Nowadays the old master, Michaelangeo, is getting a lot of mileage
out of two little cherubs plucked off the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,
only to reappear on cards, on posters, on postage stamps ….. and
everywhere! But if your name is “Michael-angel”, I suppose that’s
to be expected. The current fascination with celestial beings is o.k.,
but, for myself, another piece of that ceiling usually stops my eye dead
in its track: it’s the outstretched arm of God the Father meeting the
outstretched arm of our first father, Adam.
As their fingers touch and the divine energies of love and life pour
into Adam, I can just imagine the cosmic explosion, the spiritual Big
Bang! In His image and resemblance! Male and female! In Adam and Eve,
all of creation finds a voice and becomes reflective of God’s glory.
In countless ways their children, through the centuries, echo the words
of Psalm 148: Praise Him, sun and moon…..snow and mist…..orchards
and forests, wild animals and farm animals, young men and girls, old
people and children too!
That was the first touch of the divine. Adam and Eve lost their
touch, but we still, on our better days, see that touch in the Maine
woods and coast, in family and friends, in the warmth of our quality of
life. You created all things in wonderful beauty and order…..
Yet we feel the fragility of it all and the passing of all good
things. The news, T.V., newspapers, obits, etc. remind us each day of
our broken world and broken dreams and so we yearn and lick the backs of
the cherubs on our postage stamps, dreaming of another, better world.
But it is already here! How still more wonderful is the new creation
by which, in the fullness of time, You redeemed Your people. If the
first touch of the divine might have come in a cosmic explosion of life
and love, the second comes from within — in the quiet of the night.
A light shines in the dark, a light the darkness could not overpower…..
The light shines in the heart of Mary. Let it be done to me according
to Your will…… The Son of God is made flesh and “pitches His
tent among us”. All those He touched were cured.
Rather than look at angels, we kneel before the manger and look on
the One angel contemplate. We see Him as the firstborn of many brothers
and sisters and so see His Image in the little child, the elderly sick,
the suffering addict, the struggling poor. We see His touch in the
actions of nursing home caregivers and in the legacy of Harold Alfond.
We see His image in the unsung heroes of our own lives.
As we kneel before the manger at Christmas time, we envy not the
angels. No. They envy us! For He comes in the human and not the angelic,
and gives our human touch the second touch of the divine. His very birth
among us tells us that our future does not depend on what we produce,
but on what we are for one another.
—Father Ray
