Florida Catholic | Bishop Barbarito's Column

A Complex and Elegant Simplicity

December 21, 2007

As we celebrate the simplicity of the complex elegance of the Lord’s birth, may his presence fill us all with the strength of faith, the assurance of hope and the ardor of love.
A Blessed Christmas to all!

Christmas is a time associated with gifts. This is because God has given us the greatest gift — that of his Son who became one of us and was born of the Virgin Mary. This gift of God, and all that it embodies, is at the heart of all gifts and why we celebrate this holy season.

Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, has given us a wonderful gift this year that truly touches on the basis of all gifts. It is his second encyclical, which is on the virtue of hope, titled “Spe Salvi” (“Saved by Hope”). The encyclical, like the pope’s first, “God is Love,” is a masterpiece which not only contains the church’s teaching, but new insights that are woven into a profound but practical document. The New York Times’ article, reporting in a positive fashion on the encyclical, referred to it as “complex and elegant.” That phrase sums up well not only the encyclical, but the Gospel message and, indeed, the wonderful mystery of the gift we celebrate at Christmas.

The birth of Christ is an event that is most simple but, at the same time, complex and elegant. It may be beneficial to use some of the message of the Holy Father’s encyclical to reflect upon the feast of Christmas. One of the elegant complexities of Pope Benedict’s letter is that it fuses the three virtues of faith, hope and love into one explosion of light that illuminates, like the star of Bethlehem, the meaning of the birth of the Lord.

The pope speaks of hope and faith in a manner that makes them interchangeable. He cites a number of scriptural references that back up his insight so that there is no question that he is also reflecting on the gift of faith. Many new insights of his first encyclical, “God Is Love,” are present in his exposition of hope so that we truly have a trilogy of faith, hope and love.

On Christmas, as we gaze upon the manger surrounded by angels, stars, shepherds, sheep and other animals, we have a complex but elegant picture of God’s greatest gift to us. In the center of the manger rests the Word made flesh, focusing the radiant light of all of the wonders present at his birth, but most especially, the Virgin Mary and Joseph. Indeed, in Jesus, Mary and Joseph we have the prototype of faith, hope and love before us. They give us reason not only to desire to receive the gifts of faith, hope and love, but to share them with others. No other gifts can be compared to these.

Mary is a model of faith. She believed that God was the center of her life and that his will for her was the source of her joy. She trusted that God would bring about the plan he had placed before her even though she did not understand it and even though she was told it would bring her suffering.

In his new encyclical, the Holy Father speaks of a form of devotion, once very popular, that perhaps needs to be revived. It is the practice of “offering up” the daily hardships, great and small, that confront us all. Mary, more than anyone, practiced this devotion in faith. She saw the star, the angels and the splendor of that first Christmas but she, above all, saw the lowliness of God who was born as her Son. With her Son, she would joyfully offer up in faith all that came to her. She was at the wood of the manger and would be at the wood of the cross. Her faith would sustain her through all. Like Mary, faith sustains us through all. It is not, as the Holy Father points out in his encyclical, a faith in science, technology or politics, good as these may be, but in God who is the root and foundation of life. It is faith in a God who gave his life that we might have life.

Joseph represents the gift of hope. The Holy Father explains that hope is the distinguishable mark of faith, because one who believes knows that there is a future. One’s life will not end in emptiness, which is the greatest fear that faces us and is so prevalent in our world today. Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live in the present. Joseph, more than anyone, lived in this fashion of hope. Not understanding why Mary was with child, he took her as his wife because of the promise made by God. He hoped for a place to stay on the first Christmas and hoped in the child born of his virgin wife.

The angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and it is in dreams where hope is born. We need hope. We need to know that we have a future in God. We need to know that tomorrow will be better than today. We need to believe in eternal life which, our Holy Father tells us, “is not an unending succession of days on a calendar, but the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality. … It would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love.” Joseph stands as a model of this hope.

This “plunging into the ocean of infinite love” brings us to the center of the Christmas scene — the complex and elegant baby who is divine and human, Christ the Lord. As the Holy Father tells us in his first encyclical, he is love. Love culminates faith and hope for, as St. Paul tells us, “There are three things that last forever; faith, hope and love and the greatest of the three is love” (1 Cor 13:13). The baby Jesus not only is a model of love, he is love.

The pope points out in his new encyclical that “the human being needs unconditional love.” We need to know that no matter who we are, what we do, what our talents are, what our sins and faults are, we are loved unconditionally. We need the assurance of a love that will never betray us, of a love that goes beyond this life and of a love that will always forgive us. All other loves are beautiful, but only reflective mirrors of this unconditional love who is God by whom we were made and for whom we were made. He is in the manger of Bethlehem, as a helpless child, and he is on the cross out of love for us. He is gazed upon by Mary (faith) and Joseph (hope) as the elegant complexity of God, who creates and redeems us in love. This is the great gift and message of Christmas.

We have been given great gifts in faith, hope and love through God born among us and who became one of us at Christmas. Let us, like children, unwrap enthusiastically again these gifts as the most important of our lives. As we receive the joy they bring us, let us share them with each other, our families, our friends, those we do not know and even our enemies. These gifts are not found in the bargains of the stores that opened at 4 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning. They are found only in God — the meaning of Christmas.

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