And it came to pass that when they were there, her days were accomplished that she should be delivered. (Luke 2:6). The hope of such good news from Washington and St. Lucia reminds us of the ultimate Good News – the birth of Christ himself as a man and our way to God through his death and resurrection. There is no greater commentator on this reality – the Incarnation – than fourth century Church father St. Athanasius – who literally wrote the book “On the Incarnation.”
“You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains,” St. Athansius writes. “The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material. Even so was it with the All-holy Son of God. He, the Image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself, and seek out His lost sheep, even as He says in the Gospel: ‘I came to seek and to save that which was lost’” (Luke 19:19).
Following up on St. Athanasius’s words, Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman also contemplated Christ’s Incarnation as the first moment of the new creation which he would eventually bring with his Passion, Death and Resurrection. It was the precise moment when Christ’s teaching on love for neighbor became real – as real as a baby born in a barn.
“When our Lord came upon earth, He might have created a fresh body for Himself out of nothing – or He might have formed a body for Himself out of the earth, as He formed Adam,” Newman writes. “But He preferred to be born, as other men are born, of a human mother. Why did He do so? He did so to put honor on all those earthly relations and connections which are ours by nature; and to teach us that, though He has begun a new creation, He does not wish us to cast off the old creation, as far as it is not sinful. Hence it is our duty to love and honor our parents, to be affectionate to our brothers, sisters, friends husbands, wives, not only not less, but even more, than it was man’s duty before our Lord came on earth” (“Jesus Son of Mary,” Newman 341).
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Population Research Institute, putting people first
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Joseph O’Brien is a Catholic Business Journal correspondent. This is the fourth in a Catholic Business Journal exclusive five-part daily series of Make Advent Count: Five Ways to Approach the Manger .
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