assures us, “everything was made that was made.”  God speaks through the creation itself—in vistas that take our breaths away, in the ordered progression of sun and moon, in the complex laws of nature.  The heavens tell His glory, the Psalmist assures us,[1] and all things return the cry, “bless the Lord, praise Him, and magnify Him for ever.[2]”

God speaks in the conscience, our common faculty for knowing right and wrong, that “light that enlightens every man that comes into the world.”  He speaks through our deepest longings and highest aspirations, our yearning to know that which is noblest and best, and to be united with it.  He speaks in our desire to love others, in our search for deep stillness, in our persistent sense of justice. 

Ponder: "capable of filling life with new splendor"

“Every form of catechesis would do well to attend to the ‘way of beauty’ (via pulchritudinis).  Proclaiming Christ means showing that to believe in and follow him is not only something right and true, but also something beautiful, capable of filling life with new splendor and profound joy, even in the midst of difficulties.  Every expression of true beauty can thus be acknowledged as a path leading to an encounter with the Lord Jesus...If, as Saint Augustine says, we love only that which is beautiful, the incarnate Son, as the revelation of infinite beauty, is supremely lovable and draws us to himself with bonds of love.  So a formation in the via pulchritudinis ought to be part of our effort to pass on the faith."

Pope Francis, Evangelium Gaudii, 167.

Ponder: "the revolution of tenderness"

"For just as some people want a purely spiritual Christ, without flesh and without the cross, they also want their interpersonal relationships provided by sophisticated equipment, by screens and systems which can be turned on and off on command.  Meanwhile, the Gospel tells us constantly to run the risk of a face-to-face encounter with others, with their physical presence that challenges us, with their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction.  True faith in the incarnate Son of God is inseparable from self-giving, from reconciliation with others.  The Son of God, becoming flesh, summoned us to the revolution of tenderness."

Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 88.

Emmanuel: God with us.

O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the Expected of the Nations and their Saviour, come to save us, O Lord our God.

O Emmanuel—it is a resonant name, “God and man hyphenated,” one author calls it.[1]  It means, “God is with us,” and the One whose coming we expect, Jesus the Messiah, His name, Saint Matthew tells us, is Emmanuel.[2]  You know this name perhaps, from the prophecy in Isaiah chapter 7, which we have just heard.  But you probably know it best of all from the great Advent hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”  It is a translation of a medieval Latin hymn, which is in turn a versification of a series of beautiful antiphons.  These are one sentence anthems designed to be sung before and after Mary’s Song, the Magnificat at Evening Prayer during the last eight days before Christmas.  In that series of antiphons, and in the original Latin hymn, O Emmanuel is the last one, the antiphon for the Eve of Christmas Eve.  But when the great John Mason Neale was translating the hymn, he put it first instead, and so we know the whole hymn by that immortal plea, “O come, O come, Emmanuel.”

It was a wise choice, I think, for it is the finest of the antiphons, and in a way it is the summary of all of them.  The antiphons and the verses of the hymn chart a series of images, drawn deep from the well of Old Testament prophecy, mostly from Isaiah, the greatest prophet of the Old Testament.  O Wisdom, O Lord of Might, O Root of Jesse, O Key of David, O Dayspring, O Desire of Nations: but together, in their prayers for wisdom, for protection, for fulfillment and deliverance and peace—all of them can be summarized, O Emmanuel, O God be with us.