Catholic and Conservative

On Christmas Morning Our Salvation Began

As each and every Christmas morning approaches I am reminded of just how monumentally important Jesus’ birth was for this world.  Because it was His birth, the Incarnation of God, that allowed His eventual death to bring us salvation, for previous to Christ’s death on the cross the gates of Heaven were closed to us.  Adam and Eve took care of that.  Thus, man’s existence on Earth had zero meaning, because he was now permanently separated from God.  But the Father did not want to be separated from His creation, His image and likeness.  And John 3:16 says;

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

The opportunity for eternal life was now ours, a gift given to us by our Father in the form of a baby Jesus who would grow and love us in person, and then one day hang from a tree, bleeding from all his extremities, completely broken and humiliated for our sake.  So that we could be with him in paradise, for He so loved us.

It All Started in a Manger

As Christians we’ve all been exposed to the Manger Scene innumerable times and in many forms.  It’s the Manger Scene that is the centerpiece of Christmas imagery.  It’s what makes us recall what Christmas is all about; the birth of Christ, fully man and fully God, born to a Virgin.  These Manger Scenes are usually ornate, clean, nicely lit with Jesus lying in what seems to be a very comfortable little bed.  Nothing could be farther from the truth, although the Truth of Christ’s birth and its imagery is much more compelling than what we’re used to seeing.

God Himself chose to become human so that we could have the pathway to eternal life; Himself.  As He is the author of the Universe, the Almighty, He could have simply chosen to appear out of the blue, placed the entire world on notice that He had arrived, snapped His fingers and saved us all.  Or at the very least, He could have made Himself born to royalty with every comfort known and drawn extraordinary attention to Himself, after all, God was paying us a visit and in the flesh.

But no, He chose to be born into poverty and not even in a house, but in a stable – a barn, that stunk for all sorts of reasons.  And when he did arrive, God subjecting Himself to humanity which is lower than one of us becoming a cockroach, he chose to lay in a manger, the feed-tank for all the animals in the stable.  In the dark, in the cold, laying in nasty smelly hay.  THIS WAS GOD!  Oh yeah, add to it that he was born in Bethlehem, the bottom of the barrel in the Tribes of Israel.

Could you imagine anyone in America today, if they had the choice, choosing to be born in the most unsanitary and nondiscript way possible?  Of course not.  We’ve become so self absorbed with such an entitlement mentality that we would demand only the best for ourselves.  Because so many Americans are selfish; selfish to the bone.  But not Christ, not God – completely selfless.  What an example the story of Jesus’ birth is regarding how we should live our lives.  To not draw attention to ourselves, the be obedient to the Father, to seek to be last – not first – so that we can serve all and not be served.  How far away from this example this country has moved in the last 20 years.

Christ – Substance Over Form

One of the most attractive things to me about Christ’s life, a big reason why he is my hero, my mentor, and His life my main example, is the fact that He was completely about the substance of things, not their form.  One of the many lessons taught by how Christ’s birth unfolded was just this; that He put almost no value in form over substance.  Scripture speaks numerous times about not paying attention to what you have, what you wear, to be “in” the world and not “of” it.

His entire existence was an example of substance over form.  Everything Christ did, everything he said, everything He left us through the Church was of substance.  He left us His Word through Scripture and Sacred Tradition, He left us His Body and Blood though the transubstantiation of the bread and wine, and He left us His Advocate in the form of the Holy Spirit.

America – Form Over Substance

One of the most unattractive and anger provoking things to me about what America has become, a big reason why I started this blog, is the fact that so many of us have become so phony.  To be fair, it really depends upon what part of the country you live whether the form over substance sickness is an epidemic or just a bug.  Where I live, it’s a cancer.  For example, everyday I see women who look like they woke up at 4 a.m. to work out and then get dressed in tight jeans and stilettos just to buy a cup of coffee, only to drive their Range Rovers back home to get ready to go shopping .  Or I see young boys driving cars that have more sound equipment than a recording studio, that have rims that cost more the value of the vehicle itself, who spend hundreds of dollars on baseball hats they wear to the side and sneakers that never seem to get dirty.  The saddest thing is most of these kids can’t adequately articulate themselves.  Why should we be surprised?  They spend all their time on how they look.

But no matter where you live in America, you can’t escape the continuous onslaught of the form of things via the media; Hollywood, television shows, television commercials, magazines, music.  The bully pulpits of liberalism.  Everything thrown our way by the media is focused on convincing you and I that we have to look a certain way, sound a certain way, dress a certain way, drive the best car, date the hottest babes, etc., etc.  The American image is promoted as so unbelievable shallow.  What happened to us?  We used to be a country that was all about substance – that is absolutely what made us great.  We didn’t care about anything but “getting it done.”  Now, an enormous amount of the population couldn’t care less about getting it done, as long as they look good not doing anything.

The form over substance epidemic in the United States will be our ultimate downfall.  Because hard work and results are what moves things forward in the world and those things pay no mind to your “bling” or if “that’s how you roll”.  The pathway back to the America that all those before us built before the evil of Liberalism took us off track, the one where the substance of things ruled the day is Conservatism.  For it is in Conservatism that we can find all the examples of Christ, from His humble birth to His horrendous death.  As Christ’s birth created the pathway to ultimate salvation though His death, so does Conservatism provide a road-map for the salvation of this great country.