Dec 30: To Be Human Is To Grow

El Greco: Saint Joseph and the Christ Child
Chapel of San José, Toledo, 1597-99

The Sixth Day in the Octave of Christmas

Gospel: Lk 2:36-40

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor (NRSV, Lk 2:40).

How wonderful, Lord God, that your Word, God from God, should become a human being, that the Word, without giving up his divinity, should take upon himself a human body. And not just the appearance of humanity, a human body worn as a shell, as some have claimed.

Lord God, I struggle every day to understand you more, to understand the Word that is spoken in the depth of my being, once and for all but at every moment. Finally I accept that you are, that you are my Father, that you created me and give me a share in your life through the Word in the Holy Spirit. I accept as well that you challenge me through the Word spoken within me to grow constantly in your life by saying “yes” to the Word at every moment. I accept also that, when I sin and try to live my own life without you, your Word remains ever present to me in every moment summoning me to repentance, offering me once again to live in you if only I would say “yes” again. I accept that you love me and invite me to love you in return and to love all of my sisters and brothers in you.

But who you are, and who your Word is, and who your Holy Spirit is, are truths, really just truth, Lord, because you are always one, in which I grow ever so slowly. What I know about you, Lord, and what you require me to do, how I am to live out my life, is and never will be complete because only your truth is absolute. Truth for the creature only shares in your truth and I can only grow in it as I can also only grow in your life.

But now, since the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, since the coming of the Word into the world in the flesh, Lord God, you have become a God that could be seen and heard and touched. As I struggle to understand more about you, Lord, I can continue to examine your footprints that are the world you have created and I can continue to look within myself to find you closer to me than I am to myself, but now I have a teacher who is the Lord Jesus, one of us yet God himself, to show the way. Jesus is not like other teachers who can all eventually be surpassed because he is the one teacher whose truth cannot be exhausted.

As I strain to understand to a greater extent, moving ahead with such difficulty, I am more than encouraged to realize that during his earthly life that Jesus also struggled as I do. As one of us, he too had to learn gradually to come to a fuller understanding of his identity and the mission entrusted to him by you, Lord, his Father. It was only in his resurrection that all became clear even to him and, with a final understanding of his godhead, he was able to communicate that truth to his apostles.

Father in heaven, as I endeavor with such great effort to be your obedient son and to grow in your life and the knowledge of who you are, I am thankful for the companionship of your Son, the Word who became one of us and dwells within me in the Spirit, comforting me and encouraging me to make constant progress as he did when he walked the paths of this world. All human life passes by physical death which threatens to be the end of it all. Now, with the Lord Jesus, I have a brother to guide me, one who also had to make the leap of faith that is death. He promises me that, rather than the final end, it can be, for the believer, an hour of glory passing to eternal life.

Alleluia. Amen.