COMMENTARY ON THE LITURGY OF THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS
Collect
Almighty God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace. may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit ever, one God, world without end. Amen.
Readings
Gal 4.1-7; Mt 1: 18-25
Comment
The theme of adoption by grace - recalled in the Collect of the liturgy of the day and in Paul's Letter to the Galatians - forces us to radically review our image of God. The revelation of the Trinitarian God and of the dynamics that animate his life, internal and external, it is given to us above all in the mystery of the Incarnation. God is revealed to us as Father, therefore not as an entity closed in on itself, sterile and self-referential, but capable of eternally generating another from himself, the Son, and pouring out his own love on him. The Son gives back to the Father this love, which is the Holy Spirit, in a dynamic that is like that of a perennial source, capable of feeding its own flow, without end or beginning.
But the mystery of adoption as children, through the Incarnation of the Word, offers us a further revelation. The ability of the Trinitarian God to pour out his life even outside of himself. By fully assuming and sharing our human nature, the Son makes us one with himself. The descending and dispossessing process that begins with the Incarnation of the Word and reaches God's renaunciation of himself in the passion and death of Christ, has a parallel in the progressive ascent of human nature, at the moment in which God decides to assume it on of himself, to raise it.
The incarnation of the eternal Son is the decisive step with which God freely offers us the possibility of being inserted into his Trinitarian life. It is the sign of God's fidelity to his creature, which allows us to recover not only the lost Paradise, but to share the same divine life, to obtain what our ancestors desired and that the deceit tempter proposed to him as something that God would not have granted us: "God knows that on the day you eat it, your eyes will open, and you will be like God (...) Then the eyes of both were opened and they realized they were naked" (Gn 3:5-7).
Communion with Christ not only restores the original divine image in us, but makes us heirs of God; so that when the Father looks at us, he does not see us, he does not see me, he does not see you... but he sees his Son in us, he loves us as his beloved Son. And when we pray addressing the Father, we pray with the same voice as the Son of God, through the Holy Spirit, whom he has poured out abundantly upon us.
Made children in the Son, God can really see us with the eyes of a Father. We are no longer orphans in a foreign land, but we are called to reign with Christ, in whom the Father tells us: "you are my son, today I have begotten you" (Ps 2:7) and "all mine is yours" ( Lk 15:31).
- Rev. Dr. Luca Vona
