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Good morning and Merry Christmas to you and your family. This morning I'm joined by Bishop Robert

Baram, the ninth bishop of the diocese of Winona Rochester and the founder of Word on Fire,

which I recommend to everyone. Bishop Baram, welcome. Thank you for joining me on Newt's World.

Here at Christmas, would you mind starting us off with a message about Christmas and what it means to you?

Well first of all, thank you for having me on. It's good to be with you and Merry Christmas to all the

listeners today. You know something that church fathers said over and over again was,

God became man that man might become God and it might seem a little peculiar at first but it's

based in the Bible, namely that God becomes one of us precisely to draw us into his life.

So the Greek fathers talked about theosis in their language but Thomas Aquinas picked it up in the

West. He used the word deficazio, deification that we become sharers in God's nature. God became

one of us that we might become sharers in his own life and then I think is the deepest meaning of

Christmas. It's the message of the incarnation. So not just a sort of a strange one off but something

that's at the very heart of our human life that God is not just a moral exemplar for us but God

is calling us into intimacy with himself and that happens through the incarnation and that's the

message of Christmas. God becomes this little baby. God joins us in our weakness, our vulnerability,

our finitude that we might become sharers in his own nature. I always call it the marvelous humanism

...