ET INCARNATUS EST…and he was made man.

HOMILY FOR CHRISTMAS

Scripture Reading:
Is. 9:2-7
Ps. 96:1-2a.2b-3.11-12.13 (R. Lk 2:11)
Tit. 2:11-14; Accl. Lk 2:10-11
Gospel: Lk. 2:1-14.

Preamble:

Dear friends please repeat these words after me;
Lord Jesus, I give you my mind, help me understand.
Lord Jesus, I give you my ears, help me hear your voice.
Lord Jesus, I give you my heart, help me welcome you.
Holy Spirit, rekindle in me the fire of your love. Amen.

This day, there is great joy in the land which is been greeted with so great a preparation on various corridors-the mighty and the ordinary prepare to welcome the baby Jesus.

From the palaces of the affluent to the slums of the poor, from the boulevard of royalty to the streets and market places of ordinary people, from the mansions of the wealthy to the apartment of the middle class to the huts of the poor preparations are been made to welcome the baby Jesus.

This is a great night because our children would be baptized within this celebration. As we celebrate the birth of the lord, we celebrate the rebirth of our catechumens with the waters of baptism. They would be born anew with the baptismal water. The church is glad and rejoices with them and pray that the life of grace which they would receive tonight offers them great spiritual satisfaction and may they live their lives in total emulation of the humility of the lord who left his majesty to be with us in the most simplest of form-been human inorder to reinstate us.

Our catechumens are called to be a light to those they come in contact with-in their actions, thoughts and words.

Tonight is a great because heaven is wedded to earth, what is mighty has taken up what is lowly, what is extraordinary has taken up what is ordinary, what is strong has taken up what is weak, what is noble has taken what simple, tonight in the silent hours of the night a great light is born, tonight immortality has taken up what is mortal to make strong and holy and joyful-this is a night where the light of the Christ is shown as seen by the shepherd who set out on a journey to welcome the baby Jesus.

We too like the shepherd have set out tonight to see the baby Jesus, to greet him, to worship and adore him for he has come in time to save his people. Hence the opening words of the prophet Isaiah 9:2 is a message of hope to us “the people who walk in darkness, a great has shown. They lived in a land of shadows, but now light is shining on them.”

Tonight the preparation is made out of joy-the joy of the lord which has become our strength. Joy because in the time of the lord, he has done great things for us and it is worthy of celebration. Isaiah 9:3 says “you have given them great joy, Lord; you have made them happy. They rejoice in what you have done, as people rejoice when they harvest their corn or when they divide captured wealth.”

No prepares in emptiness-something must bring about that preparations and for us the preparation is to welcome the baby Jesus. For St. Augustine tells us “…never would we be freed from our sinful flesh, had he not taken to himself the likeness of sinful flesh.

Everlasting would be our misery, had he not performed this act of mercy. We would not have come to life again, had he not come to die our death. We would have broken down, had he not come to help us. We would have perished, had he not come.”

Brothers and sisters, it is a cause of joy so our preparation is not in vein. We prepare for the great celebration-to joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption. We are called to celebrate this hallowed day on which the great eternal day came from the great eternal day into this, our so short and temporal day.

He has become our justice, and our sanctification, and our redemption. And so, as scripture says: ‘let him who glories, glory in the Lord.’ Hence we say welcome oh great king! We welcome you into our hearts, into our homes and into our world and in particular our country Nigeria-not a prayer made selfishly but a cry to the lord to heal our land of its troubles-we say et incarnatus est-may he be made a living and real presence in our country Nigeria in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Can we celebrate Christmas without our Blessed Mary? Can there be et incarnates est without Mary? No we can’t for Christmas will be lacking one essential element and that is the cooperation of the blessed mother with the divine will. To bring about the “Et Incarnatus Est.” we notice this cooperation at the annunciation scene Mary’s response which unfolds three steps. Emeritus pontiff-Pope Benedict XVI offers great insight to this response of the Blessed Mother.

To begin with, in reaction to the angel’s greeting she is troubled and pensive. her reaction is different from Zechariah’s. of him it is said that he was troubled and “fear fell upon him” (Lk 1:12). In Mary’s case the first word is the same (she was troubled), but what follows is not fear but an interior reflection on the angel’s greeting. She ponders (dialogues within herself) over what the greeting of God’s messenger could mean.

She does not remain locked in her initial troubled state at the closeness of God in his angel, but she seeks to understand. So Mary appears as a fearless woman, one who remains composed even in the presence of something utterly new. At the same time she stands before us as a woman of great interiority, who holds heart and mind in harmony and seeks to understand the context, the overall significance of God’s message.

In this way, she becomes an image of the Church as she considers the word of God, tries to understand it in its entirety and guards in her memory the things that have been given to her.

Second reaction: Mary’s second reaction is somewhat puzzling for us. After the thoughtful reflection with which she had received his initial greeting, the angel informs her that she has been chosen to be the mother of the Messiah. Mary replies with a short, incisive question: “how shall this be, since I have no husband?” Lk 1:34.

The difference between Zechariah and Mary lies in the reception of the message. Like Elizabeth, Zechariah was advanced in years: he could no longer hope for a son. Mary, on the other hand, does not doubt. She asks not whether, but how the promise is to be fulfilled, as she cannot recognize anyway it could happen: “how shall this be, since I have no husband?” Lk 1:34. This question seems unintelligible to us, because Mary was bethroted, which meant that, according to Jewish law, she was already effectively a married woman, even if she did not yet live with her husband and they had not yet begun their conjugal life.

Since Saint Augustine, one explanation that has been put forward is that Mary had taken a vow of virginity and had entered into the betrothal simply in order to have a protector for her virginity. But this theory is quite foreign to the world of the Judaism of Jesus’ time, and in that context it seems inconceiveable.

Others say that at this point, having not yet been taken into the marital home, Mary had had no dealings with men, yet she saw the task as immediately pressing. But this fails to convince, as the time when she would be taken into the marital home could not have been far off. Other exegetes have wanted to view the saying as a purely literary construction, designed to continue the dialogue between Mary and the angel. Yet this is no real explanation of the saying either.

Another element to keep in mind is that according to Jewish custom, the betrothal was unilaterally pronounced by the man, and the woman was not invited to express her consent. Yet this does not solve the problem either.

So the riddle remains-or perhaps one should say the mystery-of this saying. Mary sees no way, for reasons that are beyond our grasp, that she could become mother of the Messiah through marital relations.

The angel confirms that her motherhood will not come about in the normal way after she has been taken home by Joseph, but through “overshadowing, by the power of the Most High,” by the coming of the Holy Spirit, and he notes empathically: “for with God nothing will be impossible.” (Lk 1:37.)

Next comes the third reaction, Mary’s actual answer: her straightforward yes makes the reality of the et incarnatus est-and he was made man. She declares herself to be the handmaid of the Lord. “let it be done to me according to your word” Lk 1:38.

In one of his advent homilies, Bernard of Clairvaux offers a stirring presentation of the drama of this moment. After the error of our first parents, the whole world was shrouded in darkness, under the dominion of death.

Now God seeks to enter the world anew. He knocks at Mary’s door. He needs human freedom. The only way he can redeem man, who was created free, is by means of a free “yes” to his will. In creating freedom, he made himself in a certain sense dependent upon man. His power is tied to the unenforceable “yes” of human being. So Bernard portrays heaven and earth as it were holding its breath at this moment of the question addressed to Mary.

Will she say yes? She hesitates…will her humility hold her back? Just this once-Bernard tells her-do not be humble but daring! Give us your “yes!” This is the crucial moment when, from her lips, from her heart, the answer comes: “Let it be to me according to your word.” It is the moment of free, humble yet great obedience in which the loftiest choice of human freedom is made.

Mary becomes a mother through her “yes.” The church fathers sometimes expressed this by saying that Mary conceived through her ear-that is to say: through her hearing. Through her obedience, the word entered into her and became fruitful in her. In this connection, the fathers developed the idea of God’s birth in us through faith and baptism, in which the Logos comes to us ever anew, making us God’s children.

For example, we may recall the words of Saint Irenaeus: “How shall man pass into God, unless God has first passed into man? How was mankind to escape this birth into death, unless he were born again through faith, by that new birth from the virgin, the sign of salvation that is God’s wonderful and unmistakable gift?”

It is by you o virgin that he was made man thus tonight we say with St. Anselm O virgin, by whose blessing all nature is blessed; sky, stars, earth, rivers, day, night, and all things that are meant to serve man and be for his good rejoice because of you, our lady. Through you they have in a way come back to life, enriched with a new grace that words cannot describe. When they lost the noble purpose of their nature, for which they had been made, of serving and helping those who praise God, they were like dead things. They were crushed, disfigured, and abused by idol worshippers for whom they had not been made.

They rejoice now as if they had come to life again. Now they are made beautiful because they serve and are used by those who believe in God.

A new and priceless grace has made them almost leap for joy. They have not merely felt God himself, their creator, ruling them invisibly from above, but they have seen him visibly within themselves using them in his work of sanctification. These immense benefits have come through the blessed fruit of the blessed womb of the blessed Mary.

Through the fullness of your grace, the things in the lower world rejoice in the gift of freedom and the things above the world are gladdened by being renewed. Through the one glorious Son of your glorious virginity all the just who died before his life-giving death rejoice that their captivity has been ended, and the angels delight that their half-ruined city is restored.

O woman, full and more than full of grace, all creation has received of the overflow of your fullness and its youth has been renewed! O blessed and more than blessed virgin, through your blessing all creation is blessed. Not only is creation blessed by the creator, but creation blesses its creator.

God gave to Mary his Son, the Only-begotten of his heart, equal to himself, whom he loved as himself. From Mary he fashioned himself a Son, not another one but the same, so that by nature there would be one and the same Son both of God and of Mary. Every nature is created by God, and God is born of Mary. God created all things and Mary gave birth to God. God himself, who made all things, made himself from Mary. In this way he remade all that he had made. He who was able to make all things out of nothing, when they had been defaced would not remake them without Mary’s help.

God is, then, father of all created things and Mary is mother of all that has been recreated. God is father of the institution of all things and Mary is mother of the restitution of all things. God begot him through whom all things were made and Mary gave birth to him though whom all things are saved. God begot him without whom nothing at all exists and Mary gave birth to him without whom nothing that exists is good.

The Lord is indeed with you. For he granted to you that all nature should owe so great a debt to you jointly with himself.

The incarnation tells us about the time of promise and the time for fulfilling what he had promised. The period of his promise was from the time of the prophets up to John the Baptist; and the period for fulfilling what he had promised is from John and henceforward to the end.

God is faithful: he made himself our debtor not by accepting anything from us, but by promising us such great blessings. The promise was not enough; he even chose to be bound by writing, creating for us a kind of bond for his promises, we might contemplate in scripture the order of their accomplishment. The period of prophecy, therefore, as we have before now frequently said, was the announcement of the promises.

He promised everlasting salvation, and an unending life of blessedness with the angels, an unfading inheritance, everlasting glory, his own dear face, his sanctuary in heaven, and, by the resurrection of the dead, no further fear of death. This is, as it were, his final promise, towards which all our endeavours tend, and after we have received it, we shall seek nothing more, demand nothing more. Nor has he passed over in silence in his promises and prophecies how that final state will be reached.

He promised to men the divine nature; to mortals, immortality: to sinners, justification: to castaways, a state of glory.

Because the promise of God that, from mortality and corruption, from this weak and abject state, from dust and ashes men would become equal to the angels of God, seemed incredible to men, he not only made a written covenant with them so that they might believe, but also gave them a Mediator as a pledge of his promise. This was not some prince, or any angel or archangel, but his only Son. Through that Son he intended to point out and show us the way by which he would lead us to the goal he had promised.

It was not enough for God to give us his Son merely to point out the way. He made the son himself the way, so that you and I might journey with him as our guide, as he walks in his own way.

The only Son of God was to come to men, to take manhood to himself, and, through what he took, to become man. He was to die, rise again, ascend into heaven, sit at the right hand of the father, and fulfill among the nations what he promised. After the fulfillment of his promises among the nations, he is to fulfil this promise to come again. Then, he will come to demand what he has previously given, to separate the vessels of wrath from the vessels of mercy, to repay the wicked as he has threatened, and the righteous as he has promised.

The whole of this was to be prophesied, was to be announced beforehand, was to have its future coming declared. It was not to come suddenly and strike terror, but was to be believed and awaited.

Et incarnatus est…and he was made man, is a reality because he was made man for our sake. May this Christmas become a time of fulfilled joy and great peace for us in the name of Jesus. I wish you a merry Christmas.