It is good that we are here
November 27, 2022
“It is good that we are here.” (Matthew 17:4) These words were spoken by Peter to our Lord at the Transfiguration and they are words that keep running through my head as I reflect on the beginning of our time here in the Holy Land. It seems like it should go without saying, but it is incredible to be able to walk in this place, to be in the place where the Word became flesh, where Jesus was born, to see where the “yes” of Mary culminated in the birth of our savior.
It blows my mind to consider that God, the One who created everything that is, would desire our salvation, the salvation of those beings which He created, so badly that He would become like us so that, through His grace, we might become like Him. In the book, Mary: The Church at the Source, Cardinal Ratzinger talks about how, in order for a seed to bear fruit, it must enter the soil, pulling the nutrients from the soil, and assimilating them to itself in order to bring about something truly new. This is what happened. The Holy Spirit came upon Mary (Luke 1:35), she conceived, and allowed herself to be absorbed by the seed. “God’s Word…assimilated the other — the soil — into itself, became man in the “soil” of his Mother, and then, fused with the soil of the whole of humanity.” (Ratzinger p. 14). The culmination of this process, the birth of our Savior happened here. “It is good that we are here.”
-Reflection by Dane Dickinson Diocese of Davenport
