Disguised for All to See

A Christmas Reflection

I was ready to deliver the line in my talk when he walked in. Just as I was talking about how God has taken flesh and how God has a face, the door that always gets stuck got stuck and started rattling. Someone was there. Someone wanted in. And, as I delivered the line, the line about how we can encounter Jesus today with the same effect as what we read about in the lives of Peter, James, John, Andrew, Zacchaeus, Mary Magdalene, the Samaritan woman and so forth in the Gospels, that’s when he entered. “When we read the Gospels we are reading our story.” He walked down the side aisle and sat at a table in the back of the room. He dwelt among us. And ate with us. And prayed with us.

Yes, this happened about a week ago at one of the parishes for which I serve. We were having a meeting and it included a meal. A poor man heard about this and showed up in his torn jacket, hungry and worn out. We welcomed him and cared for him that night.

Only afterwards did I reflect on the timing of the whole incident. In fact, I went back and listened to the audio. Right as I was are talking about God having a face and about encountering God today, this man shows up at the door. You can hear it in the recording. It’s uncanny. One has to think about the parable of the Judgement of Nations in Matthew 25. At the end of time, the Son of Man will sit on the throne and judge everyone, separating the sheep from the goats. The sheep were the ones who gave him food and drink, clothing and shelter. The goats did not. The righteous sheep are confused by this. “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?,” they ask. Jesus replies: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”

As I reflect on this parable and consider the events of that night a week ago, I cannot help but think of Jesus and serving him in the “distressing disguise of the poor,” as Mother Teresa would always put it. That night, there was an encounter of two hungers — the man’s hunger for food and fellowship and our hunger to encounter Jesus. And so it happened right there in the church hall.

Christmas

This story provides a nice backdrop for a Christmas meditation. God’s hunger for human hearts led him to take flesh and to be born into poverty in a dank cave outside Bethlehem (which literally means “house of bread”), where he was laid in a feeding trough, the world’s first monstrance. His hunger for us was so great it led him to disguise his glory and manifest his power in the most surprising of all ways, in the helplessness of a baby. His hunger for us was so great that the God who created hunger itself became hungry and allowed us to feed him, so we might realize the dignity of our dependence and allow him to feed us — with himself.

Nobody expected the God of the universe to come in this way. Power and might and lightning and thunder, yes. Pillar of cloud and fire, yes. But disguised in a hiddenness for all to see? No way. Yet this is just what he did — and what he still does.

The Angel had said to the shepherds: “This will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Lk 2:12; cf. 2:16). God’s sign, the sign given to the shepherds and to us, is not an astonishing miracle. God’s sign is his humility. God’s sign is that he makes himself small; he becomes a child; he lets us touch him and he asks for our love. How we would prefer a different sign, an imposing, irresistible sign of God’s power and greatness! But his sign summons us to faith and love, and thus it gives us hope: this is what God is like. He has power, he is Goodness itself. He invites us to become like him. Yes indeed, we become like God if we allow ourselves to be shaped by this sign; if we ourselves learn humility and hence true greatness.

— Benedict XVI, Homily for Midnight Mass, Dec. 24, 2009