The Lowliness of Christ

One has never achieved complete faith. Faith has to be lived again and again in life and in suffering, as well as in the great joys that God sends us. It is never something that I can put in my pocket like a coin… The essence of faith is that I do not meet with something that has been thought up, but that here something meets me that is greater than anything we can think of for ourselves… The Christian faith brings us consolation, that God is so great that he can become small. And that is actually for me the unexpected and previously inconceivable greatness of God, that he is able to bow down so low. That he himself really enters into a man, no longer merely disguises himself in him…but that he becomes this man. It is just in this that we actually see the truly infinite nature of God, for this is more powerful, more inconceivable than anything else, and at the same time more saving… This very God, who has the power to realize love in such a way that he himself is present in a man, that he is there and introduces himself to us, that he associates himself with us, is exactly what we need in order to escape from having to live to the end with fragments and half-truths. ~Pope Benedict XVI, God and the World

How small God made Himself when He became flesh in the womb of His Virgin Mother! How low He bowed down when He became one like us in all things but sin! The feeding trough for a cradle ... the hidden years in Nazareth ... the humble trade of carpentry ... the submission to John's baptism yet having no need to repent ... the motley crew of twelve disciples who bickered among themselves and failed to grasp his teachings ... the wanderings through the countryside with no place to lay His head ... the scandalous cross and a criminal's death for living the truth in love ... the stranger's tomb hastily found at the last minute ... the entire life of Our Lord Jesus was but one lowliness after another, and through each lowering of Himself, He raised us higher and higher with Him to the Father. O Christ ever greater, increase our faith in Thee!