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December 23, 2018O Emmanuel, our king and lawgiver, hope of the nations and their Savior: come! Save us, O Lord our God!
How does Jesus come as Emmanuel? In his first coming he came as the Child born of the virgin, prophesied by Isaiah: “You shall name him Emmanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’” In his second coming he will come to make his home with us eternally. As the book of Revelation states: “See the home of God is among mortals. he will dwell with them; they will be his people, and God himself with be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.”
And in this middle time when mourning and crying and pain abound, how does he come, he who promised to be with us always? In a way we could say that the idea of “being with” gets at the very heart of the mystery of the divine indwelling. Our fathers loved to take St Paul’s words, “I desire to depart and to be with Christ” and apply them to their desire for prayer and solitude. We can think too of those most beautiful words, “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” What it is like to be hidden with him?
St Bernard speaks of three ways of seeing God. The first is given to everyone and consists of the beautiful things he has created. These are rays emanating from God and tell us that he from whom they come truly is, although they cannot fully explain what he is. The second is given to very few who, for God’s good purposes, are admitted to communion with him through exterior visions, images or spoken words. But, Bernard says, there is another form of divine contemplation, very different from the former because it takes place in the interior, when God himself is pleased to visit the soul that seeks him, provided it is committed to seeking him with all its desire and love…One who is so disposed and so beloved will by no means be content either with that manifestation of the Bridegroom given to the many in the world of creatures, or to the few in visions and dreams…She wants to welcome him down from heaven into her inmost heart, into her deepest love; she wants to have the one she desires present to her not in bodily form but by inward infusion, not by appearing externally but by laying hold of her within…Emmanuel does not, however, make his presence continuously felt, for he loves to pay us unexpected visits in a variety of forms: as companion along the way, doctor, teacher, father of orphans, bridegroom, friend, never ceasing in one way or another, to reveal himself to the inward eye of those who seek him, thus fulfilling the promise that he made: “Be assured I am with you always, to the end of time.”
Image: O Emmanuel by Sr Ansgar Holmsberg, CSJ
