God is that greater than which nothing can be imagined. Philosophers offer this definition as one attempt to describe God: the one greater than which nothing can be imagined.
This means that God is the perfection of all perfections. God is eternal, omnipotent, and omniscient. God is not one being among other beings; he is the ground of all possible being. God is goodness, truth, and beauty in themselves, and existence is his very essence. Think of the divine Name God gave to Moses: I AM WHO AM.
God is the designer and maker of all things, the uncreated Creator and the unmoved Mover who brought this unimaginably large and complex universe into existence by his own mind and will and who guides all the stars in their courses according to an eternal plan for bringing about an eternal and universal Kingdom of justice, love, and peace.
But the prophets of Israel knew that the true God so conceived by philosophers is not merely a disengaged designer and still less an impersonal force. No, the living and true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has revealed to us that he created the human race in his image and likeness and fashioned us to live in perfect harmony with him and with each other, world without end.
That divine plan, of course, was obscured by man’s fall from grace, but before the foundation of the world, God’s eternal plan included a perfect solution for the breaking of the world. And that solution was for the eternal and omnipotent Word of God to take flesh in the fullness of time and share our human nature so that he could redeem us from sin and death by his suffering, death, and Resurrection.
And so the Church announces to us that two thousand years ago the One greater than whom none can be imagined came among us as a helpless infant. He was then the eternal Word unable to speak, the eternal Son without a human father, the divine architect of the universe unable to use his tiny hands, the omnipotent Creator completely dependent upon his creatures for his very survival.
But how can a baby be God? How can anyone born in time and space be the Creator of spacetime? Only by the sacred mystery of the Incarnation which is the wonderful exchange of divine and human natures accomplished by God in love for the salvation of the world through the willing cooperation of a simple bride, a young woman betrothed to a man but still a virgin.
Mary surrendered her entire life to God’s eternal plan in humility, and she trusted that the One greater than whom none can be imagined would bring about the salvation of the human race in her Son.
But Mary could not have accomplished this on her own, even with the grace of God. Joseph, the just man and descendant of David, also had to consent to his place in the plan of salvation by taking the already pregnant Mary as his wife and becoming the adoptive father of God the Son, the Savior of the world.
Joseph would love the Virgin Mother, provide for the Holy Family, and protect God the Son with his strong arms and his noble name until the time of that boy’s manhood and public ministry, thus making Jesus the Son of God to be also the Son of David and the promised heir of the Kingdom.
In the coming beautiful days of Christmastide, the sacred liturgy will remind us of all the mysteries of Christ’s early life: his hidden birth in poverty, his circumcision, his receiving of the Holy Name of Jesus, his presentation in the Temple, the worship of the Magi, the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt, the slaughter of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem, and the divine wisdom revealed in the boy Jesus as he taught the teachers of Israel in the Temple, the house of his true Father.
But all that lies ahead. For now we linger at the Christmas crib with wonder at the loving kindness of God our Savior and with joy that the Lamb of God and Light of the world took flesh of the Virgin Mary and was made man so that we could be raised to share his divine glory by the grace of adoption given to us in Holy Baptism through faith, hope, and love.
Friends, the Word became flesh and dwelt among, full of grace and truth, and we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten Son of God the Father. Today in Bethlehem, the city of David, a Savior has been born to us who is Christ the Lord.
Come, let us adore him!
This is the text of my homily for Christmas 2024.
Fr Jay Scott Newman