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PAGE 5—December 20,1973
Emmanuel --
God Is With Us
BY MOST REV. JOSEPH L. BERNARDIN
“While they were there the days of her confinement
were completed. She gave birth to her first-born son and
wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a
manger, because there was no room for them in the place
where travelers lodged.”
The account of the birth of Jesus Christ is presented so
simply and so beautifully in St. Luke’s Gospel. Yet, if you do
not read this Gospel narrative within the context of our
Christian faith and our religious history and experience, it is
impossible to grasp the full significance of the Christmas story;
it is impossible to understand what impact the birth of this one
child has had on the human community for nearly 20 centuries.
Let us, then, for a few moments reflect on the significance of
the Christmas mystery. Let us put aside the trappings which
today form an artificial facade around Christmas and, with
minds enlightened by faith and hearts enlivened by love, let us
probe deeply into the meaning of the Christmas story.
It would be a serious mistake to look upon Christmas merely
as a commemoration of an historical event - the birth of Christ.
Christmas is primarily the celebration of an event, an event
which has completely changed the course of our lives, one
which is present even now and, therefore, confronts and
challenges us this very moment.
And that event, of course, is the Christ-event. Jesus
Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, has become
incarnate. While ever remaining God, He has also become one of
us. Christ has taken on our poor weak human nature; He has
become like us in all respects except sin. And He has done this
precisely in order that we might overcome our human weakness
so that we can rise above the limitations imposed upon us by
our human condition; so that we sons of Adam can also become
sons of God. Through the Incarnation, Christ has restored us
fully to that divine life which God intended us to have, which
He freely and graciously gave us at the time of creation but
which we lost through sin.
However, this restoration - this redemption - does not
happen automatically in the sense that no decision or effort on
our part is needed. If we are actually to share the life of grace
which Christ has restored, we must be converted to Him; we
must make a commitment to Him. We first did this when we
were baptized. But this initial commitment must be lived out,
day by day, if it is to have any real meaning.
message of the scriptures. We encounter Him in the celebration
of the Eucharist and the other sacraments. He is ever-present in
the day-to-day routine which makes up the reality of our lives.
He is present in the aspirations, the suffering and the needs of
the many people who touch our lives every day.
And in all these circumstances, He challenges us to say a
definitive “yes” to Him personally; a definitive “yes” to the
message of love and hope which He has proclaimed to all men.
Only by accepting this challenge continually can we really share
the gift of life which He has restored to us. Only by making the
right decisions -- decisions which are totally in accord with the
Gospel message, regardless of the sacrifice or inconvenience they
might entail - will Christ’s presence affect us personally. Only
then will His life become our life; onl^then will His strength
become our stre^th so that we can rise above our infirmities
and enjoy the sp» al freedom promised to the sons of God.
The Christmas liturgy brings out these ideas in many
beautiful ways. Perhaps one of the best is in its comparison of
Christ to light or brightness. The theme of light is woven
through the sacred texts of the Christmas Masses.
In the scriptures, darkness is frequently used as another word
for sin. In the darkness of sin, man is lost; he cannot find God.
Christ, however, is the light of the world. He is our light
because, through His life, death and resurrection, He has made
us victorious over sin, if we but surrender ourselves to Him.
Through Him, the darkness has been dispelled. The cloud has
been lifted and we can now see God. We see him now, as St.
Paul tells us, through faith but in the life to come we will see
Him face-to-face.
This, then, is what Christmas is all about. It is a solemn
reminder that “God is with us,” now and forever. If we want
Him to come into our lives, we need only reach out to Him, but
we must do so with a willingness to go wherever He leads us.
And at times He will direct us along paths that will be difficult
and unappealing. The paths that Christ will point out to us will
often lead us away from the pleasant, comfortable life to which
we are accustomed and attached. They will take us instead to
the sick and the poor; to those who have been disillusioned and
hardened by prejudice and injustice. They will take us to areas
where we will see the ugly side of life; where hardship is the
order of the day; where frustration has replaced hope; where
there is no longer faith but only a stubborn unwillingness to
believe in either God or man; where hatred has often taken the
place of love.
Christ is as present today among us as He was in Bethlehem
and Nazareth nearly 20 centuries ago. He is as present to us now
as He was when He walked the earth, curing the sick and raising
the dead back to life. He is as close to us now as He was when
He gathered His apostles around Him in the upper room and
broke bread with them. He still speaks to us through the
scriptures and through the Church to whom He entrusted the
But these are the hard realities of life and they need not
discourage us. Quite the contrary. These realities can become
opportunities which, if properly understood and used, will give
real meaning to our lives. For it is precisely in these situations,
sometimes more than in thqse which please us, that we find
Christ. It is in these daily encounters that we can literally shout
with confidence: Emmanuel -- “God is with us.” ”
“Christ is as present today among us as He was in
Bethlehem and Nazareth nearly 20 centuries ago. He is
as present to us now as He was when He walked the
earth ...” A 19th century wood carving shows Jesus as
a boy with Mary and Joseph. The representation of
I (All Articles On This Page Copyrighted 1973 by N.C. News Service)
, Know Your Faith
s — ■
Jesus at Nazareth is from the Montreal Museum of
Fine Arts, Province of Quebec, and appears on a
UNICEF Christmas card. (NC Photo courtesy
UNICEF)
To the Church
Of Cincinnati
BY FATHER JOSEPH M. CHAMPLIN
Archbishop Joseph L. Bemardin of Cincinnati entered early
into the ranks of our hierarchy and has risen rapidly in it.
Bethlehem Was a City of Destiny
BY STEVELANDREGAN
Nothing in the world, including the birth of the Redeemer,
occurs in isolation from other events. Thus it is that while to the
Christian the Village of Bethlehem, a few miles south of
Jerusalem, is above all the traditional site of the birth of Jesus
Christ, it is in fact, a village whose history is woven completely
through the great tapestry that is Salvation History.
Bethlehem is first mentioned in the Bible as the site of the
death of Rachel in childbirth. The beloved wife of Jacob was
buried nearby after the birth of Benjamin (Gen. 35: 16-20), and
her tomb is marked to this day.
Ephrata, a tribal name for Bethlehem, was also the scene of
the idyll of Ruth, the Moabitess, who returned to Judah with
her mother-in-law, Naomi, after the death of her Hebrew
husband, Elimelech. It was Ruth who spoke the famous pledge
to Naomi: “Wherever you go I will go, wherever you lodge I will
lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
(Ruth 1:16).
Ruth stands out in the Old Testament as one of the few
non-Hebrew women who is depicted as a heroine. She is an
ancestor of Christ because she became the great grandmother of
King David.
Ruth was redeemed from her widowhood by Boaz and
became his wife. Their son was Obed, whose son Jesse was the
father of David. After the apostasy of King Saul, the prophet
Samuel went to Bethlehem in obedience to God’s command and
annointed David, Jesse’s youngest son, to be king over Israel.
Thus Bethlehem still is called the Town of David because it was
the birthplace of Israel’s great king.
The future role of Bethlehem as the birthplace of the Messiah
was prophecied by Micah: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrata, too
small to be among the clans of Judah. From you shall come
forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel; Whose origin is
from old, from ancient times.” (Micah 5:1)
And Isaiah identified the House of David as the line from
which the Messiah would spring: “A shoot springs from the
stock of Jesse, a scion thrust from his roots: on him the spirit of
Yahweh rests, a spirit of wisdom and insight, a spirit of counsel
and power, a spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Yahweh.”
(Is. 11: If)
So it was that when Herod the King asked the scribes and
chief priests where the Messiah was to be born, they replied
without hesitation, “At Bethlehem in Judea,” and quoted the
prophecy of Micah.
There was an early Christian community at Bethlehem and
one of the early Pontiffs, Pope Evaristus (90-107), was bom of a
Jewish father by the name of Jude who was a native of
Bethlehem according to the Book of Popes.
The Romans did not destroy Bethlehem after the Jewish war,
but they did expel its Jewish residents. St. Jerome tells us that
from the time of the Emperor Hadrian (135) to the Emperor
Constantine (326), the cave where Christ was bom was turned
into a shrine of the god Adonis and that “in the grotto where
the Christ Child once cried, the paramour of Venus was
bewailed.”
But the use of the cave as a pagan shrine only served to mark
the spot and Origen wrote in the third century that “one can
reflect on how in Bethlehem is shown the grotto in which He
was born, and in the grotto the crib in which he was wrapped in
swaddling clothes; things corresponding to the Gospel story
about His birth.”
In the fourth century Constantine ordered a great Church to
be built over the grotto. In the year 386 St. Jerome went to
Bethlehem to devote himself, with the help of local Jewish
scholars, to the study of the Bible and ancient languages.
It was in an extension of the cave where Christ was born that
Jerome produced his great literary works, among them his Latin
translation of the Old Testament, known as the Vulgate, which
was to become the standard translation for the Church.
In 529 the Samaritans revolted against Rome and plundered
the countryside. They sacked and severely damaged the church
at Bethlehem. The present church was built to replace the old
structure on orders of the Emperor Justinian. The mosaic floor
of the original Constantinian church may still be seen.
Today the village’s predominantly Christian Arab population
has been swollen by many Moslems who have sought refuge
there from the Israeli-Jordanian fighting since 1947.
But the area around Bethlehem is still pastoral and
agricultural as it has been for thousands of years. Its very name,
which means “House of Bread,” seems to suggest such a setting
for this village that has played such an important role in the
History of Salvation.
“WHILE TO THE CHRISTIAN the village of
Bethlehem . . .is above all the traditional site of the
birth of Jesus Christ, it is in fact a village whose history
is woven completely through the great tapestry that is
Salvation history.” Churches and spires set Bethlehem*
apart from the primarily Arab population of Judea.
More than 20,000 Giristians visit the city at Christmas
time. (NC Photo courtesy Israeli Tourist Office)
Ordained in his late 30’s as auxiliary bishop of Atlanta, he
soon moved to Washington for some half-dozen years of service
in the delicate, generally thankless post as General Secretary for
the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Now shepherd of
that important Ohio archdiocese, his words and actions
command respect both in the mid-west and throughout the
nation.
The youthful archbishop is an extremely hard worker, rolls
quite well with punches, speaks in a soft, gentle manner and has
the ability to organize talented personnel who can labor under
him with relative freedom and satisfaction.
Those multiple gifts bore fruits this fall in the form of “A
Pastoral Letter to Members of the Church of Cincinnati”
entitled “Prayer in Our Time.”
Beautifully laid out in contemporary typography and
enhanced by mood building photographs, this extensive,
biblically rich treatise is largely, I presume, the product of a
six-man editorial committee. At least mention of the group on
the cover with a list of its members would lead us to believe
that.
Major sections of the pastoral treat “Jesus, Man of Prayer,”
“The Body of Christ, A Prayer,” “Modem Man and Prayer.” In
this column, I wish to comment on two points covered in that
text which have special value for our days.
* Prayerful listening. Prayer is a form of communication.
Simply stated, we speak to God; God speaks to us. But to hear
what the Father has to say or is saying presupposes that we
listen well. The pastoral notes:
“Reading and reflecting on the Scriptures require listening
and receptivity. Mary, model and mother of the Church, gives us
an example of how to listen simply, humbly, openly to God
uttering His Word, overshadowing us by His Spirit so that His
revealed words may take flesh in us.
“The Christian who is familiar with the Scriptures and
attuned to listening can discern the multiple ways in which God
has spoken and still speaks.”
Sunday liturgies which flow forward smoothly, but in a
relaxed manner with pauses for silent reflection after readings,
homily and Communion makes prayerful listening possible.
* Private and public prayer. Church history, like the story of
mankind in general, indicates a constant swing of the pendulum
from one extreme to the other, from one emphasis to another.
Fifty years ago Catholic prayer life centered on private
devotions - the rosary, stations, novenas - and people even
participated almost privately at Mass, remaining silent,
somewhat isolated from others in the congregation.
Recent years have witnessed a demise in these devotions and,
instead, a stress on active, vocal, community involvement in
public worship. Certain enthusiasts, however, occasionally
convey the impression that private, devotional prayer no longer
is needed or wanted.
Truth usually stands in the middle; how wise and better a
world it would be if somehow we could keep the pendulum
from moving too far in either direction.
The Cincinnati document, in typical Archbishop Bernardin
fashion, seeks to strike such a moderate, middle and happy
balance in this matter of prayer forms or styles.
“The life of a Catholic emphasizes liturgical prayer and
centers in the Eucharist. Private prayer, however, is no less
necessary for a truly Christian life. Here one’s orientation to
God is strengthened, his consciousness of his brother’s needs is
raised, and his desire to celebrate the liturgy is heightened.”