For Advent this year, a colleague bought me Bishop Barron’s “The Word Became Flesh” devotional to use throughout the four weeks. The book is a collection of Scripture and reflections from the Bishop, as well as poems and reflections from other spiritual authors. On Gaudete Sunday, Bishop Barron’s reflection for the third Sunday of Advent analyzes the event of the Incarnation. Barron makes the distinction that the polytheistic religions of the ancient world had gods that became human, yet that usually led to destruction or conquest. Yet we as Christians have a God who became flesh not to destroy humanity, but enhance and embrace it. 

This led me to contemplate the humanity of the Incarnation in a new way. I love the passage from Philippians 2 that we read on Palm Sunday. It declares that we have a God who “emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave” (Philippians 2:7). We have a God who became flesh to teach us, to heal us, and to love us. By taking on flesh, our God gave us a specific reflection of a God that we could touch, see, and feel. Even today through the Sacraments, we as Catholics believe that we can encounter God in a tangible way. 

I wondered then: if we celebrate and believe the Incarnation to be this act of humility and embracing of humanity, why does it not feel that way to me at times in the Church? What I mean is that when I enter a Catholic Church today, I feel as if I have to dust myself off and pretty myself up even though we have a God who entered into our mess of humanity. Now I agree and understand that because at Mass our God becomes present through bread, we want to honor and hold sacred that miraculous occurrence. But we have a God that becomes present through bread. Not as the blaring of an organ or in fine robes- both of which can lead us to think about God, but are not God. Yet our God is present in the smallest, most daily, tangible, life-sustaining yet mundane thing: bread. If we celebrate Christmas as this moment where God enters into our messiness to clean up our mess of sin, why doesn’t it feel like we can touch and encounter Christ in a messy way today? 

I have a Scripture podcast that I started in 2020 and have continued with to this day. I started the podcast through an audio tool that has since added video. I, however, have chosen to stay with the audio only recordings because I am not always video ready when it comes time to record. I must admit, my guests sometimes have a hard time with this. They want their image to be seen and are frustrated when they have put effort into being seen in a more polished form only to have it be an audio recording. Our society is such a visual one, but the truth is that I don’t always feel ready to present myself outwardly to the level that I think society might be looking for. It is sad to me that I also sometimes feel that way in our Church. 

Social media most certainly is one of the reasons our society is consumed by image, but I would also submit that many priests and members of the Church are still feeling a need to overcorrect what they think was a failed unveiling of Vatican II. Vatican II set out to make our Sacraments more tangible and more like they were in the early Church. In this perceived need to reset the intentions of Vatican II, I feel like we are also ceasing to listen to the needs and desires of the people who already don’t feel worthy to attend Mass for one reason or another. The focus, for me, becomes on the garments and the gold rather than on the people in the pews who are one of the ways Christ becomes present in the Mass. According to The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the four ways that Christ becomes present in the liturgy are: “in the Eucharist broken and shared, in the person of the minister, in the Word of God, and in the assembled people of God” (CSL #7). If someone who is not Catholic walked into our Church today, what might they think the focuses of our faith are? Would they be those four things?

It is true that my own focus on appearance could be the result of my own image issues which I have written about previously, but I really feel like we forget of the dirtiness and foulness that was the first Christmas as well as our Good Friday. Our God was born in a cave with animals and died a horrific, barbaric death on a cross. Why then, do I feel like I need to dress myself up internally and externally to be worthy to enter and worship Him? Yes, it is because He did these extraordinary things without my worthiness that we should want to offer Him gold, incense, and myrrh as the magi did and put in the extra effort to honor these great truths of our faith. There are many in the world turning to Catholicism because of the mystery and awe that our art, our gold, and our ceremonial rituals bring. However, while Christ challenged us to go beyond the earthly, He still very much understood our earthliness because of the Incarnation. We raise our eyes to the heavens as He taught us while still seeing the mess around us. We should not be afraid or disgusted by our humanity because He was not. He entered into it, and I think sometimes we would rather sit in our pews in our fineries praying that God at least did not make me like the poor leper, which is the exact thing He taught and warned us against. 

The Incarnation is a miraculous, beautiful event because our God entered into our humanity. I pray that we can enter into our humanity and embrace it again as He did. Let’s make our God as tangible as our sacraments and the Incarnation teach us that He is, while still acknowledging that we are not worthy of such access, yet He made it so.