The word, the Word, flesh, and the Gospels: Christmas Eve

Last updated on: December 24, 2019 at 6:29 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

The word, the Word, flesh, and the Gospels: Christmas Eve 2019-12-24T18:29:22-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Tonight I will stand before the Mystery and see the True Light. That experience is real like most of the great goods in my life, ineffable.

If my words fail, tomorrow will come, the day of the Christ Mass, and on that day I will live in the light of the experience. The darkness will retreat and I will turn, God willing, toward the eternal. If the experience cannot be doubted, my experience is my experience, there exists the chance I have misunderstood what that experience means, entails, or implies.

This also is a mistake I make often about the best happenings in my life. My wife’s great gifts are hers and I get to share in them, experience them, but they are not always (or even mostly) generally for me! She has a full life. I often am privileged to bask in the glow of what she is doing for the sake of her children, her family, her community her God.

Sometimes she does direct her love to me and that is a glorious experience too.

Since I can misunderstand experiences, the Word gave us a word, the Gospel in written form. The people of God have expressed their communion with the Word in the word through liturgy crafted over centuries. The very actions of the Christ Mass will teach me, nudge me in the right directions. Even so, I can misunderstand!

And so tonight I thank God to be in a global and ancient church not cut off from the great conversation between God and man. This conversation, the work of theology, of creeds, of the seven great councils of the church, also guide my experience, but usually quietly through the rhythms of the service and in the memorized Creed.

I feel, so know, but then my knowing is confirmed by a sacred Word incarnate in a Church. All of this harmonizes beautifully at the Christ Mass: the deacon will read the ancient story and I will experience God born in me. This is not merely for me, however, for the great mass of the faithful will all find God born in them and so my small light will be part of their glorious light. True Light came from True Light and births True Light in us: Light from Light.

And of course I might be wrong, we might be wrong. There are days for dialectic, the normal time in the Church. Tonight, however, begins a holy time, a feasting time, when we lay down, for just a day, the wondering and simply look in wonder. We marvel at the synergy between our experience of God, the Gospel, the liturgy, and the Church.

My own faults, my grievous faults, dim that light to my eyes and to others. God have mercy. Tonight and for the Twelve Days to come, however, the focus, the experience, cannot be fully put out. Thank God. The darkness cannot snuff out the True Light.

Christ is born!

Glorify Him!

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