December 7th, 2024
“At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.”—Matthew 9:36
This reading from the Gospel of Matthew is given to us by the Church at the beginning of Advent, the time of waiting for the Lord. Since Christmas celebrates His nativity, I like to think of Advent as a time of spiritual pregnancy. Even though the chronological events of this particular Gospel are during Jesus’s public ministry, His words reveal to us His heart for us, which was moved with pity. The Greek translation of this passage (which can be found throughout the Scriptures as well) would use the word splanchnizomai. This refers to a kind of compassion that is guttural and comes from the bowels or intestines. It’s a kind of compassion that is painful, like a tearing of your insides. The kind of pain you want to resolve whether by action or by avoidance.
These words, given to us around the liturgical new year, illustrate the Heart of God for His people, that He would become incarnate for us. He is Emmanuel, God with us. He was so moved with compassion to the point of pity to the point of action. God became man. Everything that is only is because God first made an action, so everything we do is merely a response. He is the first melody, and what we offer in our virtue only harmonizes His Divine Beauty.
Someone who was in perfect harmony with the Father was Mary, whose pregnancy was only made possible by God in her perfect receptivity to Him. Only through her immaculate receptivity was she able to be impregnated by the Holy Spirit to be the Mother of God. Her witness is a great example not only for the everyday Christian during this season, but I would also say for every artist. To be receptive to the Creator, to have the openness to who He is (Love and Beauty Himself) is to be a vessel of His Beauty. The vessel is then also a transmitter. First we must contain His beauty within our very hearts and our very selves (like a pregnancy), then we have the ability to collaborate with the Creator to promulgate and perpetuate that which we have received (like a nativity).
The Nativity of Jesus is simply a sacramental (or a visible sign of an invisible reality) of the collaborative act of co-creation between God and Mary. As artists, we have not only the invitation but also the duty to respond in the same fashion. In St. John Paul II’s Letter to Artists, he speaks of one’s artistic creativity helping us to appear more than ever in His image: “With loving regard, the divine Artist passes on to the human artist a spark of his own surpassing wisdom, calling him to share in his creative power.”
As we wait on the Lord, let us do so in hopeful expectancy for the Savior, who wants nothing more than to be born in us and through us. May our work be aligned with and attuned to the Loving Creator as we respond to Beauty with beauty. May our voices (through artistic expression) harmonize with the Divine Will of the Triune God, especially through the loving intercession of Mary, Mother of Beauty.
Krista Corbello is a Filipina-American speaker, activist, and artist based in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. She has a day job as a campus minister, a night job as the founder of Even This Way, and a podcast just for kicks.
Find out more about her here.