The infinite God reduced Himself to our state — why?

Sunday, March 27, 2011
Fr. Anthony Brankin
Gospel: John 4:5-42 The water I give springs up to eternal life

Full homily text: The past week, we celebrated an immensely important feast—the Feast of the Annunciation—the day when the Angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she was to be the Mother of the Son of God—Jesus.

The twin apostolates of prayer and the education of young women are pursued by the Visitation Sisters of Georgetown. Are you searching for God’s calling? Consider a life with the Washington, DC.

The Infinite God who created all things—omniscient, omnipotent, omni-present—without beginning—without end—before whom the whole Universe, its parts, its history, its creatures is present—sent the Second Person to be conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary to be made man and nine months later born a little squalling brawling baby in a manger on a hillside in the middle of the night with no one around but His family and few shepherds.

Talk about a comedown!

That the Infinite God should deign to reduce Himself to our state, to our bodies, our circumstances! That He who was God should will to accept the indignity of being a human—like us in all things but sin. Cold and hot, sweat and dirt, chills and pain. That He would now have to eat and dress and clean Himself!

And then to spend His public life sparring verbally with his enemies who did not understand nor believe—and then to allow them to abuse Him and shame Him and put Him up on cross first to suffer and then to die.

What conceivably could have caused God on March 25, to become Incarnate in the womb of the Virgin? What could God have caused God to do all this?

Well, the short answer—and the long answer is love. Love purely and simply.

God”s great act of love

I think of the painter Francisco Zurbaran, a wonderful Spanish painter from hundreds of years ago.

Well one of the beautiful paintings that he painted for a monastery in Spain was a large painting of two saints, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas. They are standing looking at each other in a large old-fashioned room as Bonaventure is drawing back a curtain behind which is a crucifix. Thomas Aquinas’ hands are raised almost as if in surprise.

And the title of the painting is this: “St. Bonaventure revealing to St. Thomas Aquinas, the Source of His Learning.” What Zurbaran is saying is that all wisdom, all learning, all knowledge—everything in the world revolves around God’s great act of love—the sending His Son Jesus to the world to be offered as a sacrifice of love for us.

And there are no ulterior motives for this. God gets nothing out of it. He only gives. His life—His being—His love.

Why should God bother with us?

Now, an atheist who does not believe in God—who does not go to church—who does not pray—says of all this: “That makes no sense! Why should this God of yours care about any of us so much that he would do all of this? Why should He care any more for us than we care for the ants? And then you say He loves us so much that even if we commit sins He would still die for us? That is preposterous! That makes no sense!”

Well—naturally speaking—the atheist does have a point. – It would seem that an all—powerful God would more likely just ignore us and let us go our silly ways. This God should look upon us like so many ants busy about everything but really busy about nothing. Because really why should God bother about us? Why should He even love us—or most amazingly still—why should He suffer and die for us? But he did and that is startling!

Well why? Because God loves us; and He loves us because He created us to be like Him. Unlike everything else in the Universe—except Angels— what makes us special and different from everything else is that we share His nature. That’s the key. We are not like a million nameless ants in an ant hill. We are persons who are just like God because we can think and reason and figure things out. We can make acts of the will and decisions and choices. We can say “Yes” and we can say “No”.

We have an intelligence and a free will and in this way we are made in His Image and Likeness that is why God loves us. Because we are like Him, and He wants to share His Life and therefore his love with creatures like Himself.

He sees Himself in us

He loves us because He sees Himself in us. We are like an extension of God. He loves us not for what we do (because we really can’t do that much—and most of the time it comes out wrong) but He loves us for who we are. We share in God’s very life and existence and love.

It is the same for humans. When we love someone—and truly love them—we love them not because they are smart or beautiful or rich or clever. We may be attracted to people because of those qualities—but we love another person for something deeper.

We love them because we see ourselves somehow in them—We dwell in some mysterious way within the soul of the one we love. And when we see ourselves united with them in this love, then we want them therefore to have every good thing in life.

We want them to have life and life to the full—and nothing less.

It is in this way that God sees Himself in our souls; and He wants us to be happy and whole and holy as He is happy whole and holy!

That is why God always forgives and overlooks and disregards the sins of those who offend Him (if we are contrite). God forgives because seeing Himself in us—He is moved with pity and compassion.

God does not ignore us

We can ignore the ants—because we are not related to them. But God does not ignore us—because we  are related  to Him.

God loves us so much that He wants to save us from any more suffering than we have already brought upon ourselves—even if He Himself must suffer for our sake.

That is what is going on in the Incarnation and then thirty-three years later on the Cross of Christ. This whole thing is not just about some guy who was born in Bethlehem and then died at the hands of the Romans. It all leads to and takes its meaning from the cross!

The Cross—the sacrifice upon which we meditate all through Lent—is the key to understanding everything— and I mean everything! Because the Cross tells us why God made us and why He redeemed us—and why He came down to the womb of the Virgin Mary and then suffered and died. Love.

If we need a meditation this Lent—let it be the Cross. Because the cross is all about love and love is all about life—God’s life—and ours.