• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Catholic Review

Catholic Review

Inspiring the Archdiocese of Baltimore

Menu
  • Home
  • News
        • Local News
        • World News
        • Vatican News
        • Obituaries
        • Featured Video
        • En Español
        • Sports News
        • Official Clergy Assignments
        • Schools News
  • Commentary
        • Contributors
          • Question Corner
          • George Weigel
          • Elizabeth Scalia
          • Michael R. Heinlein
          • Effie Caldarola
          • Guest Commentary
        • CR Columnists
          • Archbishop William E. Lori
          • Rita Buettner
          • Christopher Gunty
          • George Matysek Jr.
          • Mark Viviano
          • Father Joseph Breighner
          • Father Collin Poston
          • Robyn Barberry
          • Hanael Bianchi
          • Amen Columns
  • Entertainment
        • Events
        • Movie & Television Reviews
        • Arts & Culture
        • Books
        • Recipes
  • About Us
        • Contact Us
        • Our History
        • Meet Our Staff
        • Photos to own
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
        • CR Media platforms
        • Electronic Edition
  • Advertising
  • Shop
        • Purchase Photos
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
        • Magazine Subscriptions
        • Archdiocesan Directory
  • CR Radio
        • CR Radio
        • Protagonistas de Fe
  • News Tips
  • Subscribe

Christmas, freedom and obedience

December 25, 2019
By George Weigel
Filed Under: Commentary, The Catholic Difference

Share
Share on Facebook
Share
Share this
Pin
Pin this
Share
Share on LinkedIn

On Dec 17, the day the first “O Antiphon” signaled the intensification of preparations for Christmas, the Church read the genealogy of Jesus from Matthew’s gospel: writing for a predominantly Jewish-Christian audience, the evangelist stresses that the blessings promised to and through Abraham, and the dynastic promises made to King David, are about to be fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. Almost three weeks later, the Church will read the second Jesus-genealogy, in Luke 3:23-38. There, on the cusp of the Epiphany and the public manifestations of Jesus as Lord, the historical lens opens farther: Luke also traces Jesus’s ancestry through David and the patriarchs of Israel, but then extends the line back through “…the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.”

Why did Luke do that? In order to emphasize to his largely Gentile audience that Jesus is more than the fulfillment of Israel’s desire. He is surely that.  But as Joseph Ratzinger wrote in Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, he is also the one who assumes in himself “the whole history of man, and … gives it a decisive re-orientation toward a new manner of human existence.”  That evolutionary leap will only be revealed at the Resurrection, in the Risen Lord’s appearances to his disciples — which reminds us that Christmas is a great Christian feast because of Easter, the pre-eminent Christian feast.

And if Christmas only makes Christian sense because of Easter, Christmas is only possible because of Mary and her embrace of the mystery of obedient freedom.

On Dec. 20, the Church read in the Liturgy of the Hours excerpts from a homily by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, in which that Cistercian Doctor of the Church reflected on the singular curiosity of God making his plan of salvation dependent on the free choice of a young Jewish woman. Again, Joseph Ratzinger sheds light on this remarkable facet of the Christmas season: “After the error of our first parents, the whole world was shrouded in darkness, under the dominion of death. Now God seeks to enter the world anew. He knocks at Mary’s door. He needs human freedom. The only way he can redeem man, who was created free, is by means of a free ‘yes’ to his will. In creating freedom, [God] made himself in a certain sense dependent upon man. His power is tied to the unenforceable ‘yes’ of a human being.”

And that leads the Pope Emeritus into a Christmastide reflection on the relationship between freedom and obedience. A culture that often confuses freedom with willfulness, with doing things “my way,” will immediately ask, “What has ‘freedom’ to do with ‘obedience’?” To which the Church answers, “The road to true freedom — and, ultimately, to the redemption of humanity — runs through Mary’s response to the angelic announcement: ‘Be it done unto me according to your word’” (Luke 1:38). Benedict XVI then explains the salvific paradox in Luke’s rendering of the Annunciation/Incarnation. It is, he writes, “an utterly humble story, yet one whose very humility gives it … grandeur. It is Mary’s obedience that opens the door to God. God’s word, his Spirit, creates the child in her. He does so through the door of her obedience. In this way Jesus is the new Adam, the new beginning … from the Virgin, who places herself entirely at the disposal of God’s will. So a new creation comes about, which is nevertheless tied to the free ‘yes’ of a human creature, Mary.”

The Christmas story is a lengthy meditation on a counterintuitive but essential truth: true freedom, genuine liberation, comes through freely chosen obedience to God’s purposes. That was true, as we have just seen, for Mary. It was also true for Joseph, who freely agrees to take a pregnant teenager for his wife. It was true of the shepherds, who find their long-awaited savior, in previously unimagined circumstances no less, through obedience to an angelic announcement. It was true of the Magi, who freely travel to parts unknown, in obedience to what they perceive as a divine summons, conveyed by a star. And it was true of Jesus himself, who, at the end of the extended Christmas drama, returns as a youngster with his parents to Nazareth, where he was obedient to them — and through that obedience, “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52).

Freely chosen obedience to God’s purposes makes the world anew: from Christmas, to the Paschal Mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection.

Print Print

Share
Share on Facebook
Share
Share this
Pin
Pin this
Share
Share on LinkedIn

Primary Sidebar

George Weigel

View all posts from this author

| Recent Commentary |

Remember common decency in immigration enforcement

confirmation

Sponsors – for life

Listen for God this summer

The virtue of patriotism

Sculpture of St. Rita and St. Therese with a cross and holy water font at the center sits on a table

A Gift and a Connection to the Past

| Recent Local News |

Deacon Gary Elliott Dumer Jr., active in men’s ministry, dies

Radio Interview: The music and ministry of Seph Schlueter

Hunt Valley parishioner recalls her former student – a future pope

Father Herman Benedict Czaster, former Curley teacher, dies at 86

Loyola University Maryland graduate ordained Jesuit priest

| Catholic Review Radio |

CatholicReview · Catholic Review Radio

Footer

Our Vision

Real Life. Real Faith. 

Catholic Review Media communicates the Gospel and its impact on people’s lives in the Archdiocese of Baltimore and beyond.

Our Mission

Catholic Review Media provides intergenerational communications that inform, teach, inspire and engage Catholics and all of good will in the mission of Christ through diverse forms of media.

Contact

Catholic Review
320 Cathedral Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
443-524-3150
mail@CatholicReview.org

 

Social Media

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Recent

  • Pope Leo visits Italian Carabinieri station, Poor Clares during summer break
  • 1 officer dead, 3 seminarians kidnapped after attack on Nigerian seminary
  • Trump administration to appeal after judge blocks ICE detentions based on race
  • Remember common decency in immigration enforcement
  • Sponsors – for life
  • Listen for God this summer
  • 80 years after ‘Trinity,’ Catholic-hosted gathering calls to abolish nuclear weapons
  • Gaza’s Christian community persevering amid hardship and hope
  • Nearly one in three conceptions in England and Wales end in abortion, government figures reveal

Search

Membership

Catholic Media Assocation

Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association

The Associated Church Press

© 2025 CATHOLIC REVIEW MEDIA, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

en Englishes Spanish
en en