Even Today Jesus Desires to Be Made Flesh

Since childhood I have always had vivid dreams and the ability to remember many of them in detail. But this ebbs and flows. I may go a while without remembering a single dream and then suddenly I have them every night. Since this quarantine began I’ve been experiencing frequent night waking and having very odd dreams again.

One night last week I must have awakened 4 or 5 times and each time I had a Latin phrase repeating in my head. How’s that for strange?!

Even though I studied Latin in college, I don’t usually utilize it in everyday life. I don’t remember Latin phrases unless they are very well known, usually from a prayer, and I certainly don’t quote them in my sleep!

So what was this dream-induced Latin phrase, you ask?

“Verbum…Factum…Est”

So, I had to use good ole Google to help me translate, especially because I was missing one word. The phrase (if you’re not a Latin or church nerd) is actually “et Verbum caro factum est.”

“And the Word was made flesh!”

What the what?! Why was this repeating in my head? Is God trying to tell me something?

I don’t know, but at the time I had been reading a book, a spiritual classic, a beautiful contemplation of Our Blessed Mother, called The Reed of God by Caryll Houselander. One of the chapters is named Et Verbum caro factum est. Maybe somehow it was in my head?

So I began there. I re-read passages and pondered them. And I realized that there is an important message in this phrase for all of us right now.

Even today, Jesus desires to be made flesh and dwell among us.

Maybe this quarantine is an opportunity for all of us to allow the Word to be made flesh, bringing Christ into the world, in ourselves and our families.

And who, if not Mary, can show us how to do this?

Her Fiat allowed God to be made flesh and dwell among us. What better way is there to bring Christ into the world than by looking to Our Blessed Mother’s Fiat, her great answer to God, “Let it be done unto me according to Thy Word!” It is she that we should emulate at all times, but even more so now!

“It is Our Lady – and no other saint – whom we can really imitate.

All the canonized saints had special vocations and special gifts for their fulfillment. Each saint had his special work: one person’s work. 

But Our Lady had to include in her vocation, in her life’s work, the essential thing that was to be hidden in every other vocation, in every other life.

The one thing that she did and does is the one thing that we all have to do, namely, to bear Christ into the world.

Our crowning joy is that she did this as a lay person and through the ordinary daily life that we all live; through natural love made supernatural.

The Reed of God, Caryll Houselander

All of us – no matter our vocation, profession, situation, location, abilities – are called to bear Christ into the world.

But how? How do we bear Christ into the world? How do we grow Christ’s life in our life? And how on earth are we supposed to do this during a pandemic lock down?

Might I suggest that we turn to the hidden life of Jesus and the Holy Family in Nazareth.

The Holy Family was living a quiet, ordinary life! It wasn’t yet time for Him to make His presence known, and His time was spent daily growing in “wisdom and age and favor before God and man (Luke 2:52).”

And how would the Holy Family spend their days? We don’t have any account of this time, but we can easily guess that their days were filled with daily, ordinary tasks – playing and learning, working and serving, cooking and eating, praying and loving. Nothing that different than that which our daily life now consists.

Houselander has a beautiful quote in the book to illustrate this point:

“What we shall be asked to give is our flesh and blood, our daily life – our thoughts, our service to one another, our affections and loves, our words, our intellect, our waking, working and sleeping, our ordinary human joys and sorrows – to God.

To surrender all that we are, as we are, to the Spirit of Love in order that our lives may bear Christ into the world – that is what we shall be asked.“

Mary and Joseph spent their days, all their energy, devoted to God in the person of their Son. Literally, their whole existence was for God. And so also should our lives be directed!

During the hidden life the Messiah was living on the earth and very few people knew He was there. When He finally taught in Nazareth during his public ministry, what do the other residents say? “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” (Matt 13:55).

They didn’t know that the Messiah had been growing up in their midst!!

Just like His neighbors in Nazareth, we often don’t recognize His presence, even though we know by faith that Jesus is dwelling in each of us, in our midst. And much like His early life, when the Lordship of Jesus was hidden, so now His Lordship appears hidden to us, in that we don’t have access to Our Lord in the sacraments.

So if people didn’t recognize His presence, and He wasn’t performing His role as Messiah and Savior, why are we reflecting on this time of His life?

Well, this part of Jesus’ life had it’s own specific purpose and timeline – His manifestation as the Messiah could not be rushed. This was a time of private, quiet existence and growth and the development of a familial bond.

This period of our lives is no different – in God’s providence there is a specific timeline and purpose to it. This is a time meant for quiet, private growth of the presence of Christ in our family.

Only after He has been made flesh in ourselves and our family can He be made manifest to the rest of the world.

And just as Our Blessed Mother helped Jesus during their hidden life in Nazareth, so too she will help us to grow “in wisdom and favor before God.” She desires, as our Beloved Mother, that Christ will grow in each of our hearts. And when we can’t see Him, see will show Him to us. We can lean on her so that we might become Christ-bearers.

Perhaps before this pandemic, we had been neglecting to pay attention to God during the regular, ordinary times. Perhaps we had relegated Him to living only in the spiritual things. We “experienced” His presence only in the Mass and the Eucharist, and poorly at that.

And yet, the whole time He has been living under our noses – IN OUR OWN HOMES – and we did not know it. Maybe we had been suffering before this pandemic, and we didn’t know it. We didn’t know what we had been missing.

Maybe this quarantine is both a period of great suffering and a period of great blessing.

Mary experienced the hidden life as both. It was a time of great blessing in that Jesus belonged only to her. The great suffering came from her knowledge of what He was destined for.

It should be no different for us. The suffering is obvious. The blessing is what we need to focus our energy on. Right now Jesus is coming to us – in our hearts and homes and family. He wants us to know that we belong to Him and He belongs to us.

Eventually, we know that His public life will begin – or begin again – when our churches are reopened and we can attend Mass again.

But right now He is wishing to grow in His mystical body, in each of us individually. He is asking for our “fiat”, so that He might become flesh through us.

Who knows what God’s plan is, but as Houselander so eloquently says:

“[This] is a moment in which the world needs great draughts of supernatural life, needs the Christ-life to be poured into it, as truly and as urgently as a wounded soldier drained of his blood needs a blood transfusion.

In many souls, for this very reason, Christ will say: “It was for this hour that I came into this world.”

Because only individuals can bear Christ.

Only Christ-bearers can restore the world to life and give humanity back the vitality of love.“