Monday, January 14, 2019

Jesus Grew Up


At Mass yesterday Father observed that the Christmas season ends with Jesus the man.  All at once, a week after Epiphany, we fast forward from baby Jesus to the thirty-year-old Son of the Carpenter being baptized by his cousin.  It’s fast, but as any mother can tell you, kids grow so fast.

Children grow fast, and rightly so.  For as charming as children are, a child who never ceases to be a child would be a pitiful thing.  Jesus in the manger is wondrous because He is the King of Glory; if He never advanced to the full manifestation of his glory, then the manger scenes would not be wondrous but pathetic.  That is why much of the best Christmas art and music already hints, like the feast of the Baptism, at Jesus’s mission.  Without that overtone or undertone of awe and sadness, the manger scenes become sentimental, kitschy.  With it, they contain all the complexity of human life: its threat and its promise.

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