I'm sitting at my desk, preparing for our Bible/catechism study tomorrow night, and I ran across this passage that just stopped me in my tracks. It is taken from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday:
Today a great silence reigns on earth, a great silence and a great stillness. A great silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began... He has gone to search for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow Adam in his bonds and Eve, captive with him -- He who is both their God and the son of Eve... "I am your God, who for your sake have become your son... I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead."
Too often the Gospel message becomes old hat for me, but there are times... there are times when the Incarnation just takes my breath away.
God became man.
Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, has a human body and a human soul.
Does that not just blow your mind?
Sometimes I let myself truly meditate on that fact... focus on all the little things that make up our daily existence, such as the feeling just before you sneeze, or tucking your hair behind your ear so that you can see better, or rubbing your eyes because you're tired and your eyes are starting to itch.
Goofy little things that make up our daily lives.
Jesus experienced all of it. He knows what that feels like.
The Son of God, for Whom and through Whom all things exist, sat in a dinky neighborhood classroom on hot afternoons listening to His teacher drone on while flies buzzed lazily around them.
The Creator of the Universe clapped with joy as He ran out with the other kids to catch lightning bugs in the evening.
He who called galaxies into being was once a toddler who woke up crying for His mom in the middle of the night because He was startled awake by a thunderstorm.
I cannot begin to fathom how big God is, or just how small He had to make Himself to become one of us, but the implications are staggering. He not only restored humanity, but gave us an even greater honor and dignity than before, because He shares our humanness.
Praise the Lord.
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