Manger brings gift of real freedom

Letter from Bishop DiNardo
Posted December 19, 2002

"Since we can as yet form no conception of Christ's generation by the Father before the daystar, let us keep the festival of his birth of a virgin in the hours of the night.... We cannot yet behold him as the only Son, abiding forever in his Father, so let us recall his coming forth like a bridegroom from his chamber. We are not ready for the banquet of the Father, so let us contemplate the manger of Jesus Christ our Lord." (St. Augustine, Sermon 194)

There is perhaps no one in the history of our Catholic faith who spent more time thinking about and proclaiming the role of human desire for God and the grace of loving God than Saint Augustine.

"Show me some one who loves and he will know what I mean" is a line that he employs frequently when he wants to speak about our love for God. Yet that is always only the first stage of his argument. He always comes to a point of reversal where he shows that the love of God for US is what is really at stake. Such an infinite love can only be appreciated by paradox, by odd or strange formulations.

In our present state, even as redeemed, we are not quite able or ready to enter such a banquet of love. The fulfillment of our longing as creatures is, strangely, beyond our normal capacities of understanding and desiring. Still, God's love is breaking through and is successful in drawing us through Jesus Christ to the banquet of love.

It is instructive to listen to St. Augustine preach on the Nativity of Christ. One might ask what an early 5th Century Christian could possibly say to an early 21st Century Christian? The times are so different and the culture so changed. What I find significant is that St. Augustine lived in a time when there were very few Christmas "customs" and practices.

The world in which he lived was still saturated by Roman paganism. From our current vantage point, we seem to be living through a kind of re-paganization in the world and an almost complete secularization of Christmas practices, unhinged from their original religious meaning and made more sentimental and vague each year. It is rather revealing now to listen to St. Augustine write on Christ's Nativity. He states some simple and uncompromising truths that we need to hear.

The manger of the Lord is, for St. Augustine, a meeting place of poverty and riches. The poverty is not economic. It is the poverty of the human condition, of human flesh, deprived of the Lord. Concealed in the poverty of the infant Jesus' flesh is an opening to all flesh to be transformed, changed by love and by the Father's desire to save us. Such love is the "riches" that are produced. Such riches are true freedom.

Real freedom is for human beings to be enveloped by the manger. Real freedom is the gift of the manger. Real freedom is not autonomy, not rugged individualism, but to know God's love manifested in our flesh in Jesus Christ. The "world" for us is changed; the "flesh in us" is made new. The obedience involved in being a disciple, a learner, of Jesus is actually freedom. To learn the manger is to learn the new way of freedom - to be in union with God through Jesus Christ. And that union for St. Augustine always takes place in Christ's Mystical Body, the church. (The "church" is already prefigured in the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, the shepherds and the Magi. All nations, all conditions of human beings are already at the manger.)

The central truth of Christmas is that in our short days of time, a marvel has occurred and continues to happen. The endless day of eternity has made a "good invasion" into our world. St. Augustine simply calls Christmas the "descent of mercy." It is not human self-assertiveness that produces freedom, but it is God's mercy that produces freedom. Through a manger, an oxen stall? Yes! True freedom is the desire for full union with God in Christ.

St. Augustine is quite aware that even among those who believe, precisely because we walk by faith, the full vision of this transformation has not yet taken place. Not every desire has been transformed yet, made obedient to the one Christmas longing that should dominate us all, to be one with Christ. Our poverty remains since the riches of Christ have not fully possessed us. Our freedom is incomplete. But our hope is not disappointed.

I write these words to you in Advent 2002, to Christians of the 21st Century. A Fifth Century Christian reminds us of our goal, our desire, and its lack of completion. But simultaneously the goal is present. It was present in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. It was present in North Africa in 400 A.D. and it is present today.

I write these words to you in December 2002 at the end of a long and difficult year for the Catholic Church in the United States. Our poverty in faith and our riches in faith have been dramatically placed before our eyes. The scandal of clergy abuse of minors and of Episcopal responsibility and accountability has grieved us. It is time for us to again embrace the manger of the Lord. True freedom is faithfulness to our call.

I write these words to you in December 2002 at the conclusion of a wonderful celebration of our centennial as a diocese. The 24 counties of Northwest Iowa have been filled for over 100 years with the life of faith of this section of Christ's Body, the church. We are believers from many nations who have sought our hearts' desire, union with the Lord.

The church of the 21st Century in Northwest Iowa is certainly different from that of our ancestors 100 years ago and different still from that of St. Augustine's time. But none of us are strangers to one another. The church, for two thousand years, in many places and conditions, is a living Tradition of faith.

Christ has made the promise to be with us always. The promise is ours. The promise was accomplished by his becoming one of us and then saving us by his cross. The promise was first manifested at the manger and remains. Let us welcome true freedom in this promise!

Merry Christmas!

†Most Rev. Daniel N. DiNardo
Bishop of the Diocese of Sioux City