Weekday

The Meaning of the Incarnation in Ordinary Time
A Meditation by Dom Augustin Guillerand

Instead of attempting to free ourselves from the things of the senses, or
abstracting from them, we should try to probe deeper into them; not stopping at
their external appearance, which changes, but seeking what is hidden deep in
their substance: their being, in a word. For God is Being. And thus we shall find
him beneath the veil of the senses.

This is the meaning of the Incarnation. God became tangible, in order to
teach us to find him in all that we touch and see and feel; for we are necessarily
bound to the senses in this life. Jesus did not do away with these external
contacts; what he taught us is not to stop at them. He taught us to find His
Father in everything: in the flowers, in the lilies of the field, in the birds, in
sorrow – in everything, because everything comes from his love, and must return
to it. That while we acknowledge him as God seen by men, we may be drawn by
him to the love of things unseen.

We must endeavour, therefore, to cultivate this spiritual ‘second sight’. It
is the secret of the saints, for whom this world is not an obstacle between their
souls and God, but a living image, a resplendent mirror of his goodness and
beauty. It is this great Reality, so utterly beyond our conception, that the
Incarnation made possible: that by loving and imitating Jesus incarnate, we love
and imitate God himself.

Dom Augustin Guillerand. Where Silence is Praise. Trans. A Monk of Parkminster. London: Darton,
Longman & Todd, 1960. 121-122.