The coming of the Son of God
into the world seems to be so small, so little. This is not how God had to come
into the world to save humanity, but how God chose to come. The Son of God is born as an
infant like any other infant, a baby boy born into a world so rough and so cruel, a
child utterly dependent up his parents for care and sustenance. He was so small, so little.
No wonder a people who had
long awaited his coming, who had kept their hope alive over centuries awaiting
the coming of the promised Messiah, did not even notice him when he came. There
is not even room for him, no one will make room for him. Only those living on the
margins of society, shepherds sleeping with their sheep in the field, shepherds
who smell like their sheep, are tipped off by angels that the Savior of the
world has been born. The sign given them is hardly a sign of greatness—you will
find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. A manger of
all places, an animal’s feeding trough.
From the human point of view,
the Incarnation, the Son of God taking our flesh, is a crazy plan, choosing
people too little and too vulnerable. But the result, in God’s wisdom, is what
is best for us: being born among us, being raised among us, he came as one of
us, as our brother. As God with us, Jesus shone a light on our true dignity and God’s might in
humility.
The Savior of the world was
entrusted to the natural processes of human life, in the most vulnerable of
hands, in the most vulnerable of ways, so that God’s glory and salvation would not
overwhelm us, but accompany
us. So that God’s glory would accompany us in solidarity with the suffering
of all of us small and little people, in order to teach us the value of human
life and the greatness of each life. No one is too little, too small, too
insignificant to share in God’s plan.
As the Savior’s birth teaches
us, God is often closer and smaller than we think. So God uses people
who are not in the spotlight, who hardly anyone sees, seemingly insignificant
people, to bring the greatness of his Son’s life and love into the darkest
corners of the world.
A number of years ago when I
was stationed at another parish, one of the daily Mass attendees, a local
baker, would weekly bring me a box of cookies. She was shocked when I told her
one day to stop bringing me cookies, that I was giving them up for a
while.
I told her that the daughter
of some long-time friends of mine had been stationed in Afghanistan, thru her
work with the Department of Defense, and that her parents were very concerned about
her safety. I told the parents of this young woman that I would pray for her, and
to make sure I would remember to pray for her on a regular basis, I would give
up all sweets during her 6-month tour of duty in Afghanistan. Each time I felt
a craving for something sweet, I would automatically be reminded to pray for
her.
When I told the baker of the
cookies this story, she thoughtfully replied: “Then I should send the cookies I usually bring to you to this young
service woman in Afghanistan.” And so she did, and thus
began something truly remarkable. The gift of homemade cookies, still delicious
even after a couple of weeks travel by mail, would arrive at a remote outpost
in Afghanistan, and my friends’ daughter would then share them with everyone
else in her company. Soldiers and Department of Defense workers would
feast on treats from halfway round the world and feel connected with their
homeland. In doing so, they came to know if a very real way they were not alone nor
were they forgotten.
My friends’ daughter shared
with me upon her safe return from Afghanistan that those monthly boxes of
cookies were a powerful sign of God’s presence in a place where God
seemed to be absent.
Such are the small yet
powerful ways that God chooses to communicate God’s bottomless love to us. My
parishioner the baker with her cookies wanted to show my friends’ daughter and
those stationed with her what God wanted them to know in those anxious days—You are loved. You are not forgotten. Feast on the sweet tenderness of my love. God
did not use a thunderbolt from heaven to tell them that, but a far subtler,
sweeter means of communication that could risk being overlooked altogether as
something as ordinary as, well, some extraordinarily delicious cookies.
St. Ignatius of Loyola has a
memorable phrase for thinking about God’s presence all around us. Ignatius
said: “God labors and works for me in all the creatures on the face of the earth.” His point was that one of the most common ways God
comes to us is through other people.
Because the Son of God left
the safety and security of his heavenly home to forever make his home with
humanity on this earth, we know this to be true: One of the most common ways
God comes to us is through other people. Ignatius invites us to see how our
daily experiences of receiving love, even in the smallest acts of human
kindness, reveal God’s deep, abiding
care for us. For like a secret admirer, God employs
incredible creativity in filling our lives with seemingly unsigned love
notes.
God not only comes to us in
the smallest of ways but also in the smallest of people. For Jesus teaches us that he
comes to visit us through the most vulnerable ones, the ones who go unseen by
many because they live on the fringes of society—the most marginalized of our
sisters and brothers, the least ones. Our eyes are not well trained to see the
Son of God coming to us in those around us, especially those people the world
pushes to the margins, those people the world chooses to not even see nor
acknowledge that they exist.
Jesus clearly teaches in
chapter 25 of Matthew’s Gospel that whatever we do for the least of our sisters
and brothers—those who are hungry or thirst or naked or a stranger or sick or
in prison—we do for him. When we welcome and love them, we are welcoming and
loving and serving him. It is no small thing to recognize Jesus coming to us
through the most vulnerable people on this planet, for Jesus assures us that
our salvation depends upon it.
During this Extraordinary
Jubilee Year, which will last until the end of November next year, Pope Francis
challenges us to practice the Corporal works of Mercy. Not just to do these
good deeds, but to “encounter Christ living
in the poor.” Knowing things about Christ is different from knowing Christ.
The same holds true for
Christ living in those who are the least of our brothers and sisters. Knowing
things about them, statistics about hunger, or statistics stating that there
are more people in prison per capita in Oklahoma than almost any other State, is
very different from coming to know the people behind the statistics.
In other words, get to know the person who is hungry, or get to know the family who
are refugees on the run from terror, or hear the life story of a prisoner
behind bars. And in coming to know them, to encounter Christ in his littleness,
in his smallness, coming to us through them.
We come to this table to be
nourished by the Real Presence of Christ, the greatest gift Jesus gave us—his
body and his blood. His presence to us here gives us the grace to be present to
Him coming to us in our daily lives in the most ordinary of ways, in hidden,
small ways.
What looks like something so
small here—a little bread, a cup of wine—is transformed by the power of God
into a divine gift—the Gift of God’s Son being born in us once again, coming to
life in and through us.
So that strengthened by such
a gift, we can welcome him coming to us each day in the most surprising of
ways, longing to find room in our lives to welcome Him.
Fr. Joseph A.
Jacobi
