We are winding up another year overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic, and as we do so we are accompanied by hymns and carols heralding the advent of the infant king. Approaching Christmas we remember how the Christ child was born offering us redemption and completing His creation, but another theme has been acutely present to our minds over the past two years: our own mortality.
The birth of the son is the death of the Father, wrote the German philosopher GWF Hegel. This cryptic statement reveals a concise and profound notion, because without the birth of the Christ child, He could not have been crucified on the Cross later in his Earthly sojourn. One must, however, tread carefully here, for it was Christ in his divinity who died on the Cross and not the divinity itself. Through sending His only son, God the Father participated in the agony of his son, and the son in turn offered Himself to His father for our sins.
