The Ongoing Incarnation: A Christmas Meditation

Beyond the festivities of the Christmas season and all the attendant trimmings, lies the incarnate Christ in the form of an infant. Manger scenes around the world feature static figures of the Holy Family, angels, shepherds, and Magi. Oftentimes overlooked on Christmas Day, these depictions of the Nativity remain central to the greatest story ever told and are prominent throughout the Christmas season. They represent a very active, dynamic group that is present at the very beginning of a revolutionary mission. As wonderful as welcoming a newborn into the world (especially the Messiah), there is much that is yet to come in salvation history.

The Incarnation in the Church

As children grow, we can “see” them as the adults they will become. In God’s eternal view, the Incarnation of Christ always was, is now, and always will be. While temporal time proceeds in a segmented, linear way, eternity presents everything “all at once.” The “growing pains” of the life Jesus endured on Earth, recounted in temporal time, are now extended and borne by the Body of Christ, the Church. All who are baptized are part of the Paschal Mystery and the ongoing Incarnation. The afflictions we endure “for the sake of his body” accrue along with the joys of this life according to God’s will. Saint Paul explains the actions of the mystical Body of Christ in this way:

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the divine office which was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now made manifest to his saints. (Colossians 1:24-26)

Incarnation in the Eucharist

The communion of saints, the church militant, suffering and triumphant, all contribute and participate in the eternal Paschal Mystery. With Christ as the head, the body of Christ on Earth is joined with all of the baptized who came before us, those with us now, and those who are yet to come. While nothing is lacking in the person of Christ, His body, still living and growing in temporal time, remains vigilant. The “oil lamps” of faith are kept lit as we await Christ’s return and the Eschatological Banquet in Heaven.

The fullest expression of the ongoing Incarnation of Christ here on Earth is realized in the celebration of the Eucharist. We participate in Paschal Mystery in communion with God and neighbor. We die to sin and rise in Christ. In daily life, we participate in the incarnate life of Christ by “paschal death” and “paschal transformation”. Father Ronald Rolheiser, in his book The Holy Longing, examines dying and rising in Christ this way:

We must distinguish between two kinds of death, two kinds of life, and between life and spirit. First, regarding two kinds of death: There is terminal death and there is paschal death. Terminal death is a death that ends life and ends possibilities. Paschal death, like terminal death, is real. However, paschal death is a death that, while ending one kind of life, opens the person undergoing it to receive a deeper and richer form of life.

The Ongoing Nature of the Incarnation

While we participate in the Paschal Mystery most fully at Mass, we can undergo Paschal death every time we “die” to ourselves and rise to the love of God and neighbor. The “daily bread” of life in Christ is expressed in the application of Faith, Hope, and Love as we give flesh to the outworking of discipleship. Evangelization is accomplished on Earth through the Body of Christ, as Fr. Rolheiser explains:

Finally, and of critical importance, is the question of the ongoing nature of the incarnation. The incarnation is not a thirty-three-year experiment by God in history, a one-shot, physical incursion into our lives. The incarnation began with Jesus and it has never stopped. The ascension of Jesus did not end, nor fundamentally change, the incarnation. God’s physical body is still among us. God is still present, as physical and as real today, as God was in the historical Jesus. God still has skin, human skin, and physically walks on this earth just as Jesus did. In a certain manner of speaking, it is true to say that, at the ascension, the physical body of Jesus left this earth, but the body of Christ did not. God’s incarnational presence among us continues as before.