Bishop's Message
December, 2010 “In the child of Bethlehem, the life of the world that is to come has come into the life of the world that is.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Thu, Dec 9th 2010, 18:11
Dear Diocesan Family and Friends,
Blessings and warm greetings to you and your loved ones this Christmas season and in the New Year. It is a joy for me to greet each one of you during this holy season of Advent and Christmastide. Truly Christmas inspires both families and friends to come closer together and share in the hope and faith of God in Christ Jesus. Our oneness and interdependence as a spiritual family in Christ becomes more evident in this grace filled season as we focus on the holy family at Bethlehem and God's gift of Himself in Jesus.
St. Thomas Aquinas used to tell his students a story of a man who heard about a very special ox. The more the man heard about the ox, the more determined he was to have it. He traveled all over the world. He spent his entire fortune looking for this ox. At last, just before he died, he realized that he had been riding on that special ox, even as he traveled the world to look for it. The moral of this story is simple and quite evident; sometimes what we seek is often under our nose or right in front of us. Throughout life there are many hopes and desires we identify motivating us to make special journeys and travels looking for that special “ox.” Secretly, each one of us knows what we have been looking for or what we continue to look for. Our souls remain restless, as St. Augustine reminds us. For centuries, Israel looked for a Messiah who would both free them and save them from their bondage and painful struggles. For Christians, Jesus is the long awaited Messiah, the Savior of the world. He was born in Bethlehem, grew up in Judea, was crucified, died and was buried in Jerusalem and, after three days, was raised from the dead. He ascended into heaven promising that he would return. Now, we, like Israel, are once again waiting, longing and looking for the Messiah to come, hopefully realizing more and more he is in our very midst, closer to us than we are to ourselves.
As we celebrate the seasons of Advent and Christmas, we are once again reminded that God's coming to us is defined in the Hebrew word Emmanuel. Emmanuel means "God with us." But more than that, Emmanuel means God does not keep us at arm's distance. God is with us with open arms and with outreached hands inviting us to come along with him in a journey heading back to our beginning, back to God the Father. At Christmas we are called to not only birth and cradle Christ in our own ordinary lives, but also to reach out and wrap our arms around our living faith which is guided by Christ Jesus. What does this mean? I believe that when we birth and cradle Christ the Messiah in our own ordinary daily lives by faith, we find our arms wrapping around others who may find themselves lost or who travel alone, heading in the wrong direction. If Christ is born in us at Christmas, we will indeed reach out with open arms to those in need who are right in front of us, under our noses; the innocent who are like the child of Bethlehem, the materially poor and displaced who are like the child of Bethlehem, the rejected and unnoticed who are like the child of Bethlehem, the homeless poor who are like the child of Bethlehem, the fragile who need care and love who are like the child of Bethlehem. Our faith's embrace and outreach of love imitates that hands-on relationship defined as Emmanuel. Just as God in Christ Jesus does not keep us at arms length, so also are we not to keep others at a distance, at arms length. God is with us. This is our message the world sorely needs to hear and hear clearly. By this gift of God in Christ, the world can experience divine presence and intimacy through and in our own fragile flesh and blood. Christian faith incarnates and imitates the living Son of God, Christ Jesus. God's incarnation in Jesus of Bethlehem has raised the mundane ordinariness of this world to the ‘ordinarily sacred.’ Unlike the man in the story Aquinas told, Christians are instructed to seek and find God in themselves and in all their neighbors. The sacred is under our noses, right in front of us. The Christmas story teaches us this.
Dietrich Bonhoffer got it right in saying and believing that ‘in the child of Bethlehem, the life of the world that is to come has come into the life of the world that is.’ This Christmas, we are once again encouraged to journey to Bethlehem and behold the presence of the living God incarnate in the child born to Mary and Joseph. It is in Jesus that God embraces the whole world and reaches out to us in love, encouraging us to seek, find and travel, with many familiar and unfamiliar neighbors, embracing a spiritual journey which leads all of us back to our divine origin. This is the true miracle of Christmas, "And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth……" (John 1: 14).
Emmanuel, God is with us. Come, Lord Jesus. Amen
To each and every one of you, Christmas Blessings and Peace.
Bishop Michael
