«A BODY YOU HAVE GIVEN ME»

Looking at the Incarnation,
We see that Temporality is the space,
where we find the materials to construct the eternal.

S. Palumbieri

We have now reached the eve of Christmas, a historical event that “divided time into a before and an after”, as the writer from Varese, Pietro Chiara, liked to say. That event was awaited by the fathers, announced by angels, recognized by shepherds, adored by the Magi. That event was also a reason for fear on the part of Herod; it caused anxiety for the powerful of Jerusalem. Even today, the Incarnation creates different reactions, from the acceptance of faith to large shadows made of indifference and superficiality. On a less pessimistic note, but also tinged with realism, a text of early Egyptian Christianity, the Gospel of Thomas, makes Christ, who came to bring the new wine of truth and love, say: “I entered the world and revealed myself to them. I found them all drunk, none of them was thirsty… they were all drunk with emptiness”.
It is the drama of a humanity drunk with nothingness. But if so many yesterday and today have read, interpreted, contested and even mocked the event of the Incarnation, how did Jesus himself understand the mystery of his becoming man? How did he welcome, inhabit and live his humanity that has its most expressive sign in the body? Today’s second reading enlightens us, a text taken from the Letter to the Hebrews, of great theological depth and from which we will extract three threads that complement each other and answer our questions. In the space of five verses, the term “body” appears twice. The body, as we know, expresses our identity and therefore our vocation; our uniqueness is also engraved in the body. The body unites us with others and personalizes us; living the human condition therefore means living our own bodiliness. But let us note the beginning of the text: «When Christ entered the world he said: “You did not want sacrifice or offering, but you prepared a body for me”». Jesus welcomes his humanity as a gift from God; a gift that is a bond with the Father and of which the body is the living memory. Jesus receives himself from the Father, he knows he depends on Him, and is grateful for it. The body he assumed therefore becomes a sign of gratuitousness and an expression of gratitude. But that is not all; in his body, in his humanity, Jesus has grasped the “you” of the Father: «You did not want sacrifice or offering, but you have prepared a body for me». What does it mean? That the body, one’s humanity, does not obscure God but manifests him; in faith, the body is the sacrament of God’s presence. From the body as a gift, we move to the body as a place of the gift: this is our second thread. A gift that has sanctified us, because such is the strength of the self-communication of love. The existential parable of Jesus is all characterized by the gift, from his Incarnation to his farewell from this world. On the evening of the Last Supper he will in fact say to his disciples: “Take, eat: this is my body” (Mt 26:26). Our body is therefore engraved with our call to exist for others.
As a third thread, Jesus also welcomed his body as a mandate: “Behold, I come to do your will, O God.” Yes, the body is also a task to be accomplished. Therefore, we can say that for Jesus, doing the will of God was no different from taking on his own body, his very concrete humanity. And that is why he knew how to take care of the human that was in him and the human that he met. How else can we explain his attention to the sick, the suffering and sinners?
We celebrate Christmas because we believe that this world can become more human. God became flesh, let us not forget, so that we would stop wanting to always be like God, dominated by the unstoppable impulse to want to be divinities. Let us rather immerse ourselves in our humanity; only those who are reconciled with the humus ascend to heaven, to the one who is real.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey