I was in the seminary during my high school years, living in Hannibal at a boarding school. But every Saturday morning for four years, I had a date. Mind you, it wasn’t the kind of date you might be thinking of. This date was with a long dead Latin scholar, Charles Edwin Bennett. The first fifteen minutes of the class were given over to learning five new verbs from The New Latin Grammar—published almost a century before. My personal copy of this grammar is one book I will never let go of. The list of hundreds of verbs not only assisted my learning Latin, but most importantly gave me a foundation in English vocabulary that I rely on almost daily.
One of those verbs comes to mind almost every time I celebrate Reconciliation. I give or I receive absolution. This comes from solvo, solvere, solvi, solutus:  to loosen or untie. I can still hear Father Wenting giving our class the many cognates in English, absolve, dissolve, resolve, solve, solution, resolute, dissolute. The root word might make you think of the untying, loosening aspect of the word for the prayer of forgiveness, but I like to think of it also from the chemical understanding. A solution is something that results when you add a solvent to a miscible compound and it frees the components to mix together in a homogenous state. When a priest absolves a penitent, Christ is freeing them from the guilt of sin. The sin is dissolved away from the soul and is no longer present.
At the Christmas Masses the congregation will all genuflect and remain kneeling for a slight pause as we speak the words of the Creed:  “And by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.” For many years, we said “was born of the Virgin Mary.” The revised English translation uses more of the Latin cognates or loan words in principle, so it makes sense to translate incarnatus est this way. I am more inclined to favor the word “enfleshed” which might be seen as a calque word, a literal word for word translation from the Latin which is itself a calqued translation of the Greek original of the creed.
Calques are used to translate words that have no history in a language. You can either borrow the word and bring it into the second language like we brought in the word algebra from Arabic. Or you can come up with a literal translation for the new word. The word scapegoat is a calque of the Hebrew word Azazel/ez ozel, the goat that departs, one of many calques that came into English through the translation of the Scriptures.
So what is the point here? Words matter. People ask me if I am ready for Christmas, presuming that there is something I must be doing to make Christmas happen. This fits perfectly with the American understanding of work and productivity as that by which all things are valued. It also attends to our desire to create an atmosphere or mood that contributes to personal happiness, ours or of those we love.
I do believe that our preparations—the gifts, the food, the decorations, the music, and the visiting—are part of entering into the mystery of Christmas. I think of my favorite Christmas music which is the Cambridge Singers’ double Christmas album, one named the Peace of Christmas and the other named the Joy of Christmas. There is no doubt that Christmas is meant to make us feel happy. And that is good.
The Mystery of the Incarnation has to be about more than an emotion. Christmas is the time of a new understanding, a new way of thinking about God and about humanity. This mystery is called the Incarnation:  that which is pure Spirit becomes enfleshed in the Virgin’s womb. This is especially important these days when the secular themes and trappings of Christmas have crowded out the central mystery and the sole reason to celebrate. This year’s Christmas is an opportunity to reflect on the Word Made Flesh. The eternal Son of God emptied himself and took the form of a baby. The Son of God is the Son of Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit. Incarnation then becomes the true Word of salvation.
The birth of Jesus Christ is the reason why we do everything we do during this season. We are getting closer to forgetting this. That it has become more about the Christmas feeling than the Christmas mystery becomes clear to me as holiday trappings are put away on the 26^th and out comes the Valentine stuff. Once we have had that magic moment—the gift giving, the Christmas roast, or simply the day off from work, it’s back to business as usual. Even the Church this year has a very short Christmas Season. The long blessing of this year’s Advent means a shorter Christmastide.
During the next two weeks of the Christmas Season, I ask you to consider the meaning of Christmas on a deeper level. That means paying attention to the words of the Gospel and the prayers at the liturgy and the hymns that we sing in Church. The Son of God not only dwelt for a time in the manger of Bethlehem. The story we read at Christmas is just the beginning of the Incarnation. In Chapter 14 of the Gospel of John, Jesus tells the apostles “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” The Incarnation continues every time we accept the Lord into our hearts, especially in the Holy Eucharist.
Jesus is the Word of God. Jesus is the fullness of God revealing himself in the person, the message and the work of Jesus Christ. The Word of God is spoken so that mankind can hear of the Father’s love. Those who ponder that word, as Mary did in her heart, will also give birth to the Savior within. Saint Ambrose says it beautifully in his meditation on the Magnificat:  “Let Mary’s soul be in each of you to proclaim the greatness of the Lord. Let her spirit be in each to rejoice in the Lord. Christ has only one mother in the flesh, but we all bring forth Christ in faith.”