As formalized as that habit can be when approaching and leaving the Lord's presence, our time in Adoration is often anything but a formal affair. It is a blessed chance to just sit and bask, or collapse in a heap, or pour out our hearts, or simply rest in silence. It is not good to be careless and slovenly, but nor do we feel the need to be overly formal, as if we were at a dinner party for distinguished guests. I typically kneel for most of my time, but when my knees feel like they are giving out, I sit. My prayers are not formalized in most cases, but just a baring of the heart and spirit, since "a contrite heart He will not despise" (Ps 51:17).
Humanity is the pinnacle of God's creation, and the Incarnation is manifestation of that glory. There is simply no creature like man, and there is no God like Christ. As co-creators in the divine work of creation, men and women given the charge to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:28) and participating in the miraculously ordinary work of bringing life into the world, we are invited into the royal court, to continue to lineage of man. It is a great privilege and we give honor to God when we offer our own fiat, like Mary, to welcome life. Even (and especially) when the odds seem stacked against us.
You can see the light in the eyes of the elderly when there is a baby in the pew at Mass. It's a light of hope in what can seem like sometimes dark circumstances--dying parishes, violent streets, breakdown of families, defection from the life of a community of faith among the young. But there is something about babies that gives hope. Biologically, deep in our DNA, we know that our existence as a people depends on propagation. A society without children is a future without hope. We are already starting to see this sad state in many parts of Europe in childless PMs and heads of state, in barren or one child couples, in young people choosing other paths besides marriage and children. There is an air of enlightenment and being free to choose one's own destiny. But the older generation knows what lies ahead. A child is a light in a darkness, a glimmer of hope in an otherwise hostile and self-serving world.
People pay homage to ordinary babes in cribs of their own accord. They come baring collections of onesies and diapers, rattles and binkies, crocheted blankets and monogrammed plush dolls. There is something that keeps them from being able to do otherwise. When the child is a prince or princess, of royal lineage, even more so. When the child is the God of Eternity, of all Creation, the God of the Universe, made incarnate...it is almost unfathomable to conceive of.
And who is it that comes to give him homage? Three foreigners, Zoroastrians following a star, are the first on the scene, no doubt planting their knees inadvertently in a few choice animal droppings and clumps of straw. Otherwise he is surrounded by his Mother and foster father in a cocoon of protection, a brief respite from the refugee flight soon to take place with a bounty on the child's head, this threat to the king.
Paying homage to a King in a crib, one who existed before all time and outside of space, who crashed into history to save His people from their sin, but who had to suck at the breast, grow and learn for thirty three years before offering His life for us. Born in obscurity in humble circumstances, and the early years as a child lived in obscurity, should tell us something about the character of our King: He teaches us to prepare ourselves in obscurity, to be content with the circumstances we find ourselves in when it is His will that we are in them, and to accept weakness, helplessness, and dependency as a model for trust in our heavenly Father. We don't need to prepare lengthy speeches or elaborate material gifts to our Infant King as we would a head of state. We need simply to drop to our knees at the foot of His crib and marvel, that God would humble himself to become one of us. That his cries and coos are as much a divine logos as His prophetic words and enigmatic parables given a man in the prime of his life. That the milk of the Mother of humanity, the new Eve, would nourish the Divine Essence Himself in earthly flesh, and that without it He would fail to thrive.
There is something about being human that cannot compare to anything else, and there is something about the Divine that no human mind can comprehend. For God to become man is a mystery too great to understand.
But nobody tries to figure out a baby. You just love a baby, marvel and awe, stare and melt. This is Adoration at it's finest, homage at the foot of the crib, the throne. This is the Incarnation, the Word made flesh, coos, drools, and all. This is Life, the 'yes' of fiat, the nourishment of the womb, the tabernacle that every man should lay his life down to protect. This is the light in the darkness that gives the old people hope. This is Emmanuel...Christ with us.
Happy Christmas to you and yours.
Rob
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