The Advent Convergence of Two Worlds

The birth of Christ told the world something. . . . His coming, I repeat, told the world something; it declared something, established something. What was it?

That something was several things, and as Christ broke the loaves into pieces for greater convenience in eating, let me divide the message into parts the easier to understand it. The Advent established:

First, that God is real. The heavens were opened and another world than this came into view. A message came from beyond the familiar world of nature. ''Glory to God in the highest,'' chanted the celestial host, ''and on earth peace, good will.'' Earth the shepherds know too well; now they hear from God and heaven above. Our earthly world and the world above blend into one scene and in their joyous excitement the shepherds can but imperfectly distinguish the one from the other.

It is little wonder that they went in haste to see Him who had come from above. To them God was no longer a hope, a desire that He might be. He was real. Second, human life is essentially spiritual. With the emergence into human flesh of the Eternal Word of the Father the fact of man's divine origin is confirmed. God could not incarnate Himself in a being wholly flesh or even essentially flesh. For God and man to unite they must be to some degree like each other. It had to be so.

The Incarnation may indeed raise some questions, but it answers many more. The ones it raises are speculative; the ones it settles are deeply moral and vastly important to the souls of men. Man's creation in the image and likeness of God is one question it settles by affirming it positively. The Advent proves it to be a literal fact.