In today’s first reading, Isaiah 40: 1-11, Isaiah reminds us
that our God comes with power; that he “rules by his strong arm.” We are about to celebrate Christmas, the
birth of our Savior. God came to us as a powerless infant, was subject to Mary
and Joseph as a child, assumed his public ministry at around the age of 30,
clashed with authorities of his day and was put to death. Where is the power, we may wonder. Our God rules very differently than the kings
of this world. God does not use power in the same way we do. Jesus’ power is His humility and his obedience to the
Father’s will. The mounds of evil were
leveled on Calvary, where Jesus, in His obedience to the Father’s will unto
death, destroyed Satan, crushed His head.
God continues to
enter our lives humbly in the Eucharist and through the quiet voice of the
Spirit speaking and working in the depths of our being and in the depths of the
hearts of others as well. We don’t see God at work most of the time because we
are looking with eyes other than those of our deepest God-self. We see as the world sees, not as God
sees. Most of the time, like Peter, who rebuked Jesus for making it clear “that he
was destined to go to Jerusalem and suffer grievously at the hands of the
elders and chief priests and scribes and to be put to death and to be raised up
on the third day” (Mt. 16: 21), we
think, “not as God thinks but as human beings do” (Mt. 16: 23).Yes, the “Lord Yahweh [is] coming with power, his arm maintains his authority,” (Is. 40: 10), the authority that put Satan to death on the cross, that put Satan to death by His obedience to the Father unto death, that put Satan to death by His humility.
By whose power to I overcome evil? By whose power do I triumph? Certainly not my own but God’s grace quietly transforming me from within and empowering me to “love tenderly, act with justice and walk humbly with our God” (compare Micah 6:8). God is transforming the world one person at a time by our cooperation in His work of redemption.
