Rise up in splendor, Jerusalem! Your light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you. Isa 60:1
We indeed have seen a great light, and the glory of the Lord has shone upon us these last days. Unfortunately, the unwelcome glitter of the materialism and consumerism that dominates the cultural narrative of these holy days can distract us from this joy. The competitive nature which is worked into consumerism often leads us to be victims of this distraction. We find ourselves preoccupied not only with our own want for material things, but also with comparing ourselves to others’ personal gifts and talents. Yet the Solemnity of the Lord’s Nativity centers around the joy that comes from God’s presence among us and rejoices in what he will do for each of us in the course of his life and ministry. Because of this, instead of worrying about how we and what we have compare with others, we ought to rejoice in his unique abiding presence in our hearts.
In his earthly ministry, our Lord tells us: The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you (Mark 4:24). But, by whom? Perhaps our Lord is saying that he will use our own metrics against us, or perhaps we become our own judges. The more we judge others, the more we hem ourselves in. Each time we judge others we establish, as it were, a string of hatred put up by annoyance and jealousy. If we go about our day constantly judging and criticizing, sooner or later we apply this same mindset to how we perceive ourselves and our own self-worth. We end up plucking these strings and create a symphony of self-hatred as we compare ourselves to others—when we measure ourselves and others by our own preferences or our own assessment of what we deserve and what others do not.
This self-composed dirge is no way to “Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart” (Ps 32:11). But this is what this holy season calls us to. In his commentary on this Psalm, Saint Augustine tells us that Jesus himself provides this method of singing in a manner perfectly pleasing to God (Saint Augustine, Ps. 32, sermo 1, 7-8: CCL 38, 253-254).
Jesus Christ became man for our sake and our salvation—salvation even from ourselves; salvation from self-hatred born out of comparison with our neighbor. We are uniquely made by God, not in the image of one another, but in the image and likeness of God himself. By his incarnation Jesus Christ gives us the only model by which we ought to measure ourselves.
In this holy season, let us rejoice in the gifts given to us by the giver of all good things. Let us rejoice that he has given us the ability to serve and praise him in a unique way determined by his infinite love for us: a love that has endowed us with all we need to build up his kingdom on earth. Then we will be able to offer to him, according to our own gifts, a perfect sacrifice of praise (Heb 13:15).
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Image: Tom Roberts, Jealousy (1889)
