Merry Christmas to one and all!!! 
God bless my dear brothers and sisters in Christ on RF, as we mark the Festival of Our Lord's Nativity: the joyful proclamation of the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God!
I have just returned myself from watching the Vigil Mass with His Holiness Pope Francis in St. Peters Basilica.
And I wish a very joyous 'Festival of Midwinter' / 'Yuletide' to all of my secular friends also celebrating this holiday at the same time!!! To you guys I raise my seasonal 'advocaat-with-lemonade-and-lime' snowball cocktail
How to make a snowball drink Always gets me in the festive mood.
(This is the Christian DIR and what follows will be stubbornly and brain-numbingly theological. Buyer beware warning in advance. You've been warned....).
Some two millennia ago, today's gospel message proclaims that the 'Light of the World' Himself came down from the heart of God the Father into the darkness of our human existence and condition; for the purpose of restoring human beings to a state of reconciliation with God and one another ("And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger [...] Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace" (Luke 2:12-13)).
He who enjoyed perfect unity with God the Father in the divine essence, took upon himself a fragile human nature to make us - each and every one of us - 'whole' again.
"Salvation" (sozo) literally means in Greek: to be made whole and Mary named her son Jesus: "She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21)
Valentinus, an ancient Christian teacher from the second century, noted this underlying meaning of being 'saved' by God in his Gospel of Truth: "For where there is envy and strife, there is an incompleteness; but where there is unity, there is completeness. Since this incompleteness came about because mankind did not know the Father...as darkness disappears when light appears, so also incompleteness is eliminated by wholeness...By means of knowledge one will purify himself from multiplicity into unity, fire and darkness by light, death by life" (The Gospel of Truth - Translation by Barnstone and Meyer - The Nag Hammadi Library)
From the womb of this young Jewish woman, the Son of God who was illimitable and had Himself been the Father's agent of creation, became flesh in the frail and vulnerable body of a baby boy, lying in a manger - a place where animals feed - because there had been no room left in Bethlehem's inn where his mother could give birth to her firstborn son. Hay became the first bed of the One who would reveal himself as “the bread come down from heaven” (Jn 6:41).
At the epicentre of the Christmas story, the 'Nativity', is the picture of the Madonna and child - Mary and her new-born son Jesus. It is the defining image of the Christmas festival. It's all about this - a mother giving birth.
Even before a woman gives birth, the experience of pregnancy alters the very structure of her brain, according to the neuroscience. Grey matter gets much more concentrated. Activity goes up in regions that control empathy and social interaction. The flood of hormones eventually, in the long-run - even if some mothers initially experience post-natal depression - leads to immensely powerful maternal feelings of overwhelming love and fierce protectiveness.
This obsessive love can sometimes result in depression - since in the postpartum period, there is an enormous desire to take care of this frail child and the duty imposed is fairly huge. Just by staring at her new baby, the reward centres of a mother’s brain light up, scientists have found in several studies.
And that's because maternal oxytocin levels dramatically rise during pregnancy. Often dubbed the 'love hormone', oxytocin is of course the potent neurotransmitter that gives each of us that warm, fuzzy feeling for someone - it foments the social bonding between a mother and her child, the physical intimacy between sexual lovers and enduring ties between close platonic friends. Levels rise in all of us when we experience the sensation of touch: holding hands, stroking, cuddling, kissing, or having sexual intercourse or indeed a young mother tickling her baby's feet to get it to laugh.
Christmas is in many regards the feast of 'oxytocin' par excellence.
It is an incredible paradox, this mystery - this 'true myth' - of the God made man in the form of a child; of the immeasurable and infinite condescending to the level of the smallest and most finite; of the omnipotent and all-knowing Creator who is dependant upon no one for existence but Himself - manifesting His glory to the world in the image of a helpless and bawling babe in swaddling clothes, nursed in the arms of a simple peasant girl:
(continued...)
God bless my dear brothers and sisters in Christ on RF, as we mark the Festival of Our Lord's Nativity: the joyful proclamation of the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God!
I have just returned myself from watching the Vigil Mass with His Holiness Pope Francis in St. Peters Basilica.And I wish a very joyous 'Festival of Midwinter' / 'Yuletide' to all of my secular friends also celebrating this holiday at the same time!!! To you guys I raise my seasonal 'advocaat-with-lemonade-and-lime' snowball cocktail
How to make a snowball drink Always gets me in the festive mood.
(This is the Christian DIR and what follows will be stubbornly and brain-numbingly theological. Buyer beware warning in advance. You've been warned....).
The Madonna (Mary) and baby Jesus
He who enjoyed perfect unity with God the Father in the divine essence, took upon himself a fragile human nature to make us - each and every one of us - 'whole' again.
"Salvation" (sozo) literally means in Greek: to be made whole and Mary named her son Jesus: "She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21)
Valentinus, an ancient Christian teacher from the second century, noted this underlying meaning of being 'saved' by God in his Gospel of Truth: "For where there is envy and strife, there is an incompleteness; but where there is unity, there is completeness. Since this incompleteness came about because mankind did not know the Father...as darkness disappears when light appears, so also incompleteness is eliminated by wholeness...By means of knowledge one will purify himself from multiplicity into unity, fire and darkness by light, death by life" (The Gospel of Truth - Translation by Barnstone and Meyer - The Nag Hammadi Library)
From the womb of this young Jewish woman, the Son of God who was illimitable and had Himself been the Father's agent of creation, became flesh in the frail and vulnerable body of a baby boy, lying in a manger - a place where animals feed - because there had been no room left in Bethlehem's inn where his mother could give birth to her firstborn son. Hay became the first bed of the One who would reveal himself as “the bread come down from heaven” (Jn 6:41).
At the epicentre of the Christmas story, the 'Nativity', is the picture of the Madonna and child - Mary and her new-born son Jesus. It is the defining image of the Christmas festival. It's all about this - a mother giving birth.
Even before a woman gives birth, the experience of pregnancy alters the very structure of her brain, according to the neuroscience. Grey matter gets much more concentrated. Activity goes up in regions that control empathy and social interaction. The flood of hormones eventually, in the long-run - even if some mothers initially experience post-natal depression - leads to immensely powerful maternal feelings of overwhelming love and fierce protectiveness.
This obsessive love can sometimes result in depression - since in the postpartum period, there is an enormous desire to take care of this frail child and the duty imposed is fairly huge. Just by staring at her new baby, the reward centres of a mother’s brain light up, scientists have found in several studies.
And that's because maternal oxytocin levels dramatically rise during pregnancy. Often dubbed the 'love hormone', oxytocin is of course the potent neurotransmitter that gives each of us that warm, fuzzy feeling for someone - it foments the social bonding between a mother and her child, the physical intimacy between sexual lovers and enduring ties between close platonic friends. Levels rise in all of us when we experience the sensation of touch: holding hands, stroking, cuddling, kissing, or having sexual intercourse or indeed a young mother tickling her baby's feet to get it to laugh.
Christmas is in many regards the feast of 'oxytocin' par excellence.
It is an incredible paradox, this mystery - this 'true myth' - of the God made man in the form of a child; of the immeasurable and infinite condescending to the level of the smallest and most finite; of the omnipotent and all-knowing Creator who is dependant upon no one for existence but Himself - manifesting His glory to the world in the image of a helpless and bawling babe in swaddling clothes, nursed in the arms of a simple peasant girl:
"in the womb of a mother I was moulded into flesh, within the period of ten months, compacted with blood, from the seed of a man and the pleasure of marriage. And when I was born, I began to breathe the common air, and fell upon the kindred earth; my first sound was a cry, as is true of all. I was nursed with care in swaddling cloths. For no king has had a different beginning of existence; there is for all one entrance into life, and one way out." (Wisdom 7:1-6).
(continued...)
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