LUENSE: The scandal of particularity

One of the unique liturgical aspects of the Feast of the Nativity that we just celebrated is the fact that the Church has four distinct Masses for Christmas: The Vigil Mass, the Mass during the Night, the Mass at Dawn, and the Mass during the Day. Each of these four has its own set of readings and prayers.

The Church seems to be saying to us that this feast has such depth that she needs a larger collection of readings and prayers to begin to communicate its meaning. Lately, I have been particularly intrigued by the choice of Gospel text for the Vigil Mass.

The Gospel for the Christmas Vigil Mass is taken from the Gospel of Matthew and has both a long and a short version. In most parishes, they usually take the short version.

It is highly recognizable, focused on Joseph’s participation, and begins, “This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about…” There are very good pastoral reasons to choose this shorter version when the Church is packed to the rafters with families with very young children. I don’t second guess pastors in the least for exercising this option.

Still, I find myself drawn to the long version that contains Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, going from Abraham to Jesus in three sets of 14 generations each. For parishes that do take the long version, the deacon or priest who proclaims the Gospel has his work cut out for him with a great number of hard-to-pronounce names.

Great heroes like David and Solomon are part of the list, but also surprising characters like Tamar (who dresses as a prostitute and seduces her father-in-law), Ruth (a foreigner), and some very questionable kings like Rehoboam and Manasseh. The genealogy flows to Joseph before introducing his wife Mary and noting, “Of her was born Jesus who is called the Christ.”

If one takes this part of the Gospel seriously, then it becomes impossible to avoid what theologians often call “the scandal of particularity.” It becomes impossible to separate this Jesus who is the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One of God, from the tangled history of these particular people of Israel whom God has elected as his own.

And this Jesus is a very particular person born at a particular place in a particular time within a particular culture and religious tradition. The Savior of all humanity, indeed the Savior of the entire universe, is not generic or general at all. His person and his history are unabashedly particular.

This is called the “scandal” of particularity because it runs so counter to so many aspects of our contemporary culture. It seems so counter-intuitive to us that God would work this universal salvation in one very particular way.

Would it not have made more sense (to us at least) for God to have worked out this universal salvation in a generic way, or at least by working through many different cultures and many different revelations?

But our Christian faith, our celebration of Christmas, says something very different. It says that all of history and all of humanity turns on this one person. Yes, salvation is universally offered, and God loves all people. But God works out this salvation and makes manifest His love in a decidedly particular way. There is no room in the Christian faith for easy syncretism or indifferentism. All ways and paths are not equal. God chose one path through one person: the Incarnate Word of God, Jesus of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem, crucified, died, risen, and ascended, the Christ of God.

This Christmas, perhaps we might do well to spend some time reflecting on what this feast teaches us about this scandal of particularity. 

Brian Luense is an associate director with the Archdiocesan Office of Evangelization and Catechesis.