Dear Parishioners and Supporters of Immaculate Conception Church,
I was sitting at a table across from a middle-aged woman. We were sharing a meal at a Franciscan church hall in one of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The living conditions in that shantytown left me aghast and filled with indignation at the sub-human socio-economic conditions in which so many people struggle to survive. Yet, despite those adverse circumstances, the same middle-aged woman of that poor parish displayed an ear-to-ear smile. I could not understand much of what she was saying. But every now and then, I heard her repeat the word in Portuguese that meant “joy”. I felt intrigued and mystified. As we are preparing for Christmas, I find myself thinking about that rather paradoxical encounter…
We are celebrating the great feast of the Incarnation. It is a theological term that refers to a key Christian belief. In a little fragile, vulnerable child, born at the margins of the Roman Empire, God became a human being. One of the third-century Fathers of the Church, Saint Athanasius made a provocative statement: “God became man (human) that man (a human being) might become God.”
Do not think about it when you are driving, but I do hope you will find some time to ponder, chew on this great Mystery with all its apparent contradictions, and still be re-enchanted by it with joy.
Even if things do not go your way – your loved one or your children frustrate you, or you fall short on self-expectations – God still desires to become flesh in the less than perfect realities of our individual and communal lives; in all the nooks and crannies.
I do not have a wife or children, but I do sometimes worry about the health of my parents, about our parish, school, and the larger Church. I feel a great deal of apprehension when I am keenly aware of the precarious situation of humanity, which is teetering at the cliff of the profound social and environmental crises. Yet, I dare to hope that our God full of an inexhaustible desire for life, creativity, and communion continues to be actively at work: in earth and its evolutionary processes, in our Church and society, in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and in Durham, in you and me.
Merry Christmas! Thank you for the many ways in which you participate in the ongoing and unfolding Mystery of Christ’ Incarnation.
I was sitting at a table across from a middle-aged woman. We were sharing a meal at a Franciscan church hall in one of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The living conditions in that shantytown left me aghast and filled with indignation at the sub-human socio-economic conditions in which so many people struggle to survive. Yet, despite those adverse circumstances, the same middle-aged woman of that poor parish displayed an ear-to-ear smile. I could not understand much of what she was saying. But every now and then, I heard her repeat the word in Portuguese that meant “joy”. I felt intrigued and mystified. As we are preparing for Christmas, I find myself thinking about that rather paradoxical encounter…
We are celebrating the great feast of the Incarnation. It is a theological term that refers to a key Christian belief. In a little fragile, vulnerable child, born at the margins of the Roman Empire, God became a human being. One of the third-century Fathers of the Church, Saint Athanasius made a provocative statement: “God became man (human) that man (a human being) might become God.”
Do not think about it when you are driving, but I do hope you will find some time to ponder, chew on this great Mystery with all its apparent contradictions, and still be re-enchanted by it with joy.
Even if things do not go your way – your loved one or your children frustrate you, or you fall short on self-expectations – God still desires to become flesh in the less than perfect realities of our individual and communal lives; in all the nooks and crannies.
I do not have a wife or children, but I do sometimes worry about the health of my parents, about our parish, school, and the larger Church. I feel a great deal of apprehension when I am keenly aware of the precarious situation of humanity, which is teetering at the cliff of the profound social and environmental crises. Yet, I dare to hope that our God full of an inexhaustible desire for life, creativity, and communion continues to be actively at work: in earth and its evolutionary processes, in our Church and society, in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and in Durham, in you and me.
Merry Christmas! Thank you for the many ways in which you participate in the ongoing and unfolding Mystery of Christ’ Incarnation.