EPIPHANY OF GOD’S HUMANNESS
At the recent Christmas mass for children, I passed the statue of the baby Jesus among the children asking them to touch and feel it, then tell me their feeling about the newly born baby Jesus. One kid quickly shouted: “He is naked, he has no clothes on”. Everyone in the church had a good laugh at such innocent and honest spontaneity.
At Christmas, God revealed Himself in a total nakedness and debasement of humanity: poor, vulnerable, and dependent. We are too helpless to overcome our nature. God though by his divine nature, rich and majestic, puts on human nature to raise us up to share his divinity and glory. But the glory of God is, as St Irenaeus said, man fully alive. Fully alive as Man. Sin has degraded our humanity. God through his Incarnated Son, born to be man, restores this broken humanness in us.
The feast of Epiphany that we are celebrating this Sunday is: God revealing Himself. God chooses to reveal Himself as a human in bone and flesh to teach us how to be fully human, the humanness that we have lost in the first Fall when we broke up our relationships with God and with one another. We become less than human because of our sinfulness, and thus we become alienated from God, from one another and even from our very own self.
A few days ago, I visited Te Papa, a famous world class museum in Wellington. There is a Great War Exhibition to commemorate the centenary anniversary of the Gallipoli Campaign in which New Zealand and Australia took part in the First World War. The horror of the war of course, needless to say, is beyond telling. We humans are capable of inflicting any mass destruction on each other that we can imagine. However, we are also capable of healing and forgiving in the face of animosity. At the exit of the exhibition, I was greatly impressed by two statements made by the two leading generals of both sides at the end of the campaign. These are the two statements:
“Our soldiers have fallen far from home, fighting gallantly … and deserve that a gallant foe, such as we have found the Turkish soldiers to be, should TAKE CARE OF THEIR LAST RESTING PLACE” (A final plea written by the Anzac commander, Lieutenant General Godley to the Turkish commander.)
In his response, the Turkish commander wrote, “Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives….are now lying in the soil of a friendly country…and are in peace…. THEY HAVE BECOME OUR SONS AS WELL.” (Kemal Ataturk, commander of the Turkish Division at Gallipoli).
They were once each other’s mortal enemies in the battle ground, now their words are like shining stars of healing and forgiveness in the dark skies of hatred and destruction. It proves what humanity can be capable of.
Christmas for the secular world out there is over. No more xmas commercial sales. It is done, finished! But for us Christians, we have just barely started the Christmas season. We have the whole reason to reflect on the mystery of God made man, Immanuel God-is-with-us. May each one of us be like a shining star leading others to Christ as his Star once led the three wise men.
Fr. John Quang svd.
On the Feast of Epiphany, 2016.