By DONALD DeMARCO
Choice has been elevated to philosophical heights. It allegedly captures the essence of the human being as an autonomous agent who is free to make choices concerning his personal life. Yet “choice” hardly characterizes the human being. People do not choose to be born. Nor do they choose their parents, their time or place of birth, or their genetic inheritance. Nor do they choose their gender or their ethnic background.
In addition, parents do not choose to have a child. Two people may choose the means that is congenial to the procreation of a child, but they do not choose to have a child or this particular child directly. It is God who is the great chooser.
There is only one person in all of human history who chose to be born and only one woman who conceived a child as a direct result of her choosing. Christ chose to be born; Mary’s fiat led immediately to her conception of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. God chose the person, the time, and the place in which Christ would be born. And He has stamped all these choices with unparalleled significance.
Presumably, given God’s freedom, Christ could have come into the world in some manner other than through a woman. He did not have to be born. He could have arrived on a cloud or on a mountaintop. He could have arrived in the midst of great pomp and circumstance.
What the Nativity means is that being born, the preferred prerogative of the Divine, is a holy and blessed thing. It has the seal of approval from the worthiest endorser. It is also a magnificent gesture of humility inasmuch as Christ’s birth was contingent upon the consent of one of His creatures. His choice to be born was tempered by His willingness to be received by another. Therefore, being received by another is also most honorable.
God, then, is the pre-eminent chooser. He is the one who sets everything else in motion. We mortals are merely recipients of our life. But God chooses life through birth. Therefore, if we are to imitate God in this regard, we should highly prize both birth as well as life. God is supremely pro-choice because He wills the existence of all people He creates. He is also uniquely pro-choice in the sense that He is the only being who creates human beings directly through the medium of choosing.
To be pro-choice, then, is to be pro-God. The Nativity is about a divine choice, a human acceptance, and the blessing of all human life. It also elevates the dignity of all the recipients of life since, by being born, they share in the Divine prerogative.
I have often heard it said, “God cannot send me to Hell because I never asked to be born.” It is a common, yet illogical statement. It also left me wondering if such a scenario could exist, would anyone say “no” to the gift of life? Where would that leave him? The state of sheer nothingness is hardly commendable. For us human beings, it is a metaphysical impossibility to request one’s birth, to pre-exist one’s existence. Only a being who is eternal exists above the distinction between “before” and “after.” The truth about our being is that we are primarily recipients of life and we find meaning in our lives as we honor who we are and make the most of our situation. We respond properly to our gift of life with gratitude, not indifference, by welcoming our responsibilities, not by seeking to avoid them.
As G.K. Chesterton has said, “When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmastime. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?” God is benevolent and does not dispatch anyone to Hell. Nonetheless, we may refuse to be who we are and act as though we were God Himself. We can presume that we are the choosers of our own existence.
Being a recipient by no means indicates servitude. We are recipients because we cannot be otherwise. We cannot create ourselves. But we are called to be creative recipients. God did not complete creation. He rested, according to Scripture, on the Seventh Day because He wanted His human creatures to complete creation through their own creative efforts. We are given the blueprint. It is up to us to finish the project. We can welcome and rejoice in our role as creative recipients. Our choosing enters the picture only after we have been given the faculty of choosing, only after we have been endowed with free will. We are created by God and consequently cannot choose ourselves.
And if we did have this power, what kind of person would we chose to be? Would we possess the wisdom to choose rightly? But we can, nevertheless, choose what is good. The Nativity should remind us of this. It calls us to be reborn free of illusions.
Christmas brings peace and joy. It brings peace because it sets our life in order by reminding us that we are not so much choosers as creative recipients. Thus, it serves to remove the burden of trying to live an impossible life. It brings us joy because it gives us hope and unites us with the God who is the source of all joy. Christmas is history’s most extraordinary event, conferring upon ordinary people a sense of their own extraordinary birth.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World are available through Amazon.com.
(Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award.)
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