Day 11: Small and Beautiful
Editor’s Note: On the eleventh day of our Advent blog series, “Following the Holy Family in Solidarity,” newly commissioned lay missioner Mary Liston Liepold, OFS reflects on Jesus’ humility, both in the Eucharist and in his Nativity.
“O sublime humility! O humble sublimity!”
Though St. Francis was speaking of the Eucharist when he wrote these awestruck words to his brothers, the Eucharist IS the incarnate Christ, so small and humble that we can take Him in.
We take it into our bodies, as often as possible, so we can grow in awareness, in reverence, in our capacity for awe. The all-powerful Lord of the Universe was born as a tiny, wailing infant around this time, some 2,025 years ago. Christ was born for us, ennobling all creation by His life, death, and resurrection. In the words of the hymn “How Great Thou Art,” “I scarce can take it in.”
Humble sublimity. Smallness, weakness, omnipotence, and majesty beyond imagination. The beauty that fills the universe. As children of God, children – incomprehensibly – of the Christ Child and Creator, you and I partake in this paradox. We can connect to the sublime – perhaps even participate in creation – with the humility appropriate for human beings, and we have 12 days to live that mystery with particular gratitude, beginning now.
The three sons I gave birth to all weighed between six and seven pounds, so I can imagine the way Jesus felt and looked in Mary’s arms – a bit puny and unbelievably beautiful, both human and divine.
Because I spent most of the 1970s tending to small bodies, it was the early ’80s before I read E. F. Schumacher’s prescient Small Is Beautiful, published in 1973. Subtitled Economics as if People Mattered, it urged us to moderate our greed and unholy ambition for our own sake and that of the planet. I learned recently that Dorothy Day loved the book as much as I did, and found it in sync with the thinking of her mentor, Peter Maurin. The world would be a better place today if Schumacher’s principle of “enoughness” had been taken seriously by enough people with power.
As a secular Franciscan, I’m particularly called to what we call minority: being comfortable with being less. Minority is a close ally of humility. My dear friends MJ & Jerry Park, who founded Little Friends for Peace (an FMS DC Service Corps partner site) more than 40 years ago, understand the beauty and the power of being small. I pray that I can emulate them in my mission.
God, grant us all the humility and trust to show up the size you want us to be, to see ourselves, each other, and the world through Mary’s eyes and God’s: as both small and beautiful.
Questions for Reflection: Spend a moment reflecting on how God exemplifies humility. How does God invite you to grow in humility?
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