Solomon tells us that “a happy heart is good medicine and a cheerful mind works healing” (Proverbs 17:22, AMP ). God undoubtedly has a sense of humor; we need only look at some of the animals He created (it’s hard not to smile at the sight of a hippo, a monkey, or a puppy). Or think of some of the married couples you know: don’t you think God was smiling at the wedding as He looked ahead to the interaction of the wildly different personalities that will be living together?
I’ve finished reading the first sermon in Ratzinger’s God Is Near Us, and it’s filled with powerful ideas and statements. This sermon is titled “God with Us and God among Us,” and for it Ratzinger takes as his starting point this sentence from the Nicene Creed:
By the power of the Holy Spirit He was born of the Vigin Mary, and became Man.”
Growing up as I did in the Churches of Christ, I’m not very familiar with the Nicene Creed, and I had to find it online. Ratzinger argues that this statement is the center of the Creed and, by extension, of the gospel message. He delivered this at the start of a Marian conference, and so part of his focus is on the role of Mary in the Incarnation; Marian theology aside, though, he continually reinforces the idea that the gospel, that Christianity, is a highly personal, deeply human faith: “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” At the end of his message, he quotes Gianfranco Ravasi, “the Christian message is not a collection of abstract propositions about God but is God’s encounter with our world, with the reality of our homes and our lives.”
Other things to ponder: commenting on the statement from the Creed, Ratzinger states,
But the dramatic feature of this sentence is that it does not assert some eternal truth about the being of God; rather, it expresses an action, which on closer inspection, turns out to be in the passive voice, something that happened to Him.”
Father, I thank you for the revelation and the reminder that Jesus, the Word, the Son of the Living God, very God of very God, came in the flesh — was born of a virgin. This truly is gospel, good news. Father, I ask — Holy Spirit, I invite — You to make this revelation more profound, more real to me.
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