In the Footsteps of St. Louis Marie de Montfort
"Footsteps Online"
Spring 2002 (Volume 7, Issue 1)
The Feast of the Annunciation
(25 March)
Understanding the Incarnation
The mystery of the Incarnation is called by St. Louis Marie "the mystery proper to this devotion", and he places the celebration of the Feast of the Incarnation among the external practices of the devotion of "Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary".
In Luke Chapter 1.26 35, we read:
"The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. He went in and said to her, 'Rejoice, so highly favoured! The Lord is with you'. She was deeply disturbed by these words and asked herself what this greeting could mean, but the angel said to her, 'Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God's favour. Listen! You are to conceive and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David; he will rule over the House of Jacob forever and his reign will have no end'. Mary said to the angel, 'But how can this come about, since I am a virgin?' 'The power of the Holy Spirit will come upon you', the angel answered, 'and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God. Know this too, your kinswoman, Elizabeth, has, in her old age, herself conceived a son, and she whom people called barren is now in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible to God'. 'I am the handmaid of the Lord', said Mary, 'let what you have said be done to me'. And the angel left her."
Our redemption is founded on Mary's "Yes" and on the Incarnation, which leads to and culminates in the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ. In other words, light has come into darkness and through our baptism, we become the light of Christ, we begin to glow. The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity invades sin and takes on our sinfulness. He came to eradicate sin.
Can I tell a piece of paper to communicate with me? No. Can I write on a piece of paper and so communicate to others? Yes. In other words, I put pen to paper and give the input. I can write or draw and do many things on a piece of paper in order to pass on information to others.
This is basically what God did and still does. The world is that piece of paper, so to speak, which God writes on. Therefore, God externalises Himself into the world of sin.
Before the Incarnation, God made various covenants (agreements) with man in the Old Testament. Various? Yes, because man, i.e. the Jews, kept breaking the agreements God made with them, and so new agreements had to be made or renewed. God is always faithful it is humanity that is constantly unfaithful to God.
The Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, had a "committee meeting", so to speak, and decided to send God the Son down here on this earth. He came to make the final covenant, the final agreement. God will not come again till the end of time.
Where does God externalise Himself? As there was nowhere holy enough on this earth for the Son to reside, God decided the only way was to create a creature, who was free from all stain of sin, to house the Son of God. So, Mary became the Holy of Holies, the personal "Villa" of God. Once Mary had said "Yes" to God's invitation, delivered by the angel Gabriel, the Son of God became man in her womb. The Son of God took on our human nature. In other words, the Incarnation is the Divinisation of our human nature. Therefore, people must have the potential of being God like, because of the Incarnation. God the Father gives us the capacity of being fully alive and brought to total fulfilment in Him. To be divinised is not to become God, that would be destruction. It means to be filled by God to our capacity, and we are all at different levels.
In becoming man, God brings us into the realm of Mystery, not just the Mystery of the Incarnation, but also, the Mystery of the Hypostatic Union (two words which are hardly used today, but they are very important words) they mean the union of the two natures in Jesus Christ, the nature of God and the nature of man, making the one person of Jesus Christ. This union makes Christ the perfect human being very, loveable, compassionate, understanding etc., and He is also hurt by our lack of love.
Therefore, Christ, our Blessed Lord, came to improve, to bring to perfection our human nature. He said, "I have come that you may have life and have it to the full" (John 10.10). God comes into our broken ness. We are redeemed by the cry of love from the cross, not by the nails of the crucifixion. (John 3.16. "God loved the world so much that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not die but have eternal life"). Our Blessed Lord accepts who He is. He wills who He is. He personalises Himself as the Son of God in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. God the Father sent His Son to reveal Himself Christ is the Word of God, the extension of the Father's voice. That ACT of revealing Himself is found in the Incarnation, in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And so, from the Incarnation flow all the Mysteries of Christ, the sacraments, the Church etc.
So, if we have the potential of becoming God like, because of the Incarnation, why is it that some of us rarely reach our potential? Maybe it is because we are not following the example of Christ, the Master, who emptied Himself to take on the condition of a slave, and became humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a Cross. We have to become nothing. We have to empty ourselves, like He did, in order to be open to God, to do the Will of God, the Will of the Father, and not our own will. The potential to become God like is contained in our humble human nature. But we have to let go of our FREE WILL etc and EMPTY ourselves in order to be filled by God. Before God, we then become base, and in this way we are able to be divinised filled with His love. Anything that does not lead us to God drop it, get rid of it. We must learn to see things in the light of Christ. God cannot fill us with Himself, if we are already full of the world and its values. To help us to do this, we have the means, but again perhaps we do not like the words or their meaning, namely, Mortification and Penance. If we are sincere in our quest to be filled by God with Himself, then we must take the means.
We are, to use a technical word, in Concursus Divinus, in God's permanent and constant creation He holds us in being and so WITHOUT GOD we will cease to exist. Therefore, our lives are God's gift to us, and so we offer ourselves back to God. If we empty ourselves, to be filled by God, we will become better gifts to offer to God. St. John 15.5. "Cut off from me, you can do nothing".
This emptying of oneself leads ultimately to resting or reposing in God. It leads to meditation and adoration, because we become aware of our nothingness before Him, and that leads us to realise that the Son of God reposes eternally in the Father and reposes in time in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Incarnation.
(Fr.Bob Ellwood, s.m.m.)
