Readings: Mic 5:1-4a; Heb 10:5-10; Lk 1:39-45
As we make our final spiritual preparations for the celebration of Christmas, the Church gives us readings to remind us that God promised to send His Son to redeem the world and save souls, but He also provided some details of how this would occur. One of the most important details regards our Lord’s birth. In the first reading we hear the well-known prophecy of Micah that the birth of the Savior would take place in Bethlehem.
This makes sense because King David was from Bethlehem and God told him one of his descendants would be seated on his throne forever. On the natural level, this seems to suggest an unbroken chain of descendants who would rule as King in Israel. After several centuries, it became clear to everyone this would not happen. Therefore, in order to help verify the One Who would come, He would not only be a descendant of David (who would have been assumed to be born in the royal palace in Jerusalem), but the One Who would sit on the throne of David forever would be born in Bethlehem.
We all know the story of the events that led to our Lord’s birth in Bethlehem, but we need to consider things from the perspective of the people of the time. One of the reasons some people rejected Jesus is that He was from Galilee, in the northern part of Israel, thus they assumed He was born in Galilee. Bethlehem, about six miles from Jerusalem, is in the southern part of Israel.
Because the religious leaders at the time of our Lord’s birth ignored what they heard from the Magi and did not believe the Messiah had been born, little or nothing was ever said publicly about our Lord or His birth. If word had spread of His birth, the people who assumed He was from Galilee would have remembered there was reason to think a Baby born in Bethlehem thirty years earlier was the Messiah. It seems that, apart from the Holy Family, very few believed in the birth of the Savior: Herod, Anna, Simeon, the shepherds, and the Magi.
I should add St. Elizabeth and St. Zechariah to the list of those few who believed, because we hear about the grace of the Holy Spirit given to St. Elizabeth to believe in our Lord and in our Lady when she exclaims: “how does this happen to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” These verses from the Visitation are beautiful in themselves, but they also point to the truth of our Lord’s humanity from the moment of His conception in the womb of our Blessed Mother.
Throughout history, the scandal of the Incarnation has led people to suggest that Jesus was not both divine and human. Some denied His divinity while others denied His humanity. St. Elizabeth’s jubilant exclamation at our Lady’s arrival makes clear that Mary is with child; she is pregnant with a human baby. At the same time, by greeting our Lady with the title “Mother of my Lord,” St. Elizabeth makes clear that the Baby in Mary’s womb is God.
Over the past few weeks, we have seen that it was necessary for Jesus to take our humanity to Himself because the sacrifice He would make for us needed to be a truly human sacrifice, that is, the offering of human blood was needed to take away human sin. This is what we read in the second reading today where St. Paul quotes (and adjusts) Psalm 40 to show that God did not delight in holocausts and sin offerings, which were animal offerings; rather, He delights in the One Who does His will.
Jesus did the will of the Father perfectly and offered the Body His Father prepared for Him. It is in this, St. Paul says, that a new Covenant is established with its sacrifice. More than that, by the will of God, we have been consecrated through the offering of the Body of our Lord. It is one thing to recognize that Jesus is both God and man and that He died so our sins could be taken away and our souls redeemed. But it is an entirely different matter to suggest that we are consecrated to God through this action of our Lord!
We must remember that everything Jesus did, He did for us. This was to do the will of His Father. To take our nature, to be born, and to die for us are all objective truths that can often remain in our heads. However, to be consecrated is a subjective truth that must be embraced in the heart. This must be our disposition for Christmas: to embrace our consecration to God through Jesus, Truth and Love Incarnate, in our hearts!
Fr. Altier’s column appears regularly in The Wanderer, a national Catholic weekly published in St. Paul, Minn. For information about subscribing to The Wanderer, please visit www.thewandererpress.com.
