The Humility of God

June 29, 2012 / MariaNews.com 

The Humility of God

By Deacon Antonio Sandoval

Watching a Christmas program while keeping vigil by my wife’s side at hospice last December, I heard the story on TV of a mother who took her young child to view the Nativity scene.  She told her child that the baby in the manger was God who became a baby to be with us.  The child gazed at the figure in the manger representing Jesus, then looked up at his mother and said, “I thought God would be much bigger than that.”  God has an uncanny ability, to appear small, humble and unimportant in the eyes of humans.  That’s why many people could not accept Jesus for who he was, because, they too, thought that God should be much bigger than what Jesus appeared to be.

At the beginning of his public ministry Jesus went to his home town, and on the Sabbath took his turn as lector in the Synagogue.  Taking the scroll from the Prophet Isaiah, he selected the passage, and read, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  Rolling up the scroll, he handed it to the attendant and said, “Today this prophecy is fulfilled in your hearing.”  At first the people were impressed, but then they began to say, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” “Don’t we know his relatives who live in our midst?” Then they took offense at this “nobody” who dared to make “messianic proclamations” to them and wanted to throw him over the brow of the hill to his death (See Luke 4:16-30).  Jesus didn’t appear big enough to them.

Jesus also has an uncanny ability to disguise himself in the poor, the sick, the elderly, the unborn in danger of abortion, that is, in the least of our brothers and sisters in our society.  Mother Teresa of Calcutta always said that she encountered Jesus in the sick and dying.  And Jesus said that whatever we do for the least of our brothers and sisters we do for him.

The Eucharist is the ultimate act of humility of Jesus.  He transforms the substance of the bread and wine into his own substance in order to enter into our bodies.  Yet many people, even Catholics, do not believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.  A crumb of bread and a drop of wine appear totally powerless and insignificant, yet if the words of Consecration have been pronounced by a priest over that crumb of bread and that drop of wine this is now Jesus hidden under the accidents of bread and wine.  Behold the humility of God.

Read more by Deacon Antonio here

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Antonio is a retired deacon in the Archdiocese of Denver. Last September his wife, Maud, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a form of cancer. They were told that she didn’t have long to live. Since she is 83 years old, they decided to refuse the chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Last October they were sent to Hospice. They have now been there for 8 months. Antonio’s wife is not experiencing the symptoms of multiple myeloma other than the fact that she cannot move and has to stay in bed all the time. She is also in the last stages of Alzheimer’s disease. You prayers will be appreciated. Antonio spends the entire day with his wife.

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