engages the whole world
in a conspiracy of love.
Scrooge suffers from a failure to imagine the human world as more than one filled with worthless dregs who, as he so callously says, refuse to die and decrease the surplus population. Three spirits haunt him and seek to correct his memory and expand his heart. He is reminded again and again that his desires for wealth and self-sufficiency have long been disordered, costing him his marriage, his friendships and a chance at genuine happiness and life-giving purpose.
Scrooge is most moved by a child who sees his own tragically broken body as a reminder that the season we celebrate centers on the birth of the one who heals all wounds, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.
[The] power and inherent meaning of the Incarnation of the Christ child, of God becoming like the children of this world draws us all into its salvific mystery. Christ joined and redeemed the whole human family in all of our complex and beautiful diversity.
Wealth cannot cure what Søren Kierkegaard aptly names as the sickness unto death—that ever-creeping possibility of despair, without which we would not be human. We are redeemed by the grace of the moment of revelation, much like Scrooge, who returns from his fanciful and spiritual journey transformed. Instead of avoiding his own history of isolation and loss, he accepts the opportunity to finally integrate its revelatory power into his life and rediscover the power of humility. The experience of being brought low, close to the ground, also exalts him, lifts him up.
The one who entered our world as the most vulnerable of children, ever willing to be an efficacious sacrament of the Father and creator of all, dares to reinvent what it means to be human and asks us to recognize him, the God who blesses us, in all of us, everyone.
Quotation source 2 & full article
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