Every time I look at a Nativity, I cannot wrap my mind around the great mystery of an all-powerful God sending His Son to be born of a woman. Once, I got into a debate with an avowed atheist, and I started asking him if he'd ever heard anything about Mary and the apparitions and messages from Fatima.
"Mary who?" he asked me
"Mary, the Mother of God!" I said, in exasperation, What other Mary is there, I thought.
I'll never forget his voice, dripping with sarcasm: " You mean God has a mother?"
I wanted to say yes, you idiot, she is the mother of Jesus Christ, the second Person in the Trinity. He at least promised me he'd read up about it, but when I later asked him if he had, he hadn't. I still keep this person in my prayers.
Is it a lot to accept? I don't think it is. But is so against our nature, which often seeks our own comfort, this all-powerful Creator lowering Himself to earth, that I think it's a mystery that could only come from a Benevolent Supreme Being. The overwhelming generosity and love is what I cannot wrap my mind around.
The second part that baffles me, but that I whole-heartedly accept, is that a young virgin, meek, humble and trusting, would bear the Son of God and remain throughout her life to be completely without ego. What's more, that this Son of God, the second Person in the Trinity, could only become human by being born of a woman. When I look at Mary's "enraptured gaze" as she contemplates the Christ Child she just brought forth, I think of the great mystery of Jesus having to take His Flesh from her. I think of this also when I contemplate an image of the Sorrowful Mother holding the battered and lifeless Body of her Son.
What other faith is centered on so great a love and the lowly handmaid who brought it to fruition by her fiat?
