Christmas is the great good news of the grace of the arrival of the Messiah of the Jewish people and the Savior of all people, for which all Jews and Christians and peoples should rejoice in exalting gratitude. He comes to us not as the warrior leader of hosts but rather as a baby, whose name is Joshua, Yeshua, Jesus. All that His presence asks and will ever ask from us is basic humanness, to love Him and other people as He always loves us, regardless of whether the events of life place Him or others in a manger or on a cross.
However, it all begins by loving the little baby looking up at humanity from the manger—for in that happy human face, loving gaze and ineffable smile is the truth that God is with us in love. The holiness, gentleness and love that shine in that baby’s face and from every baby’s face originates in the indestructible image and likeness of God, which is the uncreated essence of the Baby Jesus from all eternity and is the created essence of each baby who enters time destined for eternity.
There is a story of a man who always wept in sorrow when he held a new born baby. He wept because he could “see” how the suffering that evil would inflict on this baby during life would disfigure his or her face and mind and heart. Yet, he was at peace and grateful for this baby’s coming into being, because he knew that the little baby he held in his arms, radiating transcendent innocence and love, indeed magnifying an inexpressible sense of gentle, peaceful, unnviolent holiness with his or her smile, would, despite all that may befall him or her, always be essentially as he or she was at that moment of his or her creation, because that is the how the Creator essentially made him or her to be.
Over time the vicissitudes of existence will blur, maybe even remove from sight completely, the glory of what God brought into existence from nothingness and made in His own eternal image and likeness. But nothing can destroy the person God has chosen from all eternity to create in His own indestructible image and likeness and to love in time and for all eternity. Evil can immediately murder or can gradually corrupt or can eventually crucify this baby, but it cannot separate any person conceived and created in the image and likeness of God by God from the love of God. which is made visible in the baby Jesus, the infant Messiah, the Word of God made flesh, the glory of God, the Father of all—and which by the grace, that is, the Self-Communication of God, shines forth in the face of every baby with his or her every smile.
Grace works through nature. The grace of a star can communicate that God exists and possesses unimaginable intelligence and power. But the grace of a baby’s smile communicates God is love and loves you as His own son or daughter.
Christ is born! Be alert, for the grace of His smile.
-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
December 25, AD 2023
The post Christ is Born! Be Alert, for the Grace of His Smile. appeared first on LewRockwell.