CHRISTMAS GIFT

There is something perpetually moving about the Christmas story. It is the account of how God became man, and, with magnificent indifference to human preoccupations with status and accomplishments, became man in a discomfiting fashion. The girl who became his mother was unmarried, her pregnancy understandably a profound shock to the man she was betrothed to. The family into which the Son of God was born was unprepossessing; Joseph was a carpenter. And, the birth of Christ may indeed have been placed firmly in salvation history by the account of the genealogy of Christ, but it also upended the usual course of events by ending with Joseph – who was married to Mary.
At a time when the issue of consent in relations between the sexes looms very large, we should note that without the consent of Mary, the Incarnation could not have happened. She could have said “no”. She did not. But it was only with her words, “Be it done unto me according to thy word” that Christ was conceived. The salvation of man depended on a young Jewish teenager.
(Catholic Herald online)



