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“O Emmanuel, king and lawgiver, desire of the nations, Savior of all people, come and set us free, Lord our God.” _{(O Antiphon for Dec 23rd)}

The sequence of antiphons this week culminates today in what is one of the most outrageous claims ever made.

I was reading someone not too long ago who was speaking of the dangers that have historically been encountered whenever believers try to shift the focus of Christianity from the Passion/Resurrection to the Incarnation. Though the details escape me at this point, I recall it being a compelling read. But the tendency it criticized, if we can call it that, is also one that I am sympathetic to.

Part of that sympathy comes from the simple fact that the Passion & Resurrection take their distinctive character from the fact of the Incarnation – in other words, that they are dependent on it for their own ontological meaning. But it is also because the doctrine of the Incarnation is just so wildly exhilarating. The idea that the Creator becomes part of (and hence one with) His creation is mind-boggling, and casts a glow of sacredness and goodness over the whole creation – especially over the human race. Words would fail to describe what it would be to stand in the presence of the God-man.

We live in a world infatuated with celebrity. We put our faith in celebrities to save us from whatever it is we think concerns us. The news outlets are all atwitter day & night over disasters poised to overtake sports heroes and movie stars and other glitterati. Well, there goes the joy, for sure. Court jesters and talent-poor troubadours bask in glory as they lead social movements to eliminate unwanted human beings while saving the polar ice caps. The leader of the free world gets elected on charm and charisma, at best…

And to think that there once was a man born who was actually worthy of this kind of adulation. And to think that, through the Passion and resurrection, he is with us still, inviting us to partake of himself in Communion.

Embracing the Incarnation without the Passion might lead us to utopianism, but we shouldn’t lose our wonder and astonishment at the birth of God in a stable – and we sure shouldn’t be ready to trade the real deal for the cheap imitation of celebrity.

Quote of the Day for Wednesday, November 24th, 2010:

Henri de Lubac, from The Splendor of the Church, translated from the 2nd French edition (1953) in 1956, and re-published by Ignatius in 1999 (p.86f):

When we recite the Credo we profess our belief in the Church; and if we believe that the Church is both a universal and a visible community, then we cannot – without betrayal of our faith – be content to grant that the universal Church is made visible and concrete to the individual by that particular community which is his, regardless of the separation of these communities one from another. This would only be another way of resolving the problem of unity by an appeal to an “invisible Church”; it would still be a case of “Platonizing” rather than listening to Christ. “From the very morrow of Christ’s death” a Church was in existence and living, just as Christ had constituted her; the Church as she is should be in verifiable continuity with the community of the first disciples, which was in turn, and from the beginning, a clearly defined group, social in character, organized, and having its heads, its rites and – soon – its legislation. She should be united to the “root of Christian society” by a real and uninterrupted succession; the need for that cannot be got rid of by treating it as something “profane”, “mechanistic”, or “legalistic”.

… Ruminating tonight, on the eve of Thanksgiving, about the English Separatists and Puritans who spawned this great social and political experiment in North America, their religious character, and how they continue to influence this culture – and not just with turkey dinners at harvest time!

As submerged as American culture still is (comparatively) in religion and/or religious sentiment (at least outside the halls of our “influence” institutions), there are few sentiments more culturally pervasive than the indigenous distrust of what is called “organized religion.” This is pretty clearly traceable to the influential prejudices of the pilgrims, with their congregationalist, dis-organized (or even anti-organized) religion, and it’s hard not to rue the possibility lost in the process.

When you close yourself off to the body as an historical reality (e.g. by “spiritualizing” it), you close yourself off to precisely that which is redeemed in the historical Christ event of Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension. Thus, you close yourself off to the transcendence that belongs to the historical Church in its regeneration as the Body of Christ. Christ may remain truly Christ – how could He be otherwise? – but the community lacks the characteristic unity, sanctity, heritage, and universality that marks the Church as the living manifestation of Christ’s continued presence in the world. That’s no trivial poverty.

“O Emmanuel, king and lawgiver, desire of the nations, Savior of all people, come and set us free, Lord our God.” _{(O Antiphon for Dec 23rd)}

The sequence of antiphons this week culminates today in what is one of the most outrageous claims ever made.

I was reading someone not too long ago who was speaking of the dangers that have historically been encountered whenever believers try to shift the focus of Christianity from the Passion/Resurrection to the Incarnation. Though the details escape me at this point, I recall it being a compelling read. But the tendency it criticized, if we can call it that, is also one that I am sympathetic to.

Part of that sympathy comes from the simple fact that the Passion & Resurrection take their distinctive character from the fact of the Incarnation – in other words, that they are dependent on it for their own ontological meaning. But it is also because the doctrine of the Incarnation is just so wildly exhilarating. The idea that the Creator becomes part of (and hence one with) His creation is mind-boggling, and casts a glow of sacredness and goodness over the whole creation – especially over the human race. Words would fail to describe what it would be to stand in the presence of the God-man.

We live in a world infatuated with celebrity. We put our faith in celebrities to save us from whatever it is we think concerns us. The news outlets in the Boston area are all atwitter tonight over a star free agent first baseman signing with the Yankees instead of the Red Sox. Well, there goes the joy, for sure. Court jesters and talent-poor troubadours bask in glory as they lead social movements to eliminate unwanted human beings while saving the polar ice caps. The leader of the free world gets elected on charm and charisma…

And to think that there once was a man born who was actually worthy of this kind of adulation. And to think that, through the Passion and resurrection, he is with us still, inviting us to partake of himself in Communion.

Embracing the Incarnation without the Passion might lead us to utopianism, but we shouldn’t lose our wonder and astonishment at the birth of God in a stable – and we sure shouldn’t be ready to trade the real deal for the cheap imitation of celebrity.