18 December 2017
Monday of the Third Week of Advent
O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush and gave him the law on Sinai: Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.
In one week’s time we will recall the moment when the same God who met Moses in the burning bush came among mankind as one of our own, as inconspicuous and plain as an infant. No one kicked off their shoes in His presence, there was no booming voice; indeed we sing “Silent Night!” No Laws were given, no divine words carved in stone; rather, the very Word of God was wrought in flesh and blood. Our Adonai—our Lord—has come to redeem us. In ancient times He came in fire and cloud, doing great and terrible deeds to free His people from slavery; now He is born so He may one day die to save all who might accept His offer of salvation. He would not consume the wood and leaf of the bush in the desert with fire, yet the angel tells Joseph, “…it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her.” The Fire of God’s Spirit has consumed human nature, doing what fire does: transforming what it consumes into itself, and thus “…the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” (St. Athanasius)
“Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm” the Church prays. Today Gabriel tells Joseph, “She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” The outstretched arm of God will be a human arm, at Christmas outstretched to grasp anything its little fingers can wrap around; perhaps Joseph’s own thick, calloused finger. Yet one day those arms will be outstretched upon the Cross, those hands pierced, those fingers curled in agony. He came to save us from our sins; truly He is Emmanuel—He is “God with us,” God on the side of sinners as we face off daily against our Enemy, who cringes and cowardly shies away from this little Child lying in the manger.
“If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him… What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.” (Romans 8: 31b-32, 35, 37) All these things came after the Child—the sword and peril, anguish and persecution of Herod, the nakedness of being born in a stable, the famine of long travel, the anguish of having to make do in a foreign, pagan land—yet none of it kept Jesus from being with us. Neither, then, should any of these things keep us from Him.
May St. Joseph, the protector of and provider for the Child Jesus pray for us and care for us, helping us to do all that God commands of us.