The Hard Way

 Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord–At the Vigil Mass

When I was a freshman in high school I had a science class.  I like science, in general, but I’m not good at science.  One of our final projects in the class was to make a car from a mousetrap and have it travel 3 feet or so.  We could use anything we wanted to, as long it didn’t include a motor.  All we were given were the mousetrap and four plastic wheels.  I had seen someone else use CDs for wheels, and though that was a good idea.  Besides, what else would I do with all those AOL CDs that we got in the mail each month?  Try as I might, I could not get it to go forward.  I was left with simply pulling the arm of the trap back, and quickly releasing, trying to get enough forward momentum from my arm releasing it quickly.  It didn’t work.  When it came time for us to demonstrate what we had done, I watched my classmates and saw their cars.  They used strings or rubber bands attached to the arm of the trap, which were connected to the axels of the wheels, which, when the arm was released, propelled the mousetrap car forward.  It seemed so obvious, and yet it hadn’t occurred to me at all.  I certainly hadn’t found the easiest way to do things.  In fact, I have a special gift for often missing the easiest way, and finding the hardest way to do something.
    It may seem like God also chooses to do things the most difficult way.  St. Paul gives the basics of the Gospel as he is preaching in the synagogue in Antioch in Pisidia, which we heard in our second readings.  God chose a people, is where St. Paul starts.  The story would have been familiar to the Jews.  But in case it’s not as familiar to us, let’s make sure we know that the people God chose were not a strong nation, or the best warriors, or the smartest.  No, God chose a family, Abram and Sarai, who were very old, had no children, and lived in modern-day Iraq, and told them to go to the land of Canaan.  That family, starting with the miracle child, Isaac, slowly grows into a small household, who sell one of the brothers into slavery, and then they have to beg from that brother for food during a famine.  
    The family makes its way to Egypt, lives comfortably there for a while, before Pharaoh gets nervous about their fecundity, and enslaves them.  God sends them Moses to free them from slavery, but this people, this nation now, always seems to think life was better in Egypt as slaves as God tries to give them Canaan and freedom.  God promises them the land and peace as long as they follow Him, but they can’t do it for even one generation.  So they struggle with the surrounding nations, until they beg God for a king, even though God tells them they have a king: Him; they don’t need another.  But they whine some more, and God gives them what they want.  First comes Saul, who is pretty bad at following God, and then David, who is much better at following God, except when he’s murdering to cover-up his adulterous relationship.  Still, David is mostly for God, which is good, because he’s the last king like that.  
    The people, throughout the centuries, wander away from God, get in trouble, cry out to God, and then God saves them, only for the people to get comfortable again, and turn away from God.  Then God sends John the Baptist to prepare the way for the Messiah, Jesus.
    One would think that the Messiah, God’s own co-eternal Son, would have things easier.  Instead, His mother is almost divorced by His foster-father; He has to make numerous trips, first in the womb, then as an infant, then as a young boy.  Jesus’ foster-father, Joseph, dies before Jesus reaches the age of thirty, and then Jesus preaches God’s message, first welcomed with open arms, but eventually rejected by his followers, betrayed by one of his closest friends, and then dies on the cross, abandoned by almost everyone except His mother and few others.
    That’s not the easiest way.  As we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate that God took flesh, and so could feel the jostling in the womb on the road to Bethlehem; was cold as he was delivered in a cave, because no inns had room.  Jesus, the eternal God, could be hungry and thirsty, could stink from soiling his diapers, and could feel the emotional struggle of rejection as He grew up, similar to everyone else in appearance, but clearly very different from his neighborhood friends.  
    God didn’t choose the easiest way to save us; but He chose the best way.  He entered into our forsakenness, our desolation, so that He could change us into His Delight and His Espoused.  It was not clean and easy, but neither was humanity.  Whether it’s building mousetraps or trying to live as disciples of Jesus, we seem to choose the harder, not smarter, way.  But God loves us enough to enter into that messiness so that, by His grace, we can clean up.  
    What we celebrate at Christmas is that God didn’t take the easy way out.  He could have simply willed to save us, but instead He sent His only-begotten Son to become like us in all ways but sin.  He took on our messy history, the saints and the sinners, and made it His own history.  God became man, so that man could become God, to paraphrase St. Athanasius.  
    This Christmas is hard, no doubt about it.  But the Good News is that God is here, and He understands our challenges, our difficulties, probably better than we do ourselves.  But God is still working to save us, no matter how hard, how difficult.  And that love, that dedication to us and to our eternal happiness that humbled itself to become like us in all things but sin, is definitely worth celebrating, and is something that not even COVID-19 can take away.  O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!