the miracle of the incarnation: seminary christmas greeting to the bishops

Your Grace, your Excellency. 

 We come before you today as a community who rejoice at the coming of our Lord. We celebrate his coming not just in spirit, not in a burning bush, not in a pillar of fire and cloud mighty they might sound but we celebrate him as one coming to us in the flesh. This is the greatest of all miracles, a miracle greater than the resurrection itself. God can raise dead bodies to life, much more his own dead body to life. That is a miracle in itself but it is understandable from one who is the creator of life. If he can turn clay to life, why not a dead body? But a God, a pure spirit to become man - that is amazing to behold, too marvelous to comprehend, too sublime to fully fathom. This is what our greeting is all about. We express in songs and poetry, we express in drama and dance the joy which the mystery of the incarnation brings us.

We are the community of St. Vincent Ferrer. We were established and sustained by your predecessors for more than a century for a sole purpose: to continually incarnate Jesus in the archdiocese of Jaro - to make him flesh, to make him tangible in a way that people are touched, to make him audible in the human voice people around us can understandable, to make him comprehensible in a way that he can be followed and loved. And where can we do that specifically ... in the priesthood.


St. Vincent Ferrer was established, if I am allowed to say, to perpetuate the mystery of the incarnation. We were established, so to say, to prolong Christmas in the different parts of the diocese from the city centre to the remotest barangays - to perpetuate the incarnation, to make it permanent; to prolong Christmas through the person and work of the priest. This is our task, this is and should be the reason why we labor in this institution and why our seminarians persist and persevere. A would be priest could not help but be a celebrator of Christmas for in the end that is his destiny - to make Jesus continually flesh, to make Jesus continually tangible, perceptible, audible. Christmas, more than Easter, is the reason of our being.
We would like to thank you, Your Grace and Your Excellency, for believing in us, for entrusting to us this sacred institution. May we live up to your expectations and to our mission. We thank you for your support, for encouraging us and our seminarians to persevere.

We greet you with the joy only the miracle of the incarnation can bring.