When Mary went shopping at the market place many people saw baby Jesus in his mother’s arms. I am sure some of the women said ‘oh, how cute, he has Joseph’s nose’. Mary probably smiled and thought to herself… ‘it’s a long story’.
Indeed it is a long story! An angel, her cousin Elizabeth, a dream, a census, Bethlehem, poverty, a visit from kings, the presentation in the temple, a flight into Egypt…yes I think this would be way more than a checkout line chat.
It’s a long story and yet it’s very simple. I love the following quote of Pope Benedict XVI where he states this well. Speaking of baby Jesus, he says:
“He does not want to overwhelm us with his strength. He takes away our fear of his greatness. He asks for our love: so he makes himself a child. He wants nothing other from us than our love, through which we spontaneously learn to enter into his feelings, his thoughts and his will” Midnight mass 2006
This Advent don’t forget how real it is that God became man!
I found this to be really interesting and very beautiful. When babies are born what do we do and have for them? Nothing but happiness and love. And same for baby Jesus. God asks nothing else from us but love. What it comes down to and what its all about is love and compassion. That’s why Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, right or no? Some of my Roman Catholic friends say that it matters who you are in order to receive that love and compassion. Sin is sin. And no matter how much human beings don’t like to hear it there is no one on this earth that is undeserving of God’s love and mercy, even people who kill and rape and murder and abort babies, etc. They deserve God’s love and mercy just as much as the rest of us because God said love and pray for the one’s who deserve it least, because they’re the one’s that need it the most.