The Mystery of Christmas
Dec. 24, 2009 — -- On Thanksgiving weekend I spoke by telephone with a friend of mine. She is a clinical social worker who for many years has counseled children and teenagers. Ann is very effective in her work with young people and has been a source of healing and guidance for many kids through the years. But she never had any children of her own.
She married later in life and her husband died very unexpectedly a couple of years ago. It has been a painful period of grieving since his death. But somehow God seems to find mysterious ways to heal us during such times, and for Ann one source of healing has been a little girl who lives next door.
Ann's neighbors gave birth to a baby not long before her husband died, and Ann soon became the "designated baby sitter." Ann and Katie have become fast friends, and it is delightful to listen to the way this child has brought new life to Ann. She mentioned that she kept Katie on the evening of "Black Friday," while her parents went shopping at the local mall.
After an evening of stories, Disney videos and several glasses of milk, Ann's little friend finally settled in to bed. In giving me her lively account of this evening, Ann said this to me: "You know, Robin. The smell of a sleeping baby. Now that's the presence of God."
Karl Rahner, one of the most famous Christian theologians of the 20th century, was well known for his meditations and prayers.
Rahner once wrote a prayer addressed to the incomprehensible God. In that prayer he expresses his feelings of awe and even anxiety as he stands before the infinite God. The greatness of God makes him feel very small and insignificant. He goes on to say, "You must adapt your word to my smallness, so that it can enter into this tiny dwelling of my finiteness -- the only dwelling in which I can live -- without destroying it."
Rahner knew well that what he asked of God is what Christians profess and celebrate at Christmas -- the mystery of the incarnation. Christians believe that in the person and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth God adapted his word to our smallness. In the child born in Bethlehem, God became one of us -- shared our fragile human existence -- in order to offer salvation from within the depths of our human experience.
