On the synodal journey for Christmas

By Fr Donald Chambers

The liturgical season of Christmas is close at hand, and it is celebrated within the universal Church’s synodal journey. What is the relationship between Christmas and the synod journey?

The birth of Jesus of Nazareth is a pivotal moment of the Incarnation in which the God of Abraham, Moses, and Ruth takes on human flesh and lives in space and time without abandoning His divinity.

The authors of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke reflect and write about the Incarnation using attractive and appealing stories of the virginal conception of Christ, the visit of the Magi, the Annunciation, and the birth and visit of the shepherds.

On the other hand, the writer of John’s Gospel was very philosophical in his approach to the Incarnation. He writes, “The Word was made flesh; he lived among us” (1:14).

Writing some three decades before the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, the Apostle Paul adopted a Christian hymn reflecting theologically on the Incarnation (Phil 2:6 –11).

In responding to the question about the relationship between Christmas and the synodal journey, I use this Christ hymn and some insights from the Universal Synthesis.

His state was divine,

yet he did not cling

to his equality with God

but emptied himself

to assume the condition of a slave,

and became as men are. . .

he was humbler yet,

even to accepting death. . .

But God raised him high . . .

A brief interpretation of this passage unearths the meaning of the Incarnation for the Early Church. The hymn declares that Jesus’ “being” was divine; He was God and could reveal Himself as God.

However, Jesus Christ did not take advantage of that equality with God nor regard this equality with God as something to be exploited. Instead, He relinquished or emptied Himself of the glorious condition of His divine nature. Using the Greek verb kenoun, which means “to be rendered powerless or ineffective”, the hymn communicates that Christ freely caused Himself to be powerless as an enslaved person is defenceless.

As with an enslaved person, Christ renounces all honours, power, and riches. In addition, the hymn speaks of the Incarnation in concrete terms in that Jesus took on equality with human nature and lived like humans, even choosing death on the cross, which was proper for enslaved people and foreigners in the Roman-occupied territory.

The hymn concludes by describing God’s action in raising Him from death, exalting Him, and assigning a name above all names.

At the core of the theological reflection on the Incarnation is the powerlessness of Jesus. Christ’s powerlessness is also captured in Matthew and Luke’s stories of Jesus’ birth – the unexpected labour of Mary and the non-availability of room to give birth, giving birth in the humiliating condition of a stable, Herod’s threat, and the family’s forced migration to Egypt.

However, the Christmas story is not simply about the powerlessness period, but the Holy Spirit as the protagonist from conception to birth and beyond. The Holy Spirit guides and directs the movement of the divine ‘I’ to commune with the humanity of ‘we’ to raise human nature to a transformed state.

The Conversation in the Spirit, a listening and discernment method on the synodal journey, is grounded and guided theologically by the meaning of the Incarnation.

By listening deeply, the Conversation in the Spirit aims to move participants from the ‘I’ to the ‘You’ to the ‘We’. The participants of the recently concluded Synodal Assembly testified to this spiritual movement in themselves in the Universal Synthesis.

They wrote, “Placing Jesus at the centre of our lives requires some degree of self-emptying. In this perspective, providing a listening ear means being willing to ‘decentre’ oneself to leave space for the other. We have experienced this in the dynamic of conversations in the Spirit” (16. c).

Practically speaking, the Conversation in the Spirit is designed to facilitate a dying of the self (decentre) and rising to new life, new meaning, new ideas, and new ways forward.

Round one consists of personal sharing from our prayer time with a selected scripture passage. At this stage, the ‘I’ intentionally speaks and actively listens. Participants are invited to open their hearts and minds to listen to others speaking and be attentive to how the Spirit moves.

In round two, we move from the ‘I’ to the ‘YOU’. What emerges within us when the ‘OTHER’ person speaks?

Round three moves the process to the ‘WE’ level, that is, discerning ways the Holy Spirit may be moving, not in me, but in the group.

As with the Incarnation, the Conversation in the Spirit aims to make us relinquish the glory of the ‘I’ and rise in communion with the ‘WE’.

May this Christmas inspire and empower the Church to remain faithful to the synodal journey.

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Fr Donald Chambers of the Archdiocese of Kingston, Jamaica is the General Secretary of the Antilles Episcopal Conference.