Spiritual things are fascinating when you decide to pay attention to them. You then begin to gently train your mind to notice and value new realities related to human lives.
To walk the road of life not knowing where it leads to is mere blindness. The Holy Scriptures tell us that God created Adam (Hebrew for man). But, we know what Adam did. Seduced by the devil, Adam wanted to become like God, but without God.
God had commanded Adam saying of every tree of paradise thou shall eat, but of the tree of knowledge and good and evil thou shalt not eat, for what ever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death. By exercising his free will, the option they chose led them into sin.
By disobeying God’s command, and eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve lost their inner sanctifying grace. Spiritually Adam and his descendants became dead.
When we see ourselves as members of God’s family, we begin to understand that sin is primarily a broken relationship, and a broken home, not just broken rules.
How did God respond to the temptation and the fall? God saw that Adam and all humanity was trapped in a cage of guilt and sin. Humanity was doing badly.
As our loving Father, he responded in the most loving way. Even though Adam had broken the covenant, God still chose to walk with man. God’s expression of redeeming a fallen humanity was His Son, Jesus, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity. To the serpent he said, ”Because you have done this, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed, She shall crush thy head, and thou shall lie in wait for her heel. (Gen.3:14-15).
God willed to take on his human nature through a virgin who would also be sinless, in order to safeguard the sinlessness of his human nature.
Strictly, it was necessary that the good Lord be outside of the current of human sin in order to be a saviour.
For an adequate payment of debt, the incarnation of a divine person was necessary because the person offended is divine.
Therefore, only one who is infinite divine could pay an infinite debt; and only who is at the same time human could pay it in such a way that it would profit the human race.
In Leviticus 21:8, we read: “I, the Lord who sanctifies you, Am holy”. Hence the dwelling place of the good Lord,Jesus should be equally holy. It becomes necessary for Mary to be enriched with the requisite gifts appropriate to the role of becoming the Saviour’s Mother.
The fulfillment of God’s promise to send a saviour and a woman, began to unfold at the Annunciation. It was to a young Jewish maid, in Nazareth whose name is Mary, the birth of the Son of God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, was announced. Heavenly angel Gabriel (God’s messenger) appeared to her with the salutation, “hail Mary, full of grace. Mary is preserved from sin from the moment she was conceived in her mother’s womb, and not redeemed): thou has found favour with God. This was not only a greeting but also a gift.
The angel sought Mary’s free consent to become the Mother of God (Luk:1;29-31).
Mary said to the angel “How can this be? I have not known a man. The angel answered “the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the most high shall overshadow thee, and the holy One to be born, he shall be called Jesus, meaning the Saviour.
Mary is a woman of faith. She had the courage to live the big dream – God’s dream. She made room for God in her heart and answered: “Be it done unto me, according to thy word.”
Heaven itself waited for this obedience, and at this moment Mary became the Mother of Christ the new Adam.
The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second Man Jesus, is from heaven who gives us a new horizon and a decisive direction to journey towards the divine.
The Incarnation broke the wall between time and eternity. God’s promise to send us a Saviour was not just an idea. It came to us as a person and an event.
Israel was awaiting the Messiah; Mary bore within her the fulfillment of this expectation for the benefit of the whole of the human race.
Baby Jesus with open arms lying in the Manger came down from heaven to embrace our humanity with his saving love. This then is Christmas… a good reason to rejoice and be glad.