A Hidden Gift

This season of Advent is really so epic.  All the readings lately (mostly from the prophet Isaiah) speak of this great thing that God is about to do.  It’s like all of creation lies in wait.  The nation has been waiting and longing and you can almost feel the anticipation.  Something huge is about to happen!  And we know that something huge indeed does happen.  But it is hidden – a tiny baby, born in a lowly stable, to two young and inexperienced parents.  Many people missed it.  They didn’t see.  They failed to recognize.  They expected something different.  And yet, this hidden, humble child is God.  He comes down to the earth he created and is the answer that all of creation was waiting for, longing for!

On my recent trip to the Holy Lands, I found myself reflecting on this great mystery of the Incarnation.  Of course, in preparing for the trip, I expected I would ponder such things in Bethlehem – the site of the manger and the shepherd’s fields, the place where God became man.  But I was surprised to find myself awestruck a bit earlier in the trip during our visit to Nazareth.  While celebrating Mass at the site of Mary’s home in Nazareth in the crypt of the huge Basilica of the Annunciation, I was struck by the profound reality that it is not in fact at Bethlehem where God touches down to earth.  It is in Nazareth.  We think of the circumstances of the birth of the Christ-child and we are struck by the humility, by the poverty, by the hidden way in which he chooses to come.  But the Incarnation actually happened in Nazareth – in an even more hidden, more humble way.  God touched down to earth in the womb of the Virgin Mary and no one else even knew!  God became man and there was no visible change.  No one could see the tiny baby growing in Mary’s womb.  No one – not even a shepherd or a magi – bowed down to give him the homage he was due.

God could have chosen to come to earth in power and might, displaying his majesty for all the world to see.  And yet he didn’t.  He chose to come as a baby, first veiled in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and then born in the little town of Bethlehem.  He comes in weakness, in vulnerability.  And this same God who came hidden in the womb of Mary comes to us each and every day in the hidden, humble gift of the Eucharist.  In the Eucharist we have truly present the Body, Blood, Soul, & Divinity of our God!  He humbles himself that we might physically hold him within us!  The humility and vulnerability of our God is astounding!  And yet, so often we go before him clothed with whatever it is we feel we must cover ourselves with – our pride, acts of piety, sense of self-sufficiency.  Our God comes to us in the most vulnerable of ways and yet we refuse to be vulnerable before him.  Let us in these final weeks of Advent allow ourselves to be stripped of the clothing we hold so dear and appear before our God in humility, in poverty, in complete vulnerability that He might love us as we are!

By Sarah Houde