Lk.1:29-35 – Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name JESUS. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.”
Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?”
And the angel answered and said to her, ”The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.
This is the very heart of the message of Christmas. John said that “the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us”, Luke told us a more detailed version of the story. His story was about angels, the throne of David, a virgin birth, and the Son of God. Two versions but the end result is the same, God became a man and changed the whole world. The mystery that we all sense at Christmas time is some sort of spiritual connection to the human birth and the eternal birth of Jesus Christ. Is Jesus fully man ? Absolutely! Is Jesus God ? He is absolutely God and has been from eternity. When we turn to the manger at Christmas time and reflect again on the virgin birth we know the story didn’t begin there, it couldn’t have. This is the story of the ancient of days from before the beginning of time itself. Here is how Augustine describes this Christmas miracle.
“We believe in him that he was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. Each birth of his, you see, must be considered wonderful, both that of his divinity and that of his humanity. The first is from the Father without mother, the second from mother without father; the first apart from all time, the second at “the acceptable time”; the first eternal, the second at the right moment; the first without a body “in the bosom of the Father,” the second with a body, which did not violate the virginity of his mother; the first without either sex, the second without a man’s embrace.”
So what else could explain how time stands still every Christmas time. Whether you live in Africa or Vietnam Nam, Manila or St. Louis it makes no difference. Christmas can’t be ignored and everyone knows what happened that day. A virgin gave birth to a child, God’s only begotten Son took on a human body. There are no words that can explain it, even the angels could only describe the great day with a song of declaration. “Joy to the world, for there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”
