President's Christmas Message

As I meditate during this Advent season upon St. Thomas’ treatment of God in the first part of his Summa Theologiae, I must confess that even now, having read this treatise many times throughout my life, I am still struck by its strangeness.

Some of this reaction is explained by the fact that when one deliberates philosophically upon the First and Greatest of all beings, the reach of natural reason is severely limited, restricted to saying what God is not, how we are related to Him, and making broad analogies concerning Him. In the face of this, I resonate ever so deeply with St. Thomas’ judgment that if the only way to know God were through natural reason, “we would remain in the deepest darkness of ignorance”[1] concerning Him, and not only as this knowledge would be available only to a very few privileged and talented thinkers, but also as the God of the philosophers is not exactly one to whom a person would bow in worship and adoration. Such only occurs as He reveals Himself to us, wherein He appears “to the eye of faith” no longer as simply the God of the philosophers, but now “as the God of men”, not simply as the unmoved mover, or the first efficient cause, but as “agape, the power of creative love.”[2]

In a letter to Diognetus, its 2^nd century author, reflecting upon our state before the coming of the Word, makes a similar point: “No man has ever seen God or known Him, but God has revealed Himself to us through faith, by which alone it is possible to see Him.” He notes, however, that “the great and wonderful plan” that God had conceived for humankind was initially shared “only with His Son.” He then makes his point:

“As long as He preserved this secrecy and kept His own wise counsel, He seemed to be neglecting us, to have no concern for us. But when through his beloved Son He revealed and made public what He had prepared from the very beginning, He gave us all at once gifts such as we could never have dreamt of, even sight and knowledge of Himself.”[3]

It is at this time of the year that I find myself ever so grateful both that God revealed Himself in the Word Incarnate, and that our access to Him is not only through learned treatises, but also and especially in the Person of Jesus Christ and all that attends His life, death, and resurrection. When my mind strays into these regions, I often think of an analogous case, namely, of my wife, and how the glory that she is cannot adequately be communicated through any words that one might speak, but only and especially through the outpouring of her life to all whom she meets, most particularly to her husband who stands in awe at such a creature, rejoicing “that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all.”[4]

It is in such moments that we, in the face of all that is gifted to us in a person’s self-donation, rise above ourselves, and lift our voices in praise and gratitude, which when experienced of the Christ Child, is the root of all adoration and worship. May the Christ Child, then, fill your heart this Christmas with the wonders of His glory, and may the canticle voiced by Isaiah (at 42:10-16) be your song now and forever. Merry Christmas to one and all, and all the best to you in the New Year.

_______________________________________

[1] Summa Contra Gentiles, Book 1, Chapter 4

[2] Introduction to Christianity, p. 143,

[3] Quoted from The Office of Readings, December 18, Second Reading (Daughters of St. Paul, Boston), 1983, pp. 63-64

[4] C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Collins; Glasgow), p. 21