​A God with skin on…

Dear Friends, Our Advent focus turns from the Second Coming of Jesus at the end of time to his birth into our world, our history, our joys and our sorrows. It is right that we should celebrate that arrival – and we are good at it, aren’t we, in our culture?

We begin our masses this weekend singing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” and “Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.” In our first reading the prophet Isaiah says “Therefore the LORD himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel.” The reading from Matthew’s gospel makes clear that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of that prophecy and tells us that the name Emmanuel means “God is with us.”

What does this mean and why is it such good news? In the 4th Eucharistic Prayer we pray: “And you so loved the world, Father most holy, that in the fullness of time, you sent your Only Begotten Son to be our Savior. Made incarnate by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, he shared our human nature in all things but sin.” (emphasis mine)

Thinking back to the story of the little child who repeatedly woke his mother with bad dreams and was told to pray who then answered that he needed a God “with skin on,” we have been given just such a savior. Everything we experience in our humanity – love, anger, fatigue, joy, heartbreak, calm, worry, hunger, thirst, illness – has also been experienced by Emmanuel, God with us, Jesus Christ. When we pray, he knows our hearts, our weakness, our trials because he is one of us, one with us. This is truly something to celebrate and it is much more than a cute baby in a manger – as adorable as that baby is.

In Matthew’s gospel that we hear today the angel in Joseph’s dream who tells him to go ahead and take Mary as his wife because the child she’s carrying was conceived through the Holy Spirit and that “... you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

That we are all “his people” is made clear in the second reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans:

        Through him we have received the grace of apostleship, to bring about the obedience of faith,            for the sake of his name, among all the Gentiles, among whom are you also, who are called to             belong to Jesus Christ ... called to be holy.” 

Yes, called to be holy. All of us. No one is exempt. The Universal call to holiness was recently affirmed in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. A tall order, perhaps. But worth it. And the One who calls us to holiness is Emmanuel – God with us, who knows our need and has shown us the way to get there – nourishing us along the way with his body and blood, and guiding us with the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Let’s pray for one another this last week before Christmas!


Siempre adelante,


Dominic MacAller
Worship Minister

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