There are three ways of understanding history and our place within it. We can believe that history is progressing towards a golden age in the future, or that it is regressing from a golden age in the past, or that it is a constant struggle between good and evil, irrespective of any mythical golden age. We can believe that things are getting progressively better, progressively worse, or that they remain essentially the same. These three views might be seen as historical optimism, historical pessimism, and historical realism.
It was the view of G.K. Chesterton, as it is the view of the present author, that every generation faces the same perennial struggle between good and evil, irrespective of concepts of “progress.” This was the thesis of Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man, which was written as a riposte to the historical optimism and progressivism of H.G. Wells’ Outline of History. Essentially, Chesterton argued that the Incarnation was at the centre of history and was also its end. Everything before Christ points in expectation towards Him, and everything since Christ also points in expectation towards Him. Everything in history points to Christ because Christ is Himself the point. Everything ends with Christ because Christ is Himself the end of history, in the sense that He is its very purpose, the end to which history points.
Such a view of history is rooted in an understanding of man’s own purpose. If Christ is the Everlasting Man, we are also everlasting men because of Him. Our destiny is not ultimate non-existence via the grave but an everlasting existence beyond the grave. The birth of Christ is the death of Death. This is the Good News of the Gospel that we celebrate at Christmas.
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After the Child is born, the secular state, the domain of homo superbus, is so incensed by this rival to its power that it plans to kill the Child. Indeed, it is willing to kill every child in order to retain its power, massacring the innocent in order to destroy Innocence itself. Such is the hostility of the state that the Holy Family are forced to flee their homeland becoming refugees in a land of exile.
What does all this tell us about the plight of good and noble souls throughout history? It shows us that the good are refugees in a land of exile, seeing the silver lining that frames every cloud through a veil of tears. And yet it also shows us that the Mother’s joy transcends all sorrow in the glory of the birth of the Child. The goodness of the mother and the beauty of the Child overcome all that is bad in the prideful history of humanity. It is the goodness and beauty which points to the Golden Age beyond time in which the Mother and Child are triumphant forever in the presence of those who take the pilgrimage of life, following the star that leads to heaven.
Also see “Christmas Turns The World Upside Down: God’s Power Is Made Perfect In Our Weakness”