Quotes of the Day for December 19, 2025 – Thoughts on the incarnation, the cross, and the healing of our woundss
- Michael Haldas
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
“The wounds come. None of us escapes the hurt and pain of human relationships. No parents are perfect. No siblings are ideal. Classmates and even best friends engage in shaming and bullying. Teachers, in their own brokenness, unwittingly give unintended lessons to a child. Over time, the conflict, the darkness and the hardening set in. We lose our capacity for awe and wonder and with it a clear view of the world. Our access to God seems blocked by the opacity of our own wounds. Reason cannot get us there. The wounds are deeper than that. Christ descends into this world of wounds in the Incarnation. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it. But, in many cases, the darkness seeks to assert its will. From the very beginning the darkness sought to kill the Christ Child and we see that opposition continue throughout His ministry. But Christ came into the darkness in order to heal it.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“The miracle of both the Incarnation and the Cross is that God invades and redeems what we consider to be dead. Our hearts. Our hope. He does not cut his losses and turn to something new, rather, he enters into his broken and dying creation to summon it back to life. This includes our own particular despair. Our illness or abandonment. Our loneliness or need. He arrives at the very heart of the circumstances that cause us to believe there is no other end than death and makes them the revelation, not of divine abandonment, but of our belovedness.” (Sarah Clarkson)
“In order to embrace the good news of Christmas, we must offer the broken dimensions of ourselves to Him for healing, especially those that arise from how comfortable we have become with the usual ways of corruption. Even as He entered fully into the misery of the world as we know it, we must welcome Him into our darkest and most difficult challenges. We become more fully our true selves as we embrace His restoration of the human person in God’s image and likeness. Even as He was born into a world enslaved to the fear of the death in order to liberate it, we must become living icons of what happens when people entrust themselves fully to the God-Man. We must manifest the new day of His Kingdom in response to every person and situation we encounter. We must serve a Lord Whose Reign remains not of this world and calls us all into question.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)
“Christ heals/saves human flesh in the incarnation, and then that salvation becomes ours when we are united to Christ through faith and the sacramental life in the Church, which is Christ’s Body. Salvation is not just God uniting Himself to humanity in Christ in the incarnation, but also is in our participation in this salvation – in our incorporation into Christ and into Christ’s Body. God became human so that humans might become divine. All the dividing walls between humanity and God have been removed so that now humanity can participate in the divine love and divine life.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“Feeling spiritually empty feels terrible but it is also an opportunity to be filled. We understand in the reality of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – the fullness of love of other. We understand in the Son’s incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection, the selfless sacrificial love of other human beings. When we turn to Jesus in our emptiness, unite ourselves to Christ by bearing whatever cross God has permitted us to bear; and extend love to others through prayer and actions, whoever God brings into our life (family, friends, colleagues) our emptiness and wounds will be transformed into fullness and our brokenness healed because we are in accord with Him.” (Sacramental Living Ministries)