One among us

Like most of us Filipinos, he was born and grew up in such an ordinary, humble way. He was not up, up there - but down, down here. One among us. A common carpenter by profession. But once he broke into human history, the world was never the same again. As one Christmas card puts it:

"All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that One Solitary Life."

Why so? Because he showed us the way of human life as it was meant to be lived. So you cannot possibly ignore him. You end up being with him or against him. He inspired allegiance to his cause or provoked rebellion against it. Such is the Christ who came for all humanity. The cosmic Christ. The universal Christ. His fullness of human life belongs to all races and religions. Love, Justice, and Peace. And he walked his talk to the hilt.

The quality of his greatness was in the sharing of himself. He was always the Jesus who cared. The Man of Compassion. He was the fully actualized person, responding to every situation with deep affectivity, according to what was humanly and spiritually called for. In the language of contemporary psychology, his four affective polarities were fully activated: love, in the form of compassion; anger, in the form of confrontation with caring; strength through courage; and weakness through humility.

When Christ fed the hungry thousands after curing their sick (Mt. 14: 13-21), and brought back to life the poor widow’s only son (Lk. 7: 11-17), you cannot but feel his deep compassion for humanity.

He drove the money-changers from the temple precincts for their taking advantage of the poor, thus converting a holy place into a "den of thieves." Social injustice (Mt. 21: 12-17). He denounced the scribes and Pharisees for their "purity system" that unjustly taxed the poor, but in vain. "How often have I yearned to gather your children as a mother bird gathers her young under her wings, but you refused me" (Mt. 23: 37).

With such calmness and inner strength, Jesus stood his ground before Pilate, Herod, and the Sanhedrin. He could have saved his life by giving in to them, but he did not. "Once again the high priest interrogated him. ‘Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?’ Then Jesus answered: ‘I am; and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven’" (Mk. 14: 61-62). His claim meant death. Fearless courage.

Thus, Christ submitted himself to human vulnerability all the way to the crucifixion (Mt. 26, 27). He led the way for all of us to embrace our own crosses and experience the reality that when everything is said and done, God is the only absolute. He is our beginning and our end. God is Love. To love and be loved is the be all and end all of life.

It was in this spirit that Christ led the way by choosing the prophetic over the pragmatic. To be a spokesperson of God in word and deed, teaching and living the hard sayings that a complacent society needed to hear but refused to listen to. In so doing, he aligned himself with the poor and the oppressed. This is the meaning of God becoming man. The God-Man. The Man-God. This is the meaning of Christmas.

In the inspired words of Sigrid Unset:

"And when we give each other Christmas gifts in his name, let us remember that he has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans and all that lives and moves upon them.

"He has given us all green things and everything that blossoms and bear fruits and all that we quarrel about and all that we have misused.

"And to save us from our own foolishness, from all our sins, he came down to earth and gave us himself."

Christmas, then, is not just a nostalgic remembering of a historical event. It is our day-to-day awareness of the Living God within us and all around us — inviting us to be his prophetic followers as well as leaders in living his one and only commandment. Love, Justice, and Peace.