By Father Trevor Lontine (Parochial Vicar at Spirit of Christ, Arvada) & André Escaleira, Jr.
“Brothers and Sisters, let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.”
We’ve heard these or similar words every time you have gone to Mass for decades, but how often do we think about what they mean? In this time of Advent and Christmas, the Church celebrates one of these “sacred mysteries,” the coming of God into the world—his rescue mission, his affirmation of all that is authentically human and his revelation of just how mysterious it is to be human.
Jesus became man for you and for me to rescue us from sin and death, to unite us ever closer to the Father and to raise us up to new heights with him. Through the mystery of Jesus’ Incarnation, we are shown just how valuable we are to the Father. We are shown that we matter.
Every time we attend Mass, we are invited to stop and meditate, listen and be converted and overawed by the Incarnation, God’s own coming into the world for our sake. This Christmas season, acknowledge what it required for you to be made into a little mystery of love.
In the Beginning
In the best mystery in creation, Jesus Christ became man. Why would the God of the universe do such a thing? How did he do it? The Incarnation is a reality that we cannot fully comprehend, but it’s one that our hearts are drawn into because it’s the story of our salvation. The more we consider this mystery, the deeper we are brought into relationship with the Trinity as we come to know the Son.
In the beginning, God created us out of love and found us to be “very good.” But, through the original sin of Adam and Eve, we found ourselves at odds with God. The wound of this sin echoes through the generations, and we now are tempted towards autonomy, self-idolization, pride, fear, despair and shame. We were all conceived in sin and into sin (cf. Ps 51:5). Our first parents, Adam and Eve, compromised our humanity all for a bite of fruit. Through that action, we fell from grace and were distanced from the Father who loves us.
But even from the fall, we hear a message of hope. Could Adam and Eve break what God had so carefully crafted? Not entirely, God promised as he spoke of a Savior to come (cf. Gen 3:15).
Emmanuel: God-with-us
In the fullness of time, God sent his only-begotten Son to save us as he’d promised. To remedy the fallenness of the world and of humanity, God would have to suffer and die. God’s work had been so grievously marred through the original sin of Adam and Eve. He who had been charged with leading the human race and the created world into eternity had instead tried, laughably, to dethrone God. The penalty for this, God decreed, was death (cf. Gen 2:17). The kingdom that Adam and Eve tried to build on their own was one of death and corruption.
Yet, even though we had earned the debt, Jesus paid the price and died for our sake (cf. Rm 6:23). The remedy for sin, brokenness and evil came at great personal cost to God: his own Son.
So, God became man. Our Savior, Emmanuel, came to be with us in all things but sin. The Son, an eternal person, bound to himself a human soul and body; God, fully infinite, blessed and perfect in himself, joined himself to fallen mankind. Through his becoming man, Jesus gave us a perfect example of what it means to be human and how to follow him. He came “behind enemy lines” and showed us what it meant to love and serve God from the kingdom of this world, a kingdom of sin and death. He entered into the rebel-slave state in which we find ourselves, became its citizen, and began a resule and a revolt through true, self-sacrificing love for God.
Through our Baptism, we join Jesus in his work of salvation. Through the great sacrament, we are buried with Christ to rise to new life with him (cf. Rm 6:4), and we are established priests, prophets and royalty alongside him, to work with him for the salvation of the world. Not only did God intervene in history to save all of humanity, but, through our Baptism, he intervened in your own life to transform it and to save you and me. In the grand scheme of things, we matter to God.
Jesus’ Reason this Season is YOU.
It’s worth the time to ask ourselves this Advent and Christmas season, “If I were not a follower of Jesus, what would my life look like?” How has Jesus’ rescue mission played out in each of our lives? How has he saved us? And how should we respond?
As we consider these questions, our own identity comes into focus: we were created beloved children of God, called to be in union with him, inseparably and dynamically. We are able to do this by following Jesus, offering ourselves fully and completely as gifts and sacrifices of love. We do this by imitating Jesus, who came to show us the way to the Father.
The Church continues Christ’s mysterious rescue mission, especially through the sacraments, those mysteries that sanctify and elevate human nature to Christ. The healing and restoration of the human mystery happens in the sacred mysteries of the Mass and in responsive prayer — meditating on and recognizing where and how Christ’s life intersects with your own. The invitation at the beginning of every Mass – “Brothers and Sisters, let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.” – invites us to call upon the Spirit to remind us of our previous heritage – namely, sin and death – in order to ponder in our minds and hearts the new mystery of Jesus. As we ponder his great loving rescue mission, we are invited to make a response of gratitude, conversion and imitation of his love for us.
This Advent and Christmas season, renew your participation in the Christian mysteries to acknowledge how God has delivered you and to allow his mysteries to pierce and penetrate your own. Recognize what might have happened to you, meditate on what did happen to you, and stir your desire for what will happen to you.
In all of God’s plans, YOU are the reason for this season.
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