By Stephen P. White
The history of salvation is long. It begins, as we read in Genesis, even before Creation itself. Before space and time existed, God was already preparing everything that would unfold. The ultimate culmination of that history is still unknown to us, though it has been revealed to us in part. Our own participation in the history of salvation unfolds at every moment. And although God comprehends it all from outside of time, our actions and decisions cooperate (or not) with the plan that He established before the foundation of the world.
We human creatures are not eternal beings; we have a beginning. Although our bodies are mortal, our souls are not; they have no end. Unlike God, we are changeable—mutable, in the language of theologians and philosophers—both in our mortal bodies and in our immortal souls.
From the study of physics, we learn the conservation of mass and energy, according to which all the mass and energy that have existed or will exist already exist. Carl Sagan famously observed that we are “star stuff,” which is true in a sense. But the celestial origins of our material existence do not tell the whole story. We are more than recycled fragments of the remnants of the Big Bang. Much more.
With the creation of each new soul, something completely new comes into existence. The composition of the cosmos changes in kind, not just in degree. When a new person enters existence, reality itself is altered forever. Souls are not star stuff, nor do they disappear.
And so, every day new things arise—truly new things. Irrevocable, eternal changes happen around us. New souls come into existence. Souls are indelibly marked by baptism or by holy orders. Souls are separated, for a time, from their mortal bodies. Souls are judged. And they are saved or damned.
The history of salvation, narrated in something like its fullness, is a story not only of Creation, but of God’s continuous intervention. God visits His people. He establishes covenants with them. He calls them to Himself. He corrects them and shows them mercy. He frees them from slavery. He fulfills His promises.
The central event of this long narrative of the history of salvation is, of course, the greatest Novelty of all Creation. An angel appears to Mary, and she conceives by the Holy Spirit: the Word made flesh. A child is born in Bethlehem. He grows in wisdom and grace before God and men. He is tempted. He has no sin. He preaches the coming of the Kingdom and the good news to the poor. He performs great miracles. He is betrayed, suffers, dies, descends into hell, rises, and ascends to the right hand of the Father. He sends the Holy Spirit. He feeds His people with His own body and blood. He fulfills His promises.
The magnitude of this glorious mystery is so vast that it may be difficult, if not impossible, to contemplate it all at once. The Church, in her wisdom, recalls it through the rhythms of the liturgical year. We savor one moment at a time through our successive feasts. The whole is always there, but we encounter it more often in some particular aspect: the life of a great saint, the commemoration of great moments in the life of Our Lord or the Blessed Virgin, entire seasons of penance and joy.
It is at Easter, and particularly in the Easter Vigil, that the Church directs our gaze to the broader horizon. We hear the entire history of salvation, and the full glory and meaning of the Resurrection become as clear to the mortal mind as our liturgy and praise can make it. Easter joy is cosmic, triumphant, exultant. Easter joy is all trumpets and blinding light. Easter joy is apocalyptic in the oldest sense: a revelation of what was previously hidden in the divine mind.
The joy of this time, the joy of Christmas, is of a completely different timbre. The joy of Christmas is humble, silent, less exalted and, in some way, more deeply… human. The joy of Christmas is as different from that of Easter as the smile of a sleeping baby is from the triumphal march of the King of kings.
Different and yet, in some way, the same. The Child in the manger is the same Christ who conquers death. But to contemplate Him first as a meek and vulnerable child, whose arrival is known only to Mary, Joseph, and a few shepherds, is an astonishing grace.
Christmas allows us to savor how fully human this Child-Christ is. His humanity is not a mere covering or appearance. It is His nature. Just as grace builds on nature and perfects it, the divine triumph of Easter builds on the human joy of Christmas and perfects it.
We can more fully comprehend the divinity of the risen Christ when we first come to know the humanity—our own humanity—in the sleeping child of the manger. In this sense, Christmas is not only a temporal or chronological milestone in the mystery of the Incarnation—He must be born before He can suffer and die—but a preparation for those of us who cannot comprehend it all at once.
In the dimness of the manger, under the star, our spiritual sight is allowed, so to speak, to adjust gradually. We are granted the chance to begin to see little by little. At first, we are spared the full, unbearable brilliance of that Sunday morning in spring. Gathered around the manger, the reality of what God is doing begins, literally, to dawn on us.
In this we see the generosity of our God, who not only comes to save us, but does so with the silent tenderness of a sleeping child.
What joy!
About the author
Stephen P. White is executive director of The Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America and a fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.