ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
December 10, 2025
My first real introduction to Liberation Theology was the theologian, Gustavo Gutiérrez (1928–2024). He encouraged us to reflect on the implications of Jesus’ context, specifically the place and circumstances of where he was born.
The following are some reflections and insights from Kelley Nikondeha (from cac.org, December 26, 2024), based on her reading of Gutiérrez.
There, on the fringe of society, “the Word became history, contingency, solidarity, and weakness; but we can say, too, that by this becoming, history itself, our history, became Word.”
It is often said at Christmastime that Jesus is born into every family and every heart. But these “births” must not make us forget the primordial, massive fact that Jesus was born of Mary among a people that at the time were dominated by the greatest empire of the age. If we forget that fact, the birth of Jesus becomes an abstraction, a symbol, a cipher… To the eyes of Christians the incarnation is the irruption of God into human history: an incarnation into littleness and service in the midst of the overbearing power exercised by the mighty of this world; an irruption that smells of the stable…
It is in the concrete setting and circumstances of our lives that we must learn to believe: under oppression and repression but also amid the struggles and hopes that are alive… under dictatorships that sow death among the poor, and under the “democracies” that often deal unjustly with their needs and dreams.
(Quotes from Gustavo Gutiérrez, The God of Life)
