Christmas and Adoration

Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar

The Adoration of the Magi by Boticelli

A few years ago, I found this beautiful reflection in a Spanish translation of the original German text, and decided to give myself a project and translate the Spanish into English. You can find the Spanish version available as a free download through the wonderful publishing company Ediciones San Juan. The translation that follows probably doesn’t get everything right, but the essay is a beautiful meditation on the Christmas mystery.

—Fr. Brendan Fitzgerald

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Of the three Magi who visit the child Jesus and his mother, it is said that they prostrated themselves and adored him. The same is said of the shepherds, and every representation of the manger scene shows us the shepherds in a gesture of veneration; for by means of an angel they well know that this child is the Savior, the Messiah, the Lord. Moreover, how many ancient images show us Mary in silent adoration before the child lovingly placed on the ground before her! The days of Christmas are a time in which the adoration of God — already known by way of the Old Testament, for example in the Psalms — receives wholly new motives to grow in fervor. And, thanks to this, a wholly new form: we ourselves can and ought to adore God in this small child whom God has sent to us. This is so astonishing that it forces us to consider in a new way this act of adoration, an act that in our secularized age returns us to what is to a great extent a foreign reality. 

If there even exists within us a personal relationship with God, the majority of the time we present to him our needs, and this is just. More infrequently do we give him thanks; of the ten lepers cured by Jesus, only one returns to give him thanks. Or, when suffering strikes us, we give ourselves over to the incomprehensible will of God, and this also is just. But even resignation — the devout submission to the will of God — is not adoration. 

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What is adoration? God is unique and infinitely mysterious. Similarly, the act by which we recognize him with all our being as God — as our God — is unique and therefore not so easy to describe. But let us try it, despite the challenges: to recognize that only God exists through himself, while the whole of creation exists through an omnipotent act of love and with roots, therefore, that exist not in themselves but in the God who is unconditioned and absolute. To recognize, therefore, that God is the truth par excellence, the essence of all truth, and so as a consequence he is always justified in what he does or in what he leaves undone; that it is madness to dispute with God, as if it might be possible to charge him with an error or with some evil act, and to admit that el homme revolte terminates with its own destruction. To recognize that God is the good par excellence, the quintessence of all goodness, and that therefore he is not only always justified in his actions, but that through his being and his dispositions he is worthy of being loved unconditionally; loved with the reverent donation of our whole heart. To recognize that God is absolutely beautiful, the quintessence of all beauty, and that therefore we ought to give him homage with the greatest enthusiasm and to serve him with joy — as the Psalms acclaim exultantly to God and as St. Paul exhorts Christians: “Sing hymns of praise to God, full of thanksgiving in your hearts.” According to Scripture, God as absolute truth is our rock, that never will falter; God as goodness is our shepherd, under whose wings we are protected; as beauty he is the Lord of glory, our joy, who enchants us and leaves us fully enraptured. All of this is already known in the Old Testament, in which the heart of the pious believer delivers itself to God in loving donation, in thanksgiving, in full confidence, with an enormous reverence happily free of all anguish. 

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Having said all of this, however, what happens if now God sends to the world — to us — his eternal Word in the form of a child? Well, in the first place it would be fitting to understand what it is that he wishes to say with this new way of speaking to us. 

Surely, as always happens through the means of his Word, God says something of himself. In all that this child is and in all that he will come to be — as a child, as a man, as a teacher and worker of miracles, as he who stands silent before the judge, as beaten, despised, as rejected, as he who shouts abandoned by God on the Cross, as he who was entombed, as he who lives anew and eternally among the dead — in all of this is the Word that God speaks, and speaks — in truth — about himself. If God is the truth par excellence, then necessarily each word that he speaks to us and that comes from the center of the truth is also a declaration about himself. If God is the good par excellence, then he gives himself to us in all these words that represent the life and passion, the death and the resurrection of Jesus. And if God is beauty par excellence, then the truth and the goodness that he speaks to us and that he gives to us is also always a wondrous reality of the highest measure. 

Then, if God is the smallest of children, as that child God says to us: in all of my omnipotence, which I truly am and which I truly possess, I am at the same time so poor and humble and worthy of trust as this child — even more, not only “as” this child, for I truly am this child. And so Jesus will later teach and talk of the ultimate place in which one must deliver himself: that of service, of the giving of one’s life for his brothers. This is not only a moral teaching for mankind but something that God himself is and does; it is a manifestation of the heart of God his Father. Do this, for such is God! And now the terrible truth. When Jesus suffers for sinners and takes on their sins, already he does not feel the Father, and he shouts out as one who is left to fall: as one who dies thirsting for God. Once again, such is God! “God so loved the world,” says the Good News, “that he delivered his only Son for it,” to the point of becoming timelessly abandoned by God. And when Jesus gives himself as food and drink: such is God! It is the Father who offers us this word and this flesh of God — bloody, torn, and lacerated for mankind — as a means of participation in his eternal life. And when the heart of Jesus is changed and transformed into the empty hollow into which one can place a finger — “in your wounds conceal me!”  — such is God! A wound that reaches to the heart, and in which we are cleansed. 

To say such things is no exaggeration but a simple, meditative, Christian reflection on the mystery of Christmas. The Word of God becomes flesh: flesh that takes the breast of his mother, that later fights for life; flesh that suffers horrors and dies, but flesh that in all of these states and situations is the Word of God that tells us something of the essence of God. In conclusion: do we adore the flesh? No. We only adore God: God who is singularly and absolutely what we are not; God who is completely Other; God who is being itself, God the Omnipotent one. But at the same time a God who has pleased to show us that he is sufficiently omnipotent to become impotent; sufficiently blessed to be able to suffer; sufficiently glorious to be able to place himself in the most humble element of his creation. And God does not work “as if”: as if he were humble; as if he were poor; as if he were a child. And this is the mystery of the nature of God: his richness consists in an eternal love that gives itself without reservation; his power in the possibility of equally giving power and freedom to other beings whom he does not wish to dominate — to the point of being rendered impotent on the Cross. How can God not know in his heart, he who has created his children, the feeling of a child’s heart?

So now let us ask ourselves: does there exist a God who might be more mysterious and incomprehensible than the God of Christians? A God for whom it is not required to search above 

The clouds and adore from an irrevocable distance, but the God who as a man — better yet, being a man — relates himself to us, all the while remaining the true God: totally Other, eternal, immortal, and omnipotent. Through the mystery of Christmas this God has not lost any of his incomprehensibility, but on the contrary has made himself even more incomprehensible. Only now can we discern how far removed is the divine Omnipotence: to the point of becoming an impotent child. And we cannot distance ourselves from this God under the pretext of saying, “well, no one can understand this.” At the end of such thinking we might ask ourselves: “Is this truly God or only a man?” But we are always returned anew to his presence among us which, from the birth of Jesus, no one can overlook. We turn in order to separate ourselves from him, but the figure of Jesus returns to us — finding us from another angle of approach. It does not matter if we make ourselves Marxists or Buddhists: never will we escape from him. The history of the world has changed because of Christmas. From Christmas onward there exists only a possible “yes” or “no” to the fact that God has made himself concrete in Christ. Only because of Christmas might there exist an authentic atheism. And — if it is pure — there cannot exist a form of adoration more profound than Christian adoration. 

The three Magi, the shepherds, Mary: all of these adore the child; as will the disciples adore the man Jesus once they have reached the point of faith. Because these disciples, these Magi, these shepherds, and Mary know that Jesus is the personal Word, the expression, the exegesis of God. Of all of this Jesus tells us: “Such is God; such is my Father and your Father who is in heaven; such is our eternal Spirit. I show this to you, so that you yourselves might try to live in this way: to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect, he who makes the sun set above the good and the evil.”

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In the Incarnate Word, then, we can adore God in a new, Christian way. The Incarnate Word not only shows us God from afar, but that the Incarnate Word itself is the Divine Word spoken from the heart and the mouth of God. “The Word was with God and the Word was God,” and this “Word became flesh” and has “revealed” to us a God who no one has seen. But what does this say of the world, of ourselves and our fellow man, with all of our actions and daily responsibilities? None of these things are in any way God, and therefore, in no way are these things worthy of adoration. The world is mundane, creaturely, and it goes without saying that all that exists in the world within its very depths is the consequence of a divine and uncreated spark. If not, then we ought to simply adore ourselves. But: does there not exist something true in this way of speaking that says that in the center of the human being dwells something divine? As Christians we will respond: yes, every person possesses within themselves something divine — not by way of nature, on account of his having been created, but through the grace of God. The human person possesses that divine spark on account of the fact that all are destined, elected, and called to be children of the Father, brothers of Jesus, and servants of the Holy Spirit. Many, perhaps even the majority of human beings, know nothing or very little of this vocation and live in this passing world as though there existed nothing eternal. And this is done in such a way that not even in their neighbor do they find something that rises above the mundane. They see the face of a neighbor, his habits, his favorable and unfavorable qualities; some of these delight him and others bother him. But they do not recognize that the other is in Christ a child of the Father, loved by the Father because Christ has put on human flesh and has made himself a human being. It can also be said: in that neighbor is a child who the Father loves so freely and voluntarily as to deliver his only Son for him. The Father pays, as St. Paul says, a high price for this love of his. Human beings, by virtue of habit, 

See in their neighbors only someone equal to themselves, a fortuitous example among millions, formed of the same material as themselves. Coins of little value; some of greater purchasing power, others of greater value to collectors. Our psychology and our sociology — so dear to us these days — insists upon this presupposition: “Man is man,” and in principle each one is a substitute for the other, because in the end all are made according to the same model, forged in the same mold, sculpted from the same environment. 

Only the Christian possesses the possibility of perceiving something unique in each person he encounters: a being who is known by God not as a mere accidental creation, but rather as a person whom God loves in their uniqueness — a uniqueness at once unrepeatable and irreplaceable. This uniqueness is given only through Jesus Christ. The voice of the heavens resounds above him: “You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” You and no one other than You; You who cannot be equaled nor substituted for another. But . . . in You I have endeared myself to all these men and women; in You each one of them has gained something of Your primogenial uniqueness. 

We are all, as the Apostle says, “configured to the image of his Son,” he who has transformed himself into the “firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” And in the eternal mind of God never were we other than such beloved song and daughters, “chosen from the foundation of the world in Jesus Christ to be holy and blameless in his presence.” 

If this really is true, what does the Christian see in his brother or sister? He does not see an example of a human being who is questionable, cheap, summarily imperfect, but rather the Christian sees through all of these defects and imperfections a unique being whom God himself loves with an unmistakable love; the Christian sees in such a way so that through the shame and the worldliness of his brother or sister he might find in him or her the image of God. And the Love that loves this person is worthy of adoration. We are not making the ridiculous claim that human beings must adore one another. We only wish to affirm the solemn and grave conclusion that every person can and should become a reason to worship God’s love for us, in the same way that each of us is seen by God. 

Therefore, we do not need to build a dividing wall between those moments that we reserve for prayer and (so we hope) the adoration of God and the mundane vicissitudes of our daily lives. Naturally, if on our journey we do not find a moment to recall — to feel, in fact, and to meditate upon — the eternal love that God has for each one of us, then never will such truths occur to us when we find ourselves amidst the trials and tribulations of daily life. But — if only once — while meditating upon the mystery of Christmas, we open ourselves just slightly to the wonderful love of God, then there no longer exists a single reason for us to abandon this attitude of adoration during the course of our daily work; then we will not only remain permanently immersed within the mystery of Christmas, but each encounter with whatever person will place before our very eyes that same mystery in a new way. 

There is a marvelous Latin hymn for the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament that was once found in all books of prayer and whose first strophe prays with the following words:

Adoro te devote, latens Deitas

quae sub his figuris vere latitas

tibi se cor meum totum subjicit

quia te contemplans totum deficit. 

We could translate the hymn: “Hidden divinity I adore devotedly / that under these forms you are truly hidden / to You my heart infinitely gives itself / that falls wholly before You in contemplation.” 

So now, it seems to me, that it is granted to us that we might understand under “these forms” to signify not only the bread and wine in which God conceals himself, but also all of the forms of the world — those of other human beings before all — but then also all of those other parts of the world that were created for human beings and that pertain to their terrestrial homeland. The person who sees the world in such a way — the person who possesses such an attitude — is the one of whom it can be said that they walk in the true presence of God. 

Many believe that to see the world in such a way requires much time passed in meditative preparation; time spent in technical spiritual exercises. I do not believe this. It is enough that we simply bring ourselves contemplatively to the memory of our faith — a memory that on Christmas morning receives its visible form: “God so loved the world,” and therefore each one of us, “that he has given to the world his only Son.” A Son he has given to each one of us. This Son of God — so given over — is placed before our eyes. He is placed before our eyes on Christmas morning; and so also on the Cross; and on Easter Sunday; he is so placed before our eyes on every ordinary day of the liturgical year. 

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We cannot conclude these considerations without a final thought. The Son of God who as a child is laid before us in a manger was not obligated by his Father to become incarnate. Indeed, He — like the Father — is a person of the same unique Trinitarian life; He is possessed of the same sovereign freedom and perfection as the Father and the Holy Spirit. He, the Son, has offered himself since the dawn of time and in the fullness of divine freedom to serve as the sacred guarantor for the sake of the creation of God the Father. And because of this self-offering, the triune God could dare to create a world that is concretely transformed and even described as “very good.” The Son will take up on the Cross all of the unspeakable suffering of the world and he will present to the Father the very proof that he is capable of loving and adoring God above all things — even in the midst of divine abandonment. But at this moment, what happens in the heart of the Father? This self-offering of the Son, has it not touched and pierced him for the whole of eternity and in each and every intimate moment? Before this self-offering of the Son, ought not the Father marvel from heaven that one such idea might arise from the depths of the divine will? This reality, without any doubt, is expressed here in a way that is all too human. But how else could we express it if we wish to consider for ourselves the relationships that hold between the divine persons of the one and only Trinity? And if now on Christmas morning the work is completed and the Father sees before himself in a manger the small Child who already is marked for the hour of darkness that is to come, then can we not claim that this same astonishment on the part of the Father must be understood as the supreme model of adoration? Why could the Father not adore the marvels of the divine love of the Son, just as the Son in his earthly life always and forever has adored the Father and his loving will? “Sacred be Your name; your Kingdom come; Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”: yes, this is the prayer of adoration. And the Holy Spirit, he who is the expression and the testimony of the reciprocal love that holds between the Father and the Son: how could he also not adore, in his own way, this eternal and reciprocal adoration? 

God is a miracle in the unfathomable depths of his essence. In the mystery of his triune life exists a miracle in itself. God — we might say — never becomes accustomed to himself. Everything within God is an event that eternally takes place in the present moment: the birth of the Son from the Father, the mutual impulse of love between Father and Son in the procession of the Holy Spirit; all of this is, for God himself, worthy of adoration. 

We cannot, then, imagine for ourselves that in adoring God we complete and then free ourselves of a laborious obligation. Adoring God, we simply enter into the truth, the goodness, and the beauty of God himself. And then we discover, also simply, the law of truth, of goodness, and of beauty within our own lives, for “God is not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being . . . for we are indeed his offspring.”