Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ but many forget it was the birth of the scandalous Sacred. God is born into situations which men considered God-forsaken. That is why he was not recognised by the leaders of the Jewish faith into which he was born as their Messiah. As a Jew he was born as foretold in their own Scriptures, but the messiah was not recognised by the authorities of the religion. He was simply rejected because his birth itself was neither godly nor of religious significance. Those who read the Scriptures never recognised him, but those Wise Men who read the skies did. It shows that the birth of the Sacred implied a contradiction of unrecognizable scandal. The Messiah never got space in the cultural mainstream but only in the periphery in the midst of animals. And so, Jesus was hunted after.
The pertinent question is: Where is the sacred? In Jesus’ birth religious people did not find God – God was simply absent in him. St Paul wrote he “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness” (Phili.2:7). In Jesus God was simply emptied of his humanity so that no one can find in him godliness. His godliness dissolved in his humanity and disappeared. In another words, God appeared simply as man without power and glory. In his birth there was also the death of God. God in an unheard manner returned to man. John says “in the beginning was the Word,’’ which is love and the Word prides itself as an all-embracing love up until the point of death. God becomes human in a state of rupture of divinity. The divine takes suffering as the sacred deconsecrates itself.
The notion of ‘the sacred’ then slowly leads to the radical humanism of the Good Samaritan. It also proves that in humanity, the divine is hidden. The question is: “Do we have the eyes to see?” Nobel laureate Saramago said: “I think we are blind. Blind people who can see, but do not see”. Are we not closing our mangers when refugees from war-torn areas come knocking our doors? St Augustine asked: “What do you love when you say you love God?” The words of Jacob to Esau clearly testify that: “truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God” (Gen.33:10). Man’s face is the epiphany of God. It dispels illusions of an atheism that thinks itself capable of living without the sacred. God himself is in suffering, in his nature of the scandalous sacred, constantly raising this radical question: What kind of world is this that we can travel to the moon but do not know the way to the heart of another human being?
Fr Paul Thelakat (Author is Chief Editor, Light of Truth)
Christmas is all about seeing God
Christmas is the visitation of God to all men. Unlike the Christmas of yesteryears we celebrate Christmas as a very advanced society, going high-tech in every sphere of activity. Science and technology has reduced the planet into a global village with all the splendor of materialism. As John Naisbet has said, "this is the best time to be alive". As I go back to early days of my childhood, Christmas meant many things to be me. One such was the making of the Xmas star and the other fabrication of the crib to house the Lord, mother Mary and Joseph. Another thrilling event was the singing of Silent night, holy night and the savior is born".
I used to be part of the Christmas carol group and the nights turned into days with the joyous sounds of jingle bells and the dangling Santa Claus. Those were the day of when my heart leapt as I saw a rainbow in the sky. Those days have gone never to come back. In Shelly's words, "We look before and after and pine for what is not/ Our sincerest laughter/ With some pain is fraught". Though technology has united us and the internet provides an infinite gateway of information and knowledge yet somewhere we are missing ourselves. There is some inadequacy that haunts us. Harmony is at stake. We need to strike a harmony with ourselves, our fellowmen and nature. Xmas has come with a clarion call to commit ourselves to the path of conciliation, not confrontation.
Tagore dreamt of an India when the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls. We continue to build walls between our fellowmen by glorifying caste and creed and preaching religious fanaticism and advocating narrow parochialism. This is spitting poison. The end result of this madness is chaos within oneself. On the scared occasion of God's visit to the mankind, lest us revisit our inner self and strike a harmony in our relationship with our fellowmen. Christ was born for the entire humankind. Hence let us consider every human being born on the plant as our own brothers and sister irrespective of caste, creed or colour as we share the same brotherhood in the fatherhood of God.
The clock is ticking second by second. No, it is not the clock ticking. It is you ticking as you advance to the end of the journey here. Time will go on. One day your clock will stop ticking and you will be heard no more. Hence the true message of Xmas is communion with God, the imperishable, the unborn, the light of all lights, the omnipotent. Swamy Rama-krishna Paramhamsa was asked by his disciples, "Swamiji, you have been speaking about the Paramatma all these years. Now please show us the paramatma!". Swamiji raised his head and said for the last many years I have been searching for a place where is not". Christmas is seeing God! Once you see him your eyes will no longer be the same. They will go in the splendor of his light. Only that you have to focus. Let us not miss our focus. The purpose of Xmas is the purpose of life. Finding Him is eternity, all else will go away. Merry Xmas to all!
By Alphonse Erayil (Author is a former DGP)
Confluence, not clashes
In the immediate aftermath of the end of the Cold War, it was postulated by the likes of political scientists such as Samuel P. Huntington that cultural and religious identities will henceforth be the fundamental source of conflict. In this hypothesis, the Western viewpoint is traditionally identified with mainly the "Christian" countries, both Catholic and Protestant, and their culture. Perhaps, this clash, at least from a layman's point of view has been validated by the events of September 11, 2001 and the reordering of thinking in contemporary discourses to see events through the prism of religious motivations.
However much we may want to deny or disown the religious impulses behind major contemporary developments, there is no gainsaying the fact that developments like the victory of Donald Trump in the recent US elections or the ratings of Angela Merkel in Germany are underpinned by religious/cultural factors. Christmas and the advent of Jesus Christ have to be reappraised in the context of these present-day developments and the narrative of Jesus of Nazareth has to be refreshed to restate his dynamic, forward-looking, liberal and anti-Establishment teachings. In theology, one may call them prophets or messengers but in the grand vistas of human evolution, emissaries like Christ emerge, at the minimum, as great teachers who introduced novelty of thinking and ideas and in a sense, rebelled against accepted wisdom.
If mankind has to evolve continually, Christmas must, as an occasion, help us to focus on this potential for the renewal of ideation and the rejection of statism. Also, on the essential humaneness of their philosophies which only will make our world a better place to live, for our children and then, their children. The emphasis therefore has to be on the unifying strand of their teachings and stories. It has to be agreed that however great one may assume one's religion to be, there are possibilities of new approaches and new thinking which will help the cause of assimilation as against annihilation. The theory of the "clash" per se has to be defeated by the ideation of "confluences", which is what the great masters sought to espouse. One need not even see Christ from a divine/religious perspective to understand his influence. He appeared on top of a wave of spirituality two millennia ago and the energy that he left upon the world is not yet expended. In my view, the message of his birth, his mission and his ministry has been a clarion call to "fulfil" and not to destruct. This is the fundamental construct of Christ.
In 1900, at Los Angeles, Swami Vivekananda said in a Sunday lecture about Christ: "You and I are only little things, bubbles. There are always some giant waves in the ocean of affairs, and in you and me the life of the past race has been embodied only a little: but there are giants who embody, as it were, almost the whole world of the past and who stretch out their hands for the future. These are the signposts here and there which point to the march of humanity; these are verily gigantic, their shadows covering the earth - they stand undying, eternal!" This Christmas and forever, we owe it to Christ to see that this march of humanity, which Swami Vivekananda referred to, is onward and forward.
By S. Adikesavan (The author is the Chief General Manager, State Bank of India.
