THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE INCARNATION

THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE INCARNATION

(January 2017)

We are entering a new year, and it is a grace to be able to see it, a grace to be able to live it. Yet a new year in time should also open us to living a new year of graces. The new year should allow us to grow in our love for Jesus. Have we made resolutions to grow in our spiritual life, in our vocation, and in our consecration?

The world needs people who live the Word of God. How many problems would be solved if everyone set about living the Word of God! How many families would be at peace if all their members lived the Word of God! How many parents would be pleased with their children if these had at heart the living out of the Word of God!  How our parish communities would flourish if the choirs, the liturgical groups, and others lived the Word of God! How wonderful it would be if all Christians were true livers of the Word of God! What happiness, what peace, what joy would shine forth in the world! The world needs a new revolution, that of the Word lived out. This is what the members of the God’s Word groups aspire to.

The Spirituality of the Incarnation   consists in letting Jesus dwell in each member who lives the Word of God. The Virgin Mary   welcomes the Word of God within her. She carries Jesus, raises him, and offers him to the world, and it is Jesus who saves the world. If Jesus lives in us, if he is present in us, then he will continue to save the members of his body and will give them life, for ‘God wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth’ (1 Tim 2:4). This is the kernel, the strong aspect of the Spirituality of the Incarnation. ‘It is no longer I who live; it is Christ who lives in me’ (Gal 2:20). To let Jesus live in us, that is our spirituality. Jesus says: ‘Whoever loves me keeps my word. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling in him’ (Jn 14:21-23). When I accept the Word of God, when I live it, when I say ‘yes’ to God, Jesus comes to live in me. On this subject, Pope Benedict XVI says in Verbum Domini: ‘Christ comes to dwell in our lives. Every Christian who believes, Saint Ambrose reminds us, conceives and in a certain  sense gives birth to the Word of God within himself: if according to the flesh there is only one Mother of Christ, according to faith Christ is the fruit  of all. So what happened to Mary can happen in each one of us every day, in the hearing of the Word of God and in the celebration of the sacraments.’

We hold that living the Word of God is like a magnet that draws Jesus into us. He becomes present in us as at the Incarnation. Pope Benedict XVI says that the Incarnation is the greatest miracle of the universe. Every Christian who lives the Word experiences the same thing. When Jesus lives in us, everything we then do for him, such as evangelization, has a strong inner energy and a new fervor, for Pope Paul VI says that one of the greatest obstacles to evangelization is the lack of fervor (Evangelii Nuntiandi). And even if  we do not open our mouth to preach or to share, Jesus living in us does it: he touches, he saves, silently within us. When the Virgin Mary, already having Jesus within her, simply goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, the latter, at Mary’s greeting, is filled with the Holy Spirit. The child within her is flooded with the Holy Spirit. What God expects of us is to incarnate his word, to live his Word. Often we do too many things for God without Jesus dwelling in us. Then we are as it were empty, clanging cymbals.

Like the Virgin Mary, our chief work is therefore to live the Word of God. ‘My task, Lord, is to keep your Word’ (Ps 119:57). If, then, this is our task, we must devote ourselves to it. Let us be professionals of the Word lived out in this new year.

Henri Bayemi