The Paradox of the Incarnation
Coming back from Thanksgiving break is difficult for both faculty and students. Everyone can see the finish line, and so students begin to anticipate vacation while there is still homework and tests to complete. Faculty likewise are anticipating the vacation yet are still required to teach, while also administering and grading the homework and tests students turn in. This is fitting for the Nativity season because it begs the question, how do we see Christ’s coming in this season?
The Orthodox Church teaches us of the glory of the coming of Christ, that all of history hinges upon this moment when God became man for the Life of the World. Yet, how do we teach this to kindergarteners or middle-schoolers? The incarnation is a mystery for everyone wrap our heads around, much less students. To help answer this question, we may turn once more to the principle of lex orandi lex credendi: as we pray, so we believe. In this season, the Orthodox faithful sing the Kontakion of the Nativity:
The Virgin cometh today
To the cave to give birth
Ineffably to bring forth
The Word eternal
Therefore, rejoice O earth
At the message
With the angels and shepherds
Give glory to him
Who shall appear by His own will
As a young child
He who is from eternity God.
While this hymn is loaded with theology, I’d like to focus on the last 3 lines which tell us that God willed to appear as a young child. Anyone who works with children knows the reality of the statement: working with kids is hard.
The gospels are silent on Christ’s early years except for one passage in the Gospel of Luke where Christ scares the living daylights out of His parents by wandering away and not telling them where He was going. Granted, He was teaching in the Temple, but still, the perspective of Mary and Joseph sounds like the parents of any 12-year-old, a bemusing mix of respect and frustration. This, then, is the key to seeing the Incarnation at the Academy. Jesus was the same age as every one of our students from grades K-12. While Christ was sinless, that didn’t mean he didn’t scare or frustrate his parents either. Given God’s sense of humor in my own life, we can see the Incarnation in the innocent mischief of first grade, the reaction to getting in trouble of 5 th grade, and the mix of being almost an adult but not quite of a high schooler. We get another glimpse of this relationship between Christ and His Mother in the Gospel of John when she prompts His first miracle. At first, He refused. One can almost feel the look she gave Him, we’ve all experienced that look.
At the Academy, we see the Incarnation in every single one of our students. I tell my classes, Jesus has felt every single emotion you have ever felt. He was hungry, He was thirsty, He did things which appeared mischievous, He laughed, He told jokes, He was tired. This is the glory of Orthodoxy. Yes, Jesus is fully God. Paradoxically, He is also fully human, with all the growth and pain and angst that entails. As Fr. Thomas Hopko was fond of saying, Orthodoxy is Paradoxy. Parents and teachers encounter this paradoxy every day with our own kids and students. On the one hand, they are wonderful and interesting little people who constantly amaze us with their insights and wit. Yet, they are also incredibly frustrating sometimes. In this antimony we see Christ for who He is. So in this Nativity season, as we finish out the semester, let us see Christ in the students and children in our lives, the wonderful and joyful, and the bemusing and frustrating.
As always, in the final word of St. John Chrysostom, Glory to God for All Things!
John W. Heitzenrater, II A.B., M.H.M.
Headmaster
jheitzenrater@chrysostomacademy.org
610-427-2758