The Incarnation: Not for wimps

[The human being, in all ages of history,] resists the consequence of the mystery made flesh, for if this Event is true, then all aspects of life, including the sensible and the social, must revolve around it. And it is precisely man’s perception of being undermined, no longer being the measure of his own self, that places him in the position of refusal.

— Monsignor Luigi Giussani (via Magnificat Magazine)

In his book, Mother Angelica’s Little Life Lessons, Raymond Arroyo quotes the Abbess as recalling a time when she offered a gift of little books on faith to a woman who was visiting along with an old friend of the monastery. The woman refused the books saying, “if I read them I will have to change…”

I actually had a very similar conversation with someone, once – and I had to say, at least the woman was being admirably honest. She knew that if she allowed doubt to enter into her worldview, if she began to accept the idea that there was more to her life than an accident of being, she – being both honest and ethical – would have to acknowledge it, then bow to it, then change her whole trajectory in response to it. That was a scary thought, to her.

It is hard to move out of our comfort zones and let go of our own illusion (or delusion) that we have a great deal of control over things, that we are masters of our own little universes, accountable to no one and nothing. We don’t want anyone or anything getting between us and what we want, or messing up our perceptions of individual omnipotence and autonomy. And we certainly do hate the idea of having to answer to anyone, especially to One who is perfect.

So, the woman I knew could not allow “doubt” to enter into her secularist comfort zone and risk it being blown all to pieces. To accept the notion that a Creator God would do the unthinkable and actually join his Creation, in flesh, in poverty, in helplessness – not as a mighty ruler, but as a vulnerable baby – to accept only that part the Christian narrative would act as a scud missile to secularism, leaving a sizable crater of doubt.

The secularist/relativistic view has a surprising disdain for doubt. Surprising because ‘doubt’ is part and parcel of relativism. Everything is to be doubted, then, except doubt, itself. Don’t doubt secularism.

One of the wonderful things about Christianity is that Christ is patient. He also allows the questions. He even tolerates doubt, as we see in the story of Thomas, and in this great poem (also thanks to the July issue of Magnificat):

THOMAS

Here the blade was held to the flesh
Right here
and thrust
and there’s a keepsake
it cries in all the tongues of the fish
– a wound –

The face focused
forehead furled
blue light of dawn
reluctant and cold

Thomas’ index finger
miners lamp of touch
is guided from above
by the Master’s hand

so doubt is permitted
we are free to question
so Leonardo de Vinci’s
furrowed forehead
has value after all
– Zbigniew Herbert (a leader of the anti-communist movement in Poland)

Good morning!