GOD AMONG US
The Gospel-writer John, when he speaks to us of the incarnation of God’s Son, doesn’t tell us anything about that so familiar world of shepherds, manger, angels, and the Divine Child with Mary and Joseph. John invites us to delve into that mystery from another depth.
In God was the Word, the Power of communicating that God has. In that Word was life and light. That Word put in process the whole creation. We ourselves are fruit of that mysterious Word. That Word now has become flesh and has dwelt among us.
To us it keeps seeming too good to be true: a God made flesh, identified with our weakness, breathing our breath and suffering our problems. That’s why we keep looking for God on high, in the clouds, when God is down here, on the earth.
One of the great contradictions of Christians is to confess enthusiastically the Incarnation of God and then forget that Christ is in our midst. God has come down to what’s most profound in our existence, and life still seems empty to us. God has come to dwell in the human heart, and we feel an inner emptiness that’s unbearable. God has come to reign among us, and yet seems completely absent in our relationships. God has assumed our flesh, and we keep on not knowing how to live in the flesh with dignity.
In addition there are being fulfilled among us the words of John: «He came to his own, and his own people did not accept him». God looks for welcome in us, and our blindness closes the door to God. And yet it’s possible to open our eyes and contemplate God’s Son «full of grace and truth». The one who believes, always sees something. You see life wrapped in grace and truth. You have in your eyes a light that discovers in the depth of existence the truth and the grace of that God that fills everything.
Are we still blind? Do we only see ourselves? Does life reflect to us only the puny worries that we carry in our heart? Let’s allow our heart to feel itself penetrated by that life of God that even today wants to live in us.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
