In Annuntiatione Beatæ Mariæ Virginis - He Dwelt Among Us

PRESENTATION: God has come to His people

If you go down to Hamilton, in the east end, you will find, right off the Red Hill Expressway, Incarnation of Our Lord Parish. If you go to the West Mountain, you will find Annunciation of Our Lord Parish. When these parishes were being built, one of the priests of our diocese asked the question quite earnestly, “What’s the difference between the Annunciation and the Incarnation?” to which another of our priests responded, “About five seconds.”

While the Incarnation of Our Lord is celebrated with much more festivity at Christmas, it is on today’s feast that Our Lord took on flesh in the womb of His Blessed Mother, which is literally what the word “incarnation” means.

The Redemptorist order has a beautiful custom of celebrating a “Little Christmas,” honouring Our Lord’s Incarnation on the 25th of every month; in the Traditional Mass, we have a reminder of Our Lord’s Incarnation every day. Each Mass ends with the Prologue to St. John’s Gospel, where we genuflect at the words, “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”

Without understanding the original languages of the Scriptures, it's easy to miss the allusion that St. John makes here. The word we translate as “dwelt” is ἐσκήνωσεν (eskēnōsen), which comes from the root word σκηνη (skēnē), meaning tent.

What tent? St. John is referring to the tent of meeting or tabernacle that housed the Ark of the Covenant from Mount Sinai until the construction of the Temple by King Solomon. St. Luke, in the Gospel for today’s Mass, makes a similar allusion when he uses the word “overshadow” to describe the action of the Holy Ghost in the Incarnation, a reference to the Divine Presence that would come upon the Tabernacle in the form of a cloud, “overshadowing” the tent.

What was once a temporary and transient thing, the presence of God in the cloud overshadowing the Tabernacle, is now something more, something greater, something that man could have never hoped or dreamed of; God now dwells in His fullness in bodily form. God has come to His people to set them free.

EXPLANATION - The Young King

There is a story of a young king in olden days who truly cared about his people, and was grieved to know how much they suffered from hunger and cold and pestilence. He did what he could by gifts of clothes and food, but his own resources were scanty, and the people were often too ignorant to do the best for themselves. When the king tried to teach them better ways of farming and building, the people made little response. ‘It is no good telling the King our troubles,’ they would say. ‘He could never understand what it is to work or to be hungry and cold.’

The young king felt discouraged and went to a wise old minister and asked his advice.

‘How can I win the confidence of my people?’ he said. ‘I want to show them how to put an end to some of their misfortunes, and help them to bear the others with courage. They do not know their king cares about them—tell me how I can make them understand.’

‘There would be only one way, I think, Your Majesty.’

‘Tell me, for God’s sake.’

‘If Your Majesty could go and live amongst them, not as king, but as one of themselves...’

That night a poorly-clad man left the palace; no one recognized the King, and no one knew his secret but the old minister and two or three trusted servants. It was given out that the King had gone on a foreign journey. For months he lived in a poor hut, and lived and ate and worked as a peasant, tended the sick and helped the workers. His fellows soon got to love him and came to him for help and advice, and were very sorry when he said goodbye to them.

When he reappeared at the palace and once more went amongst the people in royal fashion, he was soon recognized by those who had known him as a labourer. The story spread, and thenceforward his people loved and trusted him because he had shown that he loved and cared for them.

The great mystery of Our Lord’s Incarnation shows us clearly that God was not satisfied with a temporary and transient presence among His people; no, He desired to live amongst them, to share their lives, to experience their hardships, so that we would truly know the depth of His love for us.

IMPLICATION: Why does the Incarnation matter?

Why does this doctrine matter so much? Simply put, without the Incarnation, the human race would still remain in sin and, therefore, be separated from God. It is because of the Incarnation that salvation comes to us through Christ’s Cross and Resurrection, but it also opens the way to an even greater inheritance.

This greater inheritance begins with eternal life. That became possible because, by taking our humanity to the cross, Jesus crucified to death the old humanity, conquering sin and death through death. This victory is completed in His Resurrection, where He is raised from the dead, no longer subject to corruption or death, with a body definitively glorified. His Resurrection is the first fruits, a sign and basis for the hope that we will be raised from the dead in glorified bodies. None of this is possible unless Our Lord took on not just a similar humanity, but also took on our very humanity. That is why St. Paul says, “For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be brought to life” (1 Cor 15:22). This is the promise that because Christ has raised humanity to life in his body, so we — members of his body by baptism — are promised the inheritance of the Resurrection.

The Incarnation, however, effects an even greater inheritance. The early Church Father St. Athanasius enunciates it in his famous phrase: “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” This is known in the Church as the doctrine of divinization: that the Incarnation effects not just a restoration of our relationship with God, but that because God took on our humanity, it has been raised to a greater dignity than before. The fact of the Incarnation now lifts our human nature to greater heights than it ever hoped for. As St. Paul says, “You received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’” (Rom 8:15).

Because God has become man, man has been lifted up into the very life of God. This all happens in Christ and is made possible through his body, the Church. At Baptism, we are grafted to the Body of Christ. Thus where Christ is, there we are also. We, by baptism, are lifted into the very life of God, into the very heart of the Trinity! We cry out to God our Father, enabled to do so in Christ and by the power of the Holy Ghost. That same Spirit animates Christ’s body here on Earth: the Church. It is in the Church that we participate in Christ’s relationship with the Father: we cannot have Christ without his Church, for it is his Church that makes us members of his body. It is in the Church that — through the liturgy and Sacraments — we participate in the very life of the Trinity.

Why does the Incarnation matter? Because by it, our humanity is lifted into the very life of God, we are lifted higher than the angels, and given a dignity greater than in the first creation. Because of the Incarnation, we are made close to God because we are made his sons and daughters through the Son.