Just a short note today to say Merry Christmas and thank you for reading and commenting throughout the year. Enjoy this holy day, and remember it’s just the beginning…
Christmas
A (Very) Short Story of Joseph of Nazareth
All in all, Joseph gets pretty short shrift in the Gospel Christmas narratives, and very little is said about him after that. He’s the quiet guy standing in the back by the shepherds and the sheep. We don’t know how long he lived but it seems clear that he did not live to see Jesus begin his ministry. He’s not mentioned after Jesus’ “missing years,” even when Mary is.
But I like to imagine the role he played in raising Jesus to manhood — to teaching him a trade, showing him the right way to build things that last, and modeling for Jesus the best way to be a gentle man in an often-violent world.
So imagine yourself with the opportunity to meet him. Sit on a hill with him overlooking the Sea of Galilee. Feel the breeze coming off the water and listen as he tells you the improbable but true story of how he came to be the father and guardian of the Son of God. He is a bit older now, wise in his ways, and eager to tell the story of how the whole thing started. Listen…
I want to tell you an improbable story. Even now, in my old age, I can scarcely believe all that happened to me back then, but I can never forget it. Even as other memories of my life begin to fade, there is nothing — not even the vagaries of a fading memory — that can steal this incredible story from me. It is, first of all, the story of how the birth of my son, Jesus, came about. But even beyond that miraculous day, it is a story about how I was changed forever in a single moment. I want to tell you that story. Do you have a few minutes?
It all began when I was betrothed to Mary, a beautiful young woman with so much spirit and faith and promise, but before we had lived together or had done so much as hold hands while walking in the olive grove on the hill behind her parents’ home. It was in that very olive grove on a cool spring day that she came to me with what was, at first, devastating and heart-wrenching news: She was expecting a child.
She told me a story that, as much as I loved her and wanted to marry her, was incredulous. She said the child was a miracle, a gift, the fruit — not of an elicit encounter with another man, but through an encounter with God’s holy spirit. How I wished that could be true. But I could not believe her. I was no fool.
But I did not want to shame her, to leave her open to ridicule or worse. I knew there was a way to sever this relationship in an honorable way, a simple decree of divorce. She would find a way to move on, to care for her child and get on with her life. That’s all I wanted for her. I made plans the next day to visit the temple to begin to quietly make the arrangements. I went home.
But that night, I had a dream unlike any dream I had ever had. A dream, but so much more than a dream. In it, an angel — it had to have been an angel — said to me, as clear as day:
“Joseph, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
And when I awoke in the morning, I knew something had changed in me in that dreamlike moment I could have never seen coming. Something softened. Something opened up. I remembered the stories of the prophets, the ones I had heard since I was a child. Something in me came alive, and I began to put the pieces together. And these ancient words of holy scripture came to me from somewhere deep inside:
“Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means “God is with us.”
I knew what I needed to do. I ran to Mary’s house and knocked on the door. It was early but she was up, sitting in the corner near the fire, stirring the pot. She didn’t look surprised to see me at all. It was as if she knew I was coming and knew what I was going to say.
I held her face in my hands and she smiled up at me. I knew everything had changed. I knew I would never be the same. I said to her, “Yes. Together we will do this improbable thing. Yes.”
A (Very) Short Story: The Impossible Night
The old couple lowered themselves into their chairs by the fire on Christmas eve, the tree lit up and twinkling to the right of the flaming logs. The small manger scene, carved by a Bethlehem artisan and purchased at their parish church years ago, was nestled in its traditional place beneath the tree, surrounded by just a few small presents. They sighed at the same time.
“It‘s just not the same,” she said, pondering this pandemic Christmas and the absence of children and grandchildren. They had shipped the presents a week ago and made arrangements for a Zoom call in the morning. It would have to be enough.
“No, it’s not,” he said, “but he’s still there, waiting.” He pointed to the manger, at the little carved figure of Jesus he had just placed into the scene a moment ago. That was the family tradition — no Jesus until Christmas Eve. She put down the book she had just picked up to read and stared at the tree.
“So much has changed this year, so much of life put on hold,” she said. “But this story never changes and somehow never gets old. The star, the shepherds, the Magi, the poor young couple and their baby. It’s all so hard to believe and, yet, here we are once again pinning our hopes and lives on what happened so long ago.”
“The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight…” he sang, his once-vibrant voice now cracking and shallow.
She smiled sadly at his attempt at singing, remembering earlier days when his booming voice would fill the house and draw the children toward the tree for the annual reading of the Christmas story. The Bible, opened to Luke 2, sat on the table nearby, as always.
“Everything changed after that night,” she said. “It had to. For the world, for us, for anyone brave enough to believe in all these impossible things — incarnation, virgin birth, angel choirs. It would be easier to not believe, of course, but it would be oh so boring. It would make everything else we do seem meaningless, wouldn’t it?”
He nodded and slowly hauled himself out of the chair. He crossed himself and then crossed the room, lifted the Bible from its cradle and held it in his arms.
“In those days,” he read, “a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed…”
She closed her eyes. She knew the scene. She believed. It was enough.
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Merry Christmas to you all, and thanks for reading and sharing this year. Below is a brand-new song and video, “After This Night,” created just this week with my musical collaborators John Caravelli and Phil Cooper. I hope this story and this video will both serve as moments of quiet contemplation for you in the days leading up to Christmas. See you in 2021.
Advent 2020: Welcome to the ‘Demented Inn’
We Christians are entering into what will likely be one of the strangest and most distracted Advent and Christmas seasons that most of us will ever experience. Many of us will hunker down and stay apart from our loved ones, unable to celebrate and gather as we usually do. Advent and Christmas services will stream online or occur with just a fraction of carefully spaced church members.
Many will grieve the loss of the season and the ability to embrace those we love, even as we grieve those who have been lost to us during this strange and pandemic year. And yet, for those who celebrate the season of Advent as prayerful preparatory to the celebration of the birth of Jesus two millennia ago, this time — even in the midst of a pandemic spike — might just be the opportunity we need to reconnect with the God who, so we believe, stooped to become one of us.
“Advent may be the best time of year to consider what will come out of the pandemic we are suffering through, for this liturgical season reminds us of our time of hope at a time when it can be difficult to find hope in the world,” writes Fr. Joe Tetlow, SJ, in the current issue of Jesuits Central and Southern. “As the virus seeps everywhere, nothing could make us more hopeful than remembering that our Creator and Lord has come into our flesh.”
Advent is traditionally seen as a time of hope for Christians who celebrate the season. Even in such a seemingly hopeless time as now, we wait and hope to welcome Christ once again into the world. It’s a time to challenge ourselves to consider whether we might, unlike the innkeepers in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, make room for a wandering, poor, seemingly homeless young couple looking for a place to get warm and bring a new life into the world. That’s the question we get to ask ourselves: Do we have the courage to open the door and make room?
In his 1965 essay, “The Time of the End is the Time of No Room,” the late poet, author, mystic and Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote:
“Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because He cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, and yet must be in it, His place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied status as persons, who are tortured, bombed, and exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in the world.”
I’m not sure there has been another time in my 60 years that I have felt so much like I was living in a “demented inn.” The world seems wracked in pain — in disease, in social and political unrest, and in every conceivable kind of violence. And yet, we believe, Christ comes — has come and continues to come — to those who believe. Whether we invite him or not, whether we are aware or not, Christ is present. He is not far away, waiting on a high mountain for us to struggle up to him. He is not buried deep in the rubble of history waiting for us to excavate him. Rather, he is present to us in the warmth and safety of our quarantine.
And if we really believe that, we must be willing to become aware of all the others to whom he has come as well. Our faith compels us to respond and lift up — now more than ever and in unimaginably charitable and just ways — the poor, the homeless, the wandering young families looking for shelter and warmth. We must be willing to provide safe spaces in the demented inn.
If during Advent we welcome Jesus and turn away the stranger at the door, we fail to live up to the promise of hope that we say stirs in us at Christmas. If we want to show the world the “true meaning of Christmas,” if we want to really “keep Christ in Christmas,” then we must let it find us loving and caring for each other.
Waiting for Christmas with Bright Eyes
When author Toni Morrison was once asked how she became a great writer, she responded, “I am a great writer because when I was a little girl and walked into a room where my father was sitting, his eyes would light up. That is why I am a great writer.We become healthy and “great” in our lives because people important to us love us so much that we can see it in their eyes. The sparkle in their eyes and the smile on their lips tell us we are loved, we are accepted, we are valued, no matter what the rest of the world says. That’s a great lesson in parenting and, as we of the Christian faith approach the celebration of Christmas, having “bright eyes” is also a wonderful parable of faith.