Those who knew Benedictine Fr. Godfrey Diekmann (1908-2002) will forgive his Teutonic exuberance regarding the centrality of the Incarnation. His friend, colleague and biographer, Sacred Heart Sr. Kathleen Hughes, tells the story of a dinner conversation in the student dining room at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., where Godfrey got worked up about the key to Christian theology and life: “He startled and silenced a good number of tables around us when he shouted, ‘It’s not the Resurrection, dammit! It’s the Incarnation!’ Then, as students slipped away, he continued, ‘But we don’t believe it. We don’t believe we are invited to become the very life of God!’ ”
Diekmann’s lifelong passion, inspired by his mentor, Virgil Michel, founder of the American pastoral liturgical movement as forerunner to the Second Vatican Council, was to unfold the startling implications of what he called “the Gospel of divine life.” Salvation is first revealed not in Christ’s death on the cross or his resurrection, Diekmann believed, but in his conception and birth. Christmas, not Easter, is the moment of salvation. God’s entry into time and history as human revealed human destiny for all of us. Our existence is an invitation to friendship with God; our future is life with God. For Christians, baptism articulates this transformation, but the potential is universal, anthropological. To be human is to be offered divine life. What Jesus had in essence we are given as gift. The Word is made flesh, and from that moment, nature is being perfected by grace toward life in God.
Why should such theological table talk impress us? And why, as Diekmann lamented, is it so hard to believe? Because as Christian doctrine emerged, especially in the West, redemption was emphasized as the result of Jesus’ death on the cross. If such a terrible sacrifice was the price of our salvation, then human sin must have been terrible indeed, a state of degradation so pervasive and hopeless that only a life of penance and vigilance could keep us safe. The church’s role was to channel grace to sinners through the sacraments. A fearful laity lived at the edge of damnation, dependent on the parish priest, who held ultimate power. A loving God receded into the distant heavens, while his divine Son sat sternly atop a hierarchy of clergy with the power to grant or withhold forgiveness. Outside the church there was no salvation, so millions of people were consigned automatically to hell.
If this sounds familiar, you are a Catholic of certain age and generation. If the invitation to friendship with God seems too good to believe, even heretical, you might be hearing the Gospel for the first time. If such an adjustment of theological emphasis seems refreshing, even liberating, then now you know why Vatican II was so necessary. Welcome to the real meaning of Christmas. Step out of the shadows into the light. The mystery is here, all of it, and it is not just for Jesus, but, through him, for all of us.