Richard Craschaw, the 17th century English Catholic poet, filled one of the last

stanza of his poem in the Holy Nativity of our Lord God with a series of apparent contradictions

as he welcomes the Christ child. Welcome, all wonders in one sight.

Eternity shot in a span.

Summer in winter, day and night,

heaven in earth, God in man.

Great little one, whose all-embracing birth

lifts heaven, earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.

That second line of this stanza captures in a singular way the enormous paradox of the incarnation.

Eternity, shot in a span.

That span is the distance between our thumb and our pinky finger.

That's the measure of a span. The poet speaks about putting all of eternity into that small and tiny

confine. This is what we're here to talk about tonight. This is the welcome that we're meant to make of Christ at Christmas time. Here,

the poet presents limitless time shut within tiny confines and an apt image for the Christ child,

for the omnipotent, all-powerful God,

shut within the tiny limbs of a babe, the mystery of the incarnation as an enflashment,

a coming of God in the flesh. These apparent contradictions in the poem

contain or capture the enormity of the notion

that Almighty God became one like us in all things but sin.

This concept, this is a concept that even the early church struggled with.

How can God become man?

How can the Creator become a creature?

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