Newsletter - January 2006

GOD?S FOOLISH LOVE

The Christmas Season turns towards the end, and the new year has just started. During these days we have celebrated the Incarnation of Christ: the great mystery of God who takes on our flesh and becomes man, without losing his divinity.

God has been always with men. He was prophesied "Immanuel", God with us.  However, with the great mystery of Incarnation, Jesus wanted to remain with us always, mystically but truly. We may say that the Incarnation continues, and in a singular manner, in the Sacrament of Eucharist.

The Incarnation reveals the great love that God has for mankind: "God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son?" (Jn 3: 16). Jesus came and revealed that God is Father, that is, love, for, in the Bible, the figure of a father is the highest meaning of love.  A father transmits life to his son, he gives his name, everything he possesses, even his life. Jesus wanted us to understand that we are really children of God, that we belong to his love.

The real love is always foolish.  Even a human being, when in love, often acts beyond a logical behaviour. We say, then, that love is blind.  The Incarnation is a "foolish" act of love: it was unexpected, a surprise that still fills us with wonder and awe.  Jesus during his life shows this kind of love without interruption and with everybody. When we read that he loved to the end (cf. Jn 13: 1), it means  that he loved without limits and limitations.

It is difficult for our intelligence to understand this kind of love. That's is why it is called "foolish", a connotation, which is human, coming from people who reserved their love only to a person, or to a few persons, or to friends, or to those who are generous with them and from whom they expect something in exchange.  And those who understand Jesus' "foolish" love and follow him in that way, are called fanatics.

Such fanatics were St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross? In our days, fanatic was Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, and all those everywhere in the world who, forgetting themselves, dedicate their lives to the poor.  They love to the end, as Jesus did.

Fanatics are those who are totally absorbed in God, so that they find in Him, and only in Him the reason for their living.

HE TOOK THE NATURE OF A SERVANT

Lowliness is assured by majesty, weakness by power, mortality by eternity.  To pay the debt of our sinful state, a nature that is incapable of suffering was joined to one that could suffer?

He took the nature of a servant without stain of sin, enlarging our humanity without diminishing his divinity.  He emptied himself; though invisible he made himself visible; though Creator and Lord of all things he chose to be one of us mortal men. Yet this was the condescension of compassion, not the loss of omnipotence. So, he who in the nature of God had created man, became in the nature of a servant, man himself.

Thus the Son of God enters this lowly world. He comes down from the throne of heaven, yet does not separate himself from the Father?s glory. He is born in a new condition, by a new birth.  He was born in a new condition, for, invisible in his own nature, he became visible in ours. Beyond our grasp, he chose to come within our grasp. Existing before time began, he began to exist at a moment in time.  Lord of the universe, he hid his infinite glory, and took the nature of a servant. Incapable of suffering as God, he did not refuse to be a man, capable of suffering. Immortal, he chose to be subject to the laws of death.

He who is true God is also true man. There is no falsehood in this unity, as long as the lowliness of man and the pre-eminence of God coexist in mutual relationship?  One nature is resplendent with miracles, the other falls victim of injuries. As the Word does not lose equality with the Father?s glory, so the flesh does not leave behind the nature of our race.

One and the same person - this must be said over and over again - is truly the Son of God and truly the son of man. He is God in virtue of the fact that ?in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God?. He is man in virtue of the fact that ?the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.?

(From a letter by Pope St. Leo the Great,)

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