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Mary seeks the child Jesus: the anguish and faith of the motherFrom the three Wise Men who visit the Child and His Mother, it is said that they bowed down and worshiped. The same should be said of the shepherds, for every Nativity scene depicts the shepherds in a gesture of veneration, because through the angel they know that this child is the Savior, the Messiah, the Lord. And how many ancient images show Mary in silent adoration before the Child!The Christmas days are a time when the adoration of God, already known from the Old Testament, for example in the Psalms, receives entirely new reasons to illuminate and, thanks to this, also a completely new form. We can and must adore God in this child that He has sent us. This is so amazing that it forces us to think about this act of adoration in a new way, which in our secularized age has become largely strange to us. If there still exists a personal relationship with God within us, most of the time we present our supplications to Him, and this is right. But we rarely thank Him. Out of ten lepers healed by Jesus, only one returns to thank Him. Or when suffering strikes us, we make an act of devotion and submission to the incomprehensible eternal will of God, and this is also right. But resignation, submission to God’s will is not yet adoration.What is adoration?God is unique and infinitely mysterious. Similarly, the act by which we recognize Him with all our being as God is unique, and thus not so easily described. Let us attempt, nevertheless: to recognize that God is by Himself, while all creation exists only through His will and omnipotent act, and therefore does not have its roots in itself, but in Him, the sole unconditioned and absolute. To recognize, therefore, that God is the true par excellence, the quintessence of all truth, and consequently He is always right in all that He desires to do or allow to happen. It is madness to dispute with God, as if it were possible to allege an error, and the rebellious man ultimately destroys his own essence. To recognize that God is the good par excellence, the quintessence of all goodness, and therefore not only is He the truth, but because of His being and dispositions, He is worthy of unconditional love, loved with the reverence of all our heart. To recognize that God is absolutely beautiful, the quintessence of all beauty, and therefore we should give Him reason with great enthusiasm and serve Him with joy, as the Psalms acclaim God, exulting Him, and Saint Paul demands from Christians: «Sing to God with gratitude in your hearts». According to Scripture, God as absolute truth is our «rock», which can never waver, for goodness is our «pastor», the «wings under which we are protected», for beauty is the Lord of «glory», our full happiness, charm, ecstasy. All this was known in the Old Testament, where the heart of the pious man surrenders to God in love, in thanksgiving, in full trust, in profound reverence, free and happily free from all anguish.Regarding the various forms of adoring God, there is an ancient hymn of adoration, in Latin, to the Most Holy Sacrament that was once in all prayer books and whose first stanza reads thus:> Adoro te devote, latens Deitas
> quae sub his figuris vere latitas
> tibi se cor meum totum subjicit
> quia te contemplans totum deficit.Which can be translated as:> I adore You devotedly, O hidden Divinity,
> That truly hides itself under these figures:
> My whole heart submits to You
> Because, contemplating You, everything fails.Now, we can understand what these «forms» would be, not only the forms of bread and wine in which the Divine is hidden, but also all the forms of the world, that of man above all, but also of all others that He created for man and belong to his earthly home. We can say that God walks among us in various forms. Many believe that to worship God in creatures and in man would require a long time of meditative preparation and technical exercises. I do not believe so. It is enough simply to bring contemplatively to memory our Faith, which at Christmas we received His visible vesture: «God so loved the world and each one of us that He gave His only Son» to the world and to each one of us. This Son given is placed before our eyes. Here, at Christmas, on the Cross, on Easter Sunday, here every day of the liturgical year. He is among us!Let us adore! The Lord is coming and He is already within us and among our brothers!Merry Christmas to all our dear Mariology Devotees!Let us live this Christmas with the Lord who dwells within us, with us, and near us!Text taken from the writings on Christmas by H. U. von BalthasarMary and Joseph sought Jesus for three days before finding him in the Temple. To deepen the mystery of Mary in Jesus’ life, read Pope John Paul II’s encyclical *Redemptoris Mater*.Deepen your studies: explore Mariology, Marian Theology, Marian Apparitions, and the Postgraduate Program in Mariology.
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From the three Wise Men who visit the Child and His Mother, it is said that they bowed down and worshiped. The same should be said of the shepherds, for every Nativity scene depicts the shepherds in a gesture of veneration, because through the angel they know that this child is the Savior, the Messiah, the Lord. And how many ancient images show Mary in silent adoration before the Child!
From the three Wise Men who visit the Child and His Mother, it is said that they bowed down and worshiped. The same should be said of the shepherds, for every Nativity scene depicts the shepherds in a gesture of veneration, because through the angel they know that this child is the Savior, the Messiah, the Lord. And how many ancient images show Mary in silent adoration before the Child!
The Christmas days are a time when the adoration of God, already known from the Old Testament, for example in the Psalms, receives entirely new reasons to illuminate and, thanks to this, also a completely new form. We can and must adore God in this child that He has sent us. This is so amazing that it forces us to think about this act of adoration in a new way, which in our secularized age has become largely strange to us. If there still exists a personal relationship with God within us, most of the time we present our supplications to Him, and this is right. But we rarely thank Him. Out of ten lepers healed by Jesus, only one returns to thank Him. Or when suffering strikes us, we make an act of devotion and submission to the incomprehensible eternal will of God, and this is also right. But resignation, submission to God’s will is not yet adoration.What is adoration?
God is unique and infinitely mysterious. Similarly, the act by which we recognize Him with all our being as God is unique, and thus not so easily described. Let us attempt, nevertheless: to recognize that God is by Himself, while all creation exists only through His will and omnipotent act, and therefore does not have its roots in itself, but in Him, the sole unconditioned and absolute. To recognize, therefore, that God is the true par excellence, the quintessence of all truth, and consequently He is always right in all that He desires to do or allow to happen. It is madness to dispute with God, as if it were possible to allege an error, and the rebellious man ultimately destroys his own essence. To recognize that God is the good par excellence, the quintessence of all goodness, and therefore not only is He the truth, but because of His being and dispositions, He is worthy of unconditional love, loved with the reverence of all our heart. To recognize that God is absolutely beautiful, the quintessence of all beauty, and therefore we should give Him reason with great enthusiasm and serve Him with joy, as the Psalms acclaim God, exulting Him, and Saint Paul demands from Christians: «Sing to God with gratitude in your hearts». According to Scripture, God as absolute truth is our «rock», which can never waver, for goodness is our «pastor», the «wings under which we are protected», for beauty is the Lord of «glory», our full happiness, charm, ecstasy. All this was known in the Old Testament, where the heart of the pious man surrenders to God in love, in thanksgiving, in full trust, in profound reverence, free and happily free from all anguish.Regarding the various forms of adoring God, there is an ancient hymn of adoration, in Latin, to the Most Holy Sacrament that was once in all prayer books and whose first stanza reads thus:> Adoro te devote, latens Deitas
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