HE’S “WILLING” TO APPEAR

“Today the Virgin comes to the cave / to give birth to the Eternal Word. / Hear the glad tidings and rejoice, O universe! / Glorify with the angels and the shepherds / the Eternal God, who is willing to appear as a little child!” (Kontakion-hymn, Forefeast of Nativity)

The “Eternal God” is “willing to appear as a little child.” He enters into our history, with all its changeability, and as one of us, with all our vulnerability to the phenomenon called “change,” to which He had not been exposed in His unchanging Being as the eternal Word of God. This is a mind-blowing fact of world history. Now, in Bethlehem, He “suits up and shows up” to us, into the messiness of our “time.”

Today my ever-changing world, overshadowed by the meaninglessness of post-modern existence, is enlightened by Him, Who shows me the Way through change. It is His Way, of walking through all of this; “trampling death” not by evasion or denial, but “by death,” – by walking through it, day by day, doing the next right thing, in communion with Him. “Save us, O Son of God, born of the Virgin, as we sing to You: Alleluia!”