“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord”
(Luke 2:11): All is Grace!
“All is grace” goes to the heart of the message of Luke 2:11 as a reading for Christmas, and explains its meaning and relevance to Spiritans today. “All is grace” accepts everything as a “gift,” this includes the Holy Spirit’s indwell in every Christian. “All is grace” commends itself for reflection at Christmas, 2017, given the ubiquity of sin and the general doubt about the possibility of a holiness of life required of every Christian. “All is grace” suggests the unbreakable bond between God and his Creation, a bond that manifests itself as “grace,” grace of and for salvation.
The Fathers of the Church was wont to consider the New Testament as the fulfillment of the Old Testament. This approach to the interpretation of Scriptures – Promise and Fulfillment – has the advantage of recalling to mind all the promises of God, in the Old Testament, as a way of seeing the role of Christ in their accomplishment. What is more is that the Fathers of the Church, through their typological explanation of Scriptures, see perfection or a better version of what happened in the Old Testament in the New Testament. St. Paul uses the same typological and allegorical interpretation of Scriptures: Old Adam, New Adam, Old Eve and New Woman, Slave Girl, Free-Woman, etc. Like the Fathers of the Church, I consider Christmas, every Spiritan Vocation, our missions – “all is grace”! How?
“To us a child is given” (Luke 2:11) reminds us of God’s everlasting love for humanity, it also shows a God who keeps his promises to his creatures. In Africa, the gift of a child is a guarantee of a future generation, it is a definitive affirmation that a future lies ahead full of promises and great things to come. The fact that the child that was given comes from a royal family, “in the city of David,” tells the esteem in which this child is to be held. And, this child’s name is given as “savior” in order to tell us his role and destiny in life. Finally, this child “is Christ the Lord”; “all this is grace”!
To describe the attributes of a child in so vivid a fashion is a generous attempt to obliterate confusion and assure certainty. A child whose destiny is already known – Savior, his title declared – Christ, and his status divine – Lord, cannot but be a special envoy, a unique emissary and an extraordinary agent of grace, God’s grace to humanity. To talk about grace is to talk of a gratuitous gift; to speak of a gratuitous gift is to accept human dependence on God for salvation; after all “grace is a supernatural gift of God which enables us to believe that God will offer us all we need for salvation”. Yes, salvation is a gift of God, to be accepted in thanksgiving and love; yes, “all is grace”!
It is precisely because the birth of a child, the baby Jesus Christ, is a “gift” that the exegetical approach of the Fathers of the Church – Promise and Fulfillment – makes sense. We recognize in Christ the “fulfillment” of God’s “promise” through his prophets in the Old Testament. The unalloyed descriptions of the child Jesus brings together the various titles and attributes we were warned to look out for in order to recognize the Savior. Titles and attributes are God’s revelatory indices to human beings for the purposes of recognition and faith. The Savior and his coming were planned and fulfilled in the New Testament, so that the people of the Old Testament and ourselves today could have a bridge that links us together – the past, present and future as one. The Promises of God are never past and forgotten, they are always new and renewed every day; this too “all is grace”!
The history of salvation, part of which the birth of the Savior is constitutive, makes God and his plans for human beings relevant to every generation. Salvation is progressive as it reaches to every age and generation. Salvation is perennial like the God of history who remains immortal. But more importantly, God associates human beings to his history of salvation, God chooses and makes human beings participants of the history of salvation. Just as the angels announced a new dawn of salvation “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11), so must the lives of Christians, in words and deed show forth this salvation to make other human beings co-sharers in the gift of salvation; we still see “all as grace”!
Spiritans, you and I, by our consecration and apostolate, we join in the propagation of this history of salvation. We announce to the “little ones” the message of freedom and the gratuitous salvation of God that has reached all peoples in the form of Grace. As the opening biblical quotation of the Spiritan Rule of Life puts it, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me . . .” So do we make this good news known, so does every generation of Spiritans perpetuates it; yet “all is grace”!
Every Spiritan is a prophet by the virtue of the prophetic mandate that the Spiritan Rule of Life has chosen for us. Not a Prophet in the sense of predicting the future, but a prophet as a transformer of evil into good, a crusader of social and distributive justice, avant-gardes of holiness and defenders of the power and working of the Holy Spirit in a world that is gradually becoming atheistic. Yes, our mission is “anatheism,” those who struggle to return God to the public square in words and action. Etymologically, “anatheism” is the action of “leading up to God”. We are co-creators of salvation history because we participate in it and we make it come about through our respective ministries; our ministries of leading people up to God. An to be a leader in this sense (anatheism) is to stand in full view of others, in one’s strengths and weaknesses; it is the acceptance that, as leaders, we are followers of Christ, because it is Christ who leads while we follow. Yes, the work of salvation continues through our missionary enterprises for the kingdom of God.
“All is grace” because our vocation is a gift, and our services of and to one another is pure grace. As Spiritans, the Holy Spirit takes the driver’s seat in all we do, just as the Holy Spirit made the incarnation of Jesus Christ possible, otherwise there will be no Christmas. Indeed, to say SPIRITANS is to affirm that we are Spirit Propelled Individuals Responding in Truth (and) Announcing News (of) Salvation (S.P.I.R.I.T.A.N.S.). This conforms every Spiritan to the prophetic agenda of Jesus in Luke 4:18-19 as agents and instruments of God’s transformative power through the multiple gifts the Holy Spirit inspires in each one of us, for the purposes of proclaiming and announcing the dawn of God’s salvation for humanity.
May this season of palpable gift of Grace – Baby Jesus – move us to bring the message of love, peace, and unity to our respective missions, communities and the world at large. Not theoretical peace, but concrete gestures of peace; not words of love, but acts of charity; not talks about unity, but a demonstration of togetherness and solidarity. When we do this, then “all will be grace” because the sinners and the saints among us will recognize their indebtedness to God, and there wouldn’t be room for criticism but a celebration of redeeming grace; there wouldn’t be room for sadness, because Joy is the message of Christmas; and, “joy” is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit; after all, you and I are Spiritans, so we deserve and ought to be happy and joyful!
Merry Christmas, 2017, and Prosperous New Year, 2018!
Ayodele Ayeni, C.S.Sp.
Provincial of Nigeria North-West.