But there is hope- hope of an amazing sort; a kind of hope that no words can contain (for yes, words contain and there is no way to contain something this great, this amazing, this mind boggling in them). There is a hymn that is sung during in Christmas and in it, it says "marvel now, O Heaven and Earth, That our Lord chose such a birth". Marvel indeed. The Divine humbles Himself to come to us in our form- as a human- so that we may come to know, love, and serve God in this life and be with Him in the next. He gave Himself a name, a name that allows us to contain as much of Him as humanly possible; He gave Himself a face, a face that looks upon us with tenderness, mercy and love and that we can look upon with adoration; He made Himself tangible to us. He became helpless that we might have Hope.
Jesus, a tiny baby in a manger, on straw and wrapped in swaddling clothes. It conjures up images of cuteness and warm fuzzies and wise men adoring, angels singing, little lambs lying beside Him. But that baby was not like other babies. That baby was not given to His parents in the same way that other babies are. That baby freely chose to become a baby. That baby caused the world to be. That baby knew that His life would end in pain and misery. He did it anyway. He did it for us. And He knew that some of us would reject His sacrifice, His love, His mercy. But He came anyway. He could have chosen not to. And yet, He did. He came to earth, more helpless than an animal.
This mystery, the mystery of the Incarnation, is the center of our faith. By making Himself man, He chose to feel the pain, the lonliness, the despair of life. He chose to feel it, so that we would not have to feel that without the hope of something more. He died a miserable death, one more painful than anything that we could imagine. He cried out to God "why have you abandoned me?" He knows all that we feel. He knows rejection and despair, and He knows it more than any of us could. Chesterton wrote "And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist".
But He also smiled. He knew friendship and He knew love. He knew laughter. He knew joy, He knew it more than we can. And this joy is the hope of the Christian. It is this joy that cannot be contained or explained.
Negativity is something at which I excell. But it is the perversion of joy. It is the chosing not to see that joy. In that same book (Orthodoxy), Chesterton wrote (and it is a long quote, but why reinvent the wheel? [emphasis mine])
"The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma defiantly) it is not native to man to be so. Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live. Yet, according to the apparent estate of man as seen by the pagan or the agnostic, this primary need of human nature can never be fulfilled. Joy ought to be expansive; but for the agnostic it must be contracted, it must cling to one comer of the world. Grief ought to be a concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation is spread through an unthinkable eternity. This is what I call being born upside down. The sceptic may truly be said to be topsy-turvy; for his feet are dancing upwards in idle ecstacies, while his brain is in the abyss. To the modern man the heavens are actually below the earth. The explanation is simple; he is standing on his head; which is a very weak pedestal to stand on. But when he has found his feet again he knows it. Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man’s ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small. The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick-room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.
Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.
And a share in that Mirth, that joy is given to us through the Mystery of the Incarnation which leads to the Paschal Mystery.
At the Name of Jesus, every knee shall bow,Every tongue confess Him King of glory now;’Tis the Father’s pleasure we should call Him Lord,Who from the beginning was the mighty Word.
Mighty and mysterious in the highest height,God from everlasting, very light of light:In the Father’s bosom with the spirit blest,Love, in love eternal, rest, in perfect rest.
At His voice creation sprang at once to sight,All the angel faces, all the hosts of light,Thrones and dominations, stars upon their way,All the heavenly orders, in their great array.
Humbled for a season, to receive a nameFrom the lips of sinners unto whom He came,Faithfully He bore it, spotless to the last,Brought it back victorious when from death He passed.
Bore it up triumphant with its human light,Through all ranks of creatures, to the central height,To the throne of Godhead, to the Father’s breast; Filled it with the glory of that perfect rest.
Name Him, brothers, name Him, with love strong as death But with awe and wonder, and with bated breath!He is God the Savior, He is Christ the Lord,Ever to be worshipped, trusted and adored.
In your hearts enthrone Him; there let Him subdue All that is not holy, all that is not true;Crown Him as your Captain in temptation’s hour;Let His will enfold you in its light and power.
Brothers, this Lord Jesus shall return again,With His Father’s glory, with His angel train;For all wreaths of empire meet upon His brow, And our hearts confess Him King of glory now.
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