The Word became flesh

One of my little friends came in the bookstore again today. While her father and uncle browsed, we played house. She was the mother and I was the daughter, and she told me to play with the cars, but I wanted to play with the train. I tried to get her to stop clunking up and down the stairs, creating vibrations that were perhaps not good for our neighbors, by whispering to her that we had to be secret. The next time she came back, she whispered, “I was secret, but Mario saw me!”

And I nodded and listened as she chattered on to me about her household chores and what I needed to do, marveling at the ease and beauty with which she dropped in the participle “ne” in right spot. I can never get that one right. And I tripped over my words in responding to her—was the mele il or la? But she rolled off masculine and feminine articles left and right without any of the hesitation and consequent vague mumbling I threw in.

For some reason it makes me laugh to hear children one-sixth of my age dropping “ne”s everywhere (I use those when I want to show off), or seriously urging another to be careful, “mi raccomando,” a phrase I can never quite get the gist of. “Arrivo subito,” my friend told me this morning, and I laughed. Does everyone here have to learn Italian?

Children are the most patient teachers. They don’t raise a fuss if you make a mistake, just wait till you’ve figured out what you’re trying to say and move on from there. They take mistakes so matter-of-factly, without the smug little grin even the nicest adults can’t help letting slip every once in awhile when you say something stupid. Children just have a lot less of that self-importance we adults have let grow up around our images. No silly pride.

“Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven,” said Jesus. He knew.

The word became flesh, and learned to speak.

Can you imagine? The one who spoke the universe into existence, stuttering through the Aramaic equivalent of the difference between “angry” and “hungry”. “Angry,” he would say. “No, dear, ‘hungry,’ Mary would respond, until he finally got it.

I had a “conversation” the other day with certain believers who don’t celebrate Christmas. “Jesus didn’t stay a baby,” they said, “So it’s his death and resurrection that are important for us, not his birth.”

“But it is important!” I argued at my mirror later. “His birth as a human baby is part of his humbling, proof of his love; that God became a man.”

“Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven,” this man said.

“He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing…Therefore, God exalted Him, and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, on heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father,” says the Scripture.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given;And the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be calledWonderful Counselor, Mighty God,Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.

He has another name: Immanuel, God is with us. Let us adore him.