Dec

30

Co-Workers of the Truth 12/30

Posted By reynor | Filed Under Co-Workers of the Truth 

Excerpts from Co-Workers of The TruthOn Christmas we do not merely celebrate the birthday of some great person, of whom there are many.  Nor do we merely celebrate the mystery of being a child.  True, the freshness, the innocence and openness of the child are reasons for hope.  They give us the courage us to expect new possibilities for mankind.  Yet should we cling too tenaciously to this expectation only, to the new beginning of life in the child, we might be left, in the end, with nothing but disappointment: this new beginning, too, will one day be used up.  The child, too, will become part of life’s competition; the child, too, will be absorbed by life’s compromises and defeats, and in the end he will be conquered by death as all of us are.

If we has nothing else to celebrate but the romanticism of new birth and of childhood, we would be left, in the end, without even such romanticism.  In that case, there would be nothing but the eternal coming and going; there would be reason to suspect that being born is cause for sadness, for it inevitably will result in death.  For this reason is it so very important to realize that much more has happened here: the Word became flesh.  ” This Child is God’s Son”, as one of our beautiful old Christmas carols has it.  Here the outrageous has happened, the inconceivable and yet the always expected, even the necessary: God has entered our world.  He has established a union with man so inseparable that this man truly is God from God, light from light, and yet always true man as well. 

The meaning of the world has come to us in such a real way that it can be touched and seen (Jn 1).  For John’s “Word”, in Greek, stands at the same time also for “the meaning”.  Thus we would be entitled to translate, “the meaning has become flesh”.  But this “meaning” is not merely a general idea inherent in the world.  This meaning relates to us.  This meaning is a message, addressed to us.  This meaning knows us, challenges us, guides us.  This meaning is not some general principle, in which we might play a certain part.  No, it addresses each one of us personally.  It is itself a Person: the living God’s own Son, born in a stable in Bethlehem.

From: Licht, das uns leuchet, pp.43f

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