A story is told of a group of religious Sisters who were captives of the Japanese in the Philippines during World War II. They were allowed to hold their services and they had a novena leading up to Christmas. Each day they brought up in procession a small statue of the infant Jesus and placed it on the altar. The Japanese guard watched all this with great interest. About the fifth day he figured it out and asked Sister McCarthy a question. "Same one?" he asked, pointing to the Infant and to the Crucifix nearby. "Yes," she replied. "Same one." And he said: "Sorry."
We can get so used to the things that we believe that we forget how amazing they really are. That Japanese guard was obviously moved by the thought of that lovely baby later being tortured. What on earth would he have thought if we had said to him: "This man is God."
It takes time for us to appreciate what we really believe when we say God became human, because he came in such a different way from what we would have expected.Mary herself would have taken time to realise it. More than once in the gospel it says that she "treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart".Throughout the whole of her lifetime she must have been 'figuring it out'.One of the hardest things to appreciate is that Almighty God, our Creator and Lord, became an ordinary human being. And that it is best expressed by saying that Mary is the Mother of God.Her son, Jesus, is human and divine.
Fr. Michael Barrow, SJ
