Thy Nativity, O Christ our God, hath shined the light of knowledge upon the world; for thereby they that worshipped the stars were instructed by a star to worship Thee, the Sun of Righteousness, and to know Thee, the Dayspring from on high. O Lord, glory be to Thee.
God’s Christmas “hath shined the light of knowledge upon the world.” This is wonderful.
God does. God acts. God comes down to Earth and becomes a man and this action shines the light of knowledge on the world. God reveals by divine action.
As a teacher, I might turn God into a divine pedagogue, explaining to us what we could not understand without divine help.
Maybe.
A wiser, more Scriptural, more historical image is God shining the light of knowledge. If God taught, God taught by ending darkness and revealing what is. We cannot see God as God, but in the person of Jesus we have God revealed to us. There God is!
This revelation, this showing, this holy light in our souls, is progressive. We see and understand more over time, but this is not because the Truth has changed. The Truth was, is, and always will be there. God is not changing, adjusting, wondering what to do.Instead, we choose to see or to close our eyes and not see. When we choose to see, our limited minds and feeble ability to experience slowly (all too slowly!) grasps some of what there is to see.
Even those truths we see, grasp so well that those with better vision could formalize what is there in creeds are just a start. Nothing will contradict what has been seen, but the implications continue to unfold over time. What does it mean to see God?
The better we see Jesus, the more we see the image of God in other people, the world, even in self. This image obviously is just an image, so old temptations to idolatry fade away. We can honor, even venerate so much in art, nature, each other safely, because the Christ puts all in proper order.
Often when I read a very hard text or consider some difficult problem, there is a flash, and then I see! I get it. Often this occurs because something out there triggers an insight in my mind. Once I was in class with a very great teacher and he was pausing over a passage. I looked up and saw demonstrated in him what the text was discussing. He made flesh the proposition in the passage. This shed a light and so I thought: “Oh. Now I get it.”
Christmas is the great “Oh. Now I get it.”
God became man at Christmas time and so at any time we can turn and see. He lives in my heart, in the life of the Church, in the pages of Sacred Scripture. He is revealed everywhere now in all that is good, true, and beautiful: all pointing to Christ, but not Christ.
Knowledge joyfully considered leads to wisdom and virtue: Christ born in us.
Glorify Him!
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