Tomorrow night I will be speaking to the men’s discussion group about the mystery of Christmas, in particular about how omnipotence and humility come together in what Anthony Esolen calls Child Everlasting:
But can we see the wonder from the other direction? It may be that the child Jesus does not conceal omnipotence so much as reveal what it really means to be omnipotent. That’s because the Word through whom were made the heavens and the earth was from before the foundations of the world the Word who would be made flesh: It is a world made to be redeemed by that child.
Perhaps Esolen is playing on Chesterton’s Everlasting Man:
Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet. Here begins, it is needless to say, another mighty influence for the humanization of Christendom. If the world wanted what is called a non-controversial aspect of Christianity, it would probably select Christmas. Yet it is obviously bound up with what is supposed to be a controversial aspect (I could never at any stage of my opinions imagine why); the respect paid to the Blessed Virgin. When I was a boy a more Puritan generation objected to a statue upon my parish church representing the Virgin and Child. After much controversy, they compromised by taking away the Child. One would think that this was even more corrupted with Mariolatry, unless the mother was counted less dangerous when deprived of a sort of weapon. But the practical difficulty is also a parable. You cannot chip away the statue of a mother from all round that of a newborn child. You cannot suspend the new-born child in mid-air; indeed you cannot really have a statue of a newborn child at all. Similarly, you cannot suspend the idea of a newborn child in the void or think of him without thinking of his mother. You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother, you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows I as it is followed in history. We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross.
There is something momentous to be learned by men from the God of hosts who chose the path of childhood as the expression of his omnipotence. Kings from far away bow down, and the king in whose jurisdiction He is born fears him and sends soldiers to kill Him. What is it about the Virgin Mother and the stable of Bethlehem that reveals so much of what it means to be the King of Kings.
How can men surrender to the mystery of Christ’s condescension without surrendering their dignity, responsibility and strength as men, husbands and fathers?
Posted in Blessed Virgin Mary, Catholicism, Chivalry, Fatherhood, Heroes, Husbands, Manliness, Marian Chivalry, Men, Religion, Spirituality Tagged: Anthony Esolen, Christmas, G.K. Chesterton 
