John 1:1-5; 9-14, Christmas Day

Every Christmas Eve, for over 10 years, Fr Nemy Que SJ organized a small choir of scholastics to sing in Mrs Cory Aquino’s house, where he celebrated mass for the whole family. After the mass, we had supper. Mrs Aquino’s daughters, Pinky, Ballsy, and Viel always dutifully and cheerfully served us, and made sure we had our happy fill. We never went home without presents from Mrs Aquino, personally inscribed with our name and signed by her.

Many years later, our turn came to be ordained. We gathered that Mrs. Aquino wanted to come to the Mass. Shame on us, it really didn’t cross our minds to invite her because, well, Fr Nemy was the one she was close to and we were just the happy tag-alongs. Also, we didn’t think our ordination was important enough for a former president to attend, right? But Mrs Aquino said it would be her token of appreciation for all those Christmas Eves we sang at her home. Day of ordination came. We didn’t see Mrs Aquino. You know why? She was sitting at the back of the church, blending in with the rest of the congregation! Of course, we sent for someone to move her up to where our families sat. But she initially declined because she didn’t want to take the occasion away from us by making a scene. Not wanting to be difficult, Mrs. Aquino relented and sat somewhere forward, but still not at the place of honor. After the mass, she gladly indulged our request for a picture with our families.

Can you imagine how honored we felt that Mrs Aquino even considered coming to “only” one of the most sacred moments in our lives? And the humility of the woman, sisters and brothers. Other bigwigs would have had advance bodyguards to check out the place, stationed themselves everywhere, then made sure their VIP was safely protected from the hoi-polloi. Well, not this lady. Not Mrs Aquino. By assuming our smallness, she made us feel big.

The ancient, thoughtful Greeks saw how there was an intrinsic harmony and reasonability in the workings of the universe. So, they came up with a name for it: Logos, literally, word or reason. This overarching Logos made language possible, first of all, and therefore, human understanding and knowledge. Logos also made ethics and principles possible, so it guided human relationships. As Logos regulated human passions, it also attracted human intelligence to seek more answers to what the universe could reveal. In other words, Logos was the ancient Greeks’ catch-all term for what gave life and the universe its all-encompassing meaning, purpose, drive, and reason for existwnce.

For John, that Logos did not stay in the realm of the abstract, the invisible, the highfallutin. Ho logos sarx egeneto, the Word became flesh; sarx: flesh. He didn’t say, the Word became a body, or a human person. No, flesh, laman! God did not just become part of our world. No, God assumed human flesh as his own reality. God knows how it is to be like us, not so much because he knows everything, but because he became flesh like us, with all the emotions, feelings, impulses, temptations, struggles, regrets, delights, relief, joys we all have. He just fought very hard to never cross the line into sin. That line must’ve worn thin many times. And it would’ve been more satisfying to cross it because it would’ve been righteous fury, sweet vengeance, justified retaliation. But see, that’s why the Messiah knows just how to save us. He has assimilated the most rudimentary reality of our being human, our flesh, our sarx, laman.

I explain to myself the Incarnation by thinking of Mrs Aquino attending our ordination, but multiplying it a million-billion-gazillion times. The Incarnation is Jesus making us part of his family (with his mom serving us like we were her very own). The Incarnation is Jesus never letting us go without blessings, personally inscribed with our name, signed with his love. The Incarnation is Jesus showing up at every occasion of celebration and at every moment of grief, quietly. In the Incarnation, God blends in with us, not staying above us, but moving up beside us, and being, as Karen Carpenter sang, “the crowd that sits quiet listenin’ to me and all the mad sense I make.”

Finally, let me read to you my favorite theologian’s (Karl Rahner) beautiful contemplation on the Incarnation, where he imagines God saying: “I am there. I am with you. I am your life. I am your time. I am your joy. Do not be afraid to be happy, for ever since I wept, joy is the standard of living that is really more suitable, than the anxiety and grief of those who think they have no hope. I am the blind alleys of all your paths, for when you no longer know how to go any further, then you have reached me…though you are not aware of it. I am in your anxiety, for I have shared it by suffering it. I wasn’t even heroic according to the wisdom of the world. I am in the prison of your finiteness, for my love for you has made me your prisoner. When the totals of your plans and of your experiences do not balance out evenly, I am the unsolved remainder. And I know that this remainder, which makes you frantic, is in reality my love, that you do not yet understand…. I am in your death, for today I began to die with you because I was born, and I have not let myself be spared any real part of this death…. This reality— incomprehensible wonder of my all-mighty love—I have sheltered, safely and completely in your world.”

This Son of God lovingly assumed our smallness, sisters and brothers, so that he can show us endlessly just how big we are to him.

*image from the Internet/CTTO