<<<home page index>>>

 

Brookline Carmel Bulletin                         J M J T

December 20, 1959

 

 

Cogitatio Sancta

(Holy Meditation)

 

The Christ Child

 

Devotion to Our Lord in His childhood has always been one of the special characteristics of Carmelite spirituality.  One reason is, undoubtedly, that Carmelite spirituality aims at producing in the soul that perfect simplicity which is a necessary prerequisite for total union with God.  This virtue of simplicity is exemplified in Mary, Queen of Carmel, after whom the many saints of Carmel, canonized and uncanonized, have modeled their lives.  It is epitomized in the infancy of Our Lord.  Thus it is understandable that Carmel, in striving to attain perfect simplicity, tends to seek God Himself under His most childlike aspect.

 

Theologians, in defining simplicity, relate it to the virtue of truth.  It implies, on the part of the soul, a right intention, directed towards God in all things.  It is based on a truthful representation of reality, according to which the soul recognizes that it was created by God out of nothing, that it is dependent upon Him for each moment of its existence, and that its only happiness consists in directing itself unwaveringly towards union with His will.  Simplicity is the virtue Our Lord commended when He admonished His disciples:  “Let the little children be, and do not hinder them from coming to me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”  And again he warned, “Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”  Our Lord was not insisting, by any means, that we strive to remain in a state of arrested childhood.  What He was demanding was that we have a childlike simplicity in our dealing with Him.

 

The simple soul is one who lives by faith, basing his life on his form belief in the truths revealed by God through His Church.  It is with simple faith that we should view the scene of Bethlehem at Christmas.  Kneeling before the crèche to gaze upon the figures there – the Infant, Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and, later, the kings of the East – our first reaction may be to admire the beauty of the scene.  We are perhaps attracted by the fine workmanship of the statues, the artistic arrangement of the background, the softness of the lighting effects.  Such aesthetic appreciation is good, but our faith should see far beyond all this – beyond the emotional thrill that may accompany our experience, to the deeper significance.  Faith opens up to us (in a limited way, to be sure, but with certainty – for faith, as St. John of the Cross explains, “is a habit of the soul, certain and obscure and the reason for its being an obscure habit is that it makes us believe truths revealed by God Himself, which transcend all natural light, and exceed all human understanding”) the tremendous mystery of the Incarnation.  What an overpowering truth is contained in the words “and the Word was made flesh,” by which St. John the Evangelist makes known to us the fact of God’s becoming man.  Out of reverence for this mystery, we kneel when the priest pronounces these words during the Last Gospel of the Mass.  For the same reason, we kneel during the words of the Creed “and was made man.”  The Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Word, Who exists for all eternity, one by nature with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, assumes a human nature, becomes one of us, uniting the divine and the human natures in the one divine Person.  So as we gaze at the figure of the Christ Child in the crib, our faith penetrates the external appearances of things to perceive that this Child is God.

 

Our senses do not indicate this to us.  This Child has all the outward appearances of an ordinary child.  St. Thomas, addressing the Blessed Sacrament, says (in the Adore Te), “Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur” – “Sight, touch, and taste in Thee are each deceived.”  Our true source of vision, as he indicates in the Tantum ergo, is faith – “Praestet fides supplementum sensuum defectui” – “Faith for all defects supplying, where the feeble senses fail.”  It is by faith alone, a special gift from God, that we recognize the Child in the crib as Our Lord.  “Come, let us adore Him!  Christ, the Lord.”

 

            When the interval of waiting                                    Once on earth, with arms extended

            For His birth its course had run,                  He embrac’d His heavenly Bride,

            Straight from out His bridal chamber              And the gracious Mother laid Him

            Came the Bridegroom, God the Son.               In the manger, at her side.

 

             (St. John of the Cross, Romance IX, Of the Birth of Christ)

 

 

<<<home page

* * * * * * *** * *

MISSION STATEMENT: This web site was created for the purpose of completing the work of Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, O.C.D These conferences may be reproduced for private use only. Publication of this material is forbidden without permission of the Father Provincial for the Discalced Carmelites, Holy Hill, 1525 Carmel Rd., Hubertus, WI 53033-9770.