15 January 2019
Tuesday of the First Week in Ordinary Time
The young Antonin Scalia attended Georgetown University as an undergraduate and majored in history. At the end of his senior year, he had to appear before a small committee of the department to orally defend his thesis. The session went well until the final question when a Jesuit priest asked, “Mr. Scalia, what is the most important event of world history?” In his later years, Scalia remarked that he did not remember the answer he gave—but he did remember that the Jesuit priest looked at him solemnly and said, “Mr. Scalia, Georgetown has failed you if we did not teach you that the most important event of world history is the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.”
How often do we think about and appreciate the greatness of the gift of God’s Incarnation, when God becomes a human being? Christmas seems already a long time ago and we might not think about the birth of Christ any longer. But the Gospel reading today reminds about God’s greatest gift; the eternal Logos becomes a human being like us. Jesus’s command to the demon to be silent and to come out of the man indicates his authority over it. But this incident reveals more than Jesus’ authority. The unclean spirit says Jesus is the “Holy One of God.” This means that Jesus Christ is not a holy person who resembles God. Rather, Jesus is the second person of the Trinity who became human. From this logic, we can understand what Jesus does on earth is what God does. When Jesus drives out unclean spirits, it is God who drives them out. Without this understanding, we will have a distorted picture of Jesus by making him a miracle worker or a magical person instead of the Second Person of Trinity who is truly God and truly human.
If we appreciate God’s gift to us in His incarnation, then we will put Jesus Christ at the center of our lives. More than our amazon prime accounts, our Netflix, or the latest gadget from the Apple store, is Jesus Christ the center of our lives? May our prayer reflect Christ’s centrality.