May the peace that passes all understanding, the peace of Emmanuel, God-with-us, be yours during this holy season.

For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counsellor,
Mighty God,
Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace.
(Isaiah 9:6)

To return, however, to the opening verses of the Canto: these are St. Bernard’s prayer to the Blessed Virgin, a beautiful and adoring paean. There is one verse, though, which jars me. In spite of the sublimity of the poetry, I believe Dante is mistaken when he has Bernard say to Mary:

you are the one who so ennobled
human nature that the maker of it
condescended to be made of it.

It was not because Mary was so good that God became human, but because you and I were (and are) in such need — because so often we debase rather than ennoble our human nature. Jesus comes to us out of that “love which moves the sun and the other stars,” a love so encompassing that it freely enfolds us in our sinfulness and our brokenness.

At the end of the Paradiso the poet experiences his own desire and will “turned already, / like a wheel that is moved evenly, / by the love which moves the sun and the other stars.”

In our truest self, each one of us is also moved by this love. Let us pray that through Jesus, God-with-us, our whole being might be in harmony with the divine love.

O loving God,
may I wait in peace for you,
and waiting
enter the place in my heart
where like the sun and the stars
I am moved only by your love,
and there find you
already with me,
waiting for me.

 

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning.
(Psalm 130:5-6)

Two years ago, with the help of Sister Elizabeth, the county housing authority, and a number of generous people, Carol — the mentally ill homeless woman about whom I have written before — finally moved into her own apartment.  One day shortly before Christmas we drove her to sign forms and take care of assorted bits of red tape.  The real estate agent is a compassionate woman who treated Carol with the same courtesy that she would have shown a millionaire.  She took obvious delight in handing over to her the key to the apartment.

Stopping for lunch

After leaving the real estate office, we stopped for lunch at a fast-food restaurant. Carol was too excited to sit still and eat.  She half-danced among the tables, raising her hands and praising Jesus for all to hear.

A woman working there asked if we were from a church group.  I told her that we were Catholic Sisters, and she asked if we were from Saint Augustine parish.  I replied that we do indeed attend Saint Augustine .

“I’m Lulu,” she told me. “I’m on work release.”

“Good for you!” I replied, not knowing what the proper response would be, as being on work-release meant that her place of residence at the moment was prison.  (Should I have said, “Oh, I’m so sorry”?  Or simply, “Oh…”?  On second thought I decided that “Good for you” was appropriate after all, because she is working hard to prove herself a responsible citizen and to take her place in the community.)

“I’d like to be going to Saint Augustine’s,” she added.

“I’ll hope to see you there one day,” I said. And we agreed to pray for each other.

After lunch, Sister Elizabeth, Carol (key in hand), and I headed for Carol’s new home.  In the car she was singing,

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining,
it is the night of the dear Savior’s birth.

Moving in was uncomplicated, as she had few belongings.  Though devoid of furniture, the apartment was warm and clean, with a real bathroom, and a kitchen to prepare the food that she buys with food stamps.

However, while Carol is streetwise, she is not house-wise.  She does not know some of the simplest things most of us take for granted.  She has to be taught the necessity of putting the garbage can out at the curb on the designated day.  Or that you don’t turn the thermostat up as high as it will go to warm the apartment, then turn on the air conditioning when it heats up too much — unless you want to run up a bill impossible to pay and have your electricity turned off.

Getting there in spite of ourselves

Those of us who have been more fortunate than Carol and Lulu — in our parents, in our economic situation, in our mental or physical health — are not for all that closer to the reign of God.  Neither are we more worthy of the Christ who comes, just because we have never been in jail or in need of food and shelter.  All is gift for each of us, including what we imagine we have merited.  We have not earned the good things in our lives any more than Lulu, who is for the moment not even free to come and go as she pleases – or than Carol, who must be approved for SSI if she is to stay in her new lodging.

This is how the British poet U. A. Fanthorpe describes the events surrounding Jesus’ birth:

… a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

“BC:AD,” Christmas Poems
(Enitharmon Press, 2003)

Are we not walking haphazard into the kingdom of heaven along with Carol, Lulu, shepherds, Magi, and the kind real estate agent?  Or, to borrow the words of Paul Simon, are we not all more or less “bouncing into Graceland”? There is no AAA TripTik to show us ahead of time each step of the journey, and most of us do meander, sometimes on track and sometimes off.

If we are really paying attention, we will be struck with wonder at finding ourselves there in spite of ourselves.

We may be walking beneath a starlight that seems no different from yesterday’s light, in a world where war still rages, where the hand of oppression lies heavy on the poor, and where earthquakes and hurricanes and mental illness leave ordinary people homeless.  What has changed, we say?  The grip of evil is still unbearably strong.

Nevertheless, through all the sorrows and joys and anxieties and tedium of our lives, we are bouncing into graceland.  Held by a hand stronger than sorrow and evil, we stumble into the kingdom of God.

And unlike the shepherds and the three wise men, we know how the story ends.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

(Matthew 5:3)

A wise rabbi once asked his students, “How do you know when the night is over and the day has dawned?

One answered, “When you can look at an animal in the distance and tell whether it is a sheep or a dog?”

“No,” said the rabbi.

Another said, “Is it when you can look at a tree and tell whether it is a fig or an olive tree?”

“No,” said the rabbi.

“Please, rabbi, tell us.  How do you know when the night is over and the day has dawned?”

The rabbi answered, “You know that the day has dawned when you can look at any man or woman and discern there the face of your brother or sister.  Until then, you are still in the night.”

Rise up in splendor, Jerusalem!  Your light has come,
the glory of the Lord shines upon you.
See, darkness covers the earth,
and thick clouds cover the peoples;
but upon you the LORD shines,
and over you appears his glory.

Isaiah 60:1-2

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future’s
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

U. A. Fanthorpe, “BC:AD”

I am convinced that most of us stumble into the reign of God, not because of our sterling virtue or our skill in prayer, but in spite of ourselves,

Sandro Botticelli, "The Mystical Nativity" (detail showing an angel pointing out the Christ child to the shepherds), National Gallery, London

thanks to a loving guidance of which we may be totally unaware. And sometimes where we find ourselves – what turns out to be filled with grace and glory – is not at all what we would have expected.

You might enjoy listening to Paul Simon’s song “Graceland,” which is ostensibly about a trip to Elvis Presley’s house in Memphis.  As the song goes on, however, one realizes that it is really about something far bigger and infinitely deeper. Here is one verse:

There is a girl in New York City,
Who calls herself the human trampoline,
And sometimes when I’m falling flying
Or tumbling in turmoil I say
Whoa, so this is what she means,
She means we’re bouncing into Graceland…

The shepherds and the Magi “walked haphazard” or bounced into Graceland. And so do we bounce — usually awkwardly — into the glory of God where we are expected, longed for, and welcomed.
In the words of Paul Simon:

Maybe I’ve a reason to believe
We all will be received
In Graceland

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.

Pensacola is yet another hurricane-ravaged city, still recovering from Ivan which hit in 2004. More than two years later, the devastation is still visible in some neighborhoods. Many trees are dead or nearly defoliated. The house Sister Rosalie and I stayed in was heavily damaged by the storm, but has been recently repaired. The two houses on either side of us there on the bay were virtually destroyed. One is being rebuilt from the ground up. The other is best described by the reaction of a deliveryman who came to our door and exclaimed,

“That house is nothing but garbage!”

This is true, the house is mostly rubble, flanked by huge piles of debris. The deliveryman was astonished, but not, I imagine, in the way Oliver intends in her poem — with rejoicing and gratitude.

What do we do with the sorrows and horrors of the world as we stand before the manger this Christmas season? Can we stand still and learn to be astonished? And what do we make of our astonishment when faced with storms, war, poverty, cruelty, disease, and death? Or is it possible that we are no longer capable of astonishment, either at suffering or at the numinous, when the song of the angels is so regularly drowned out by news reports of violence and corruption or by bombardments of the terminally trivial?

It is tempting to forget that the cross is always implicit in the nativity scene. The gifts of the Magi, for example, are more than a welcome source of revenue for a young couple with a baby. Gold was the kingly gift; frankincense an offering for God; and myrrh… ah, there’s the rub. Myrrh was used for embalming. This kingly, godly child was going to die — like every child born into the world, but with a difference. His death would be an execution, premature, shameful, and expressing the love of God who emptied himself for us.

Nevertheless, if the cross seems to hang over the manger, as it does in this woodcut of the Nativity by Durer, so does the promise of the Resurrection. Since we know the rest of the story, we also know that Jesus was raised from the dead and brings us into his own divine life.

Our work, like the work of the poet, like the work of Jesus Christ, is “loving the world” (see John 3:16). So this Christmas season, fidgety and distracted though I am, I try to stand still before the mystery of the Incarnation and let myself be astonished:

astonished at the mercy shown me in God become flesh; and astonished at the mercy I am called to show others;

astonished at the presence of God — Emmanuel, “God-with-us” — in the most ordinary parts of life: “The phoebe, the delphinium / The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture” (Oliver, “Messenger”) — and in the birth of a baby in the midst of the pain and rubble of human existence;

astonished at all I don’t understand about life, human or divine (or human and divine);

astonished at my own powerlessness; and astonished to hear God say, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9);

astonished at the evil that seems to triumph in our world; and astonished that despite all appearances to the contrary, goodness is victorious.

_____

*”Messenger,” from Thirst (Beacon Press, 2006)

The first Noel the angel did say
Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay;
In fields where they lay keeping their sheep,
On a cold winter’s night that was so deep.

But at that age I understood “to certain” as an infinitive. That is, there were these shepherds tending their sheep on a cold, dark night, and they felt uncertain and afraid. So the angel came and sang, “Noel!” to “certain” them, to reassure them, so they would no longer be afraid.

It wasn’t until I grew up that I realized “certain” wasn’t a verb at all, but just meant “some” shepherds. However, I still prefer my childhood interpretation, because we all need those words of reassurance. We need to hear “Noel” far beyond the date of Christmas — into our dark nights of January and beyond. We need to hear the messengers of God who come to “certain” us, to give us the assurance that we have nothing to fear, because God is indeed Emmanuel, God-with-us.

A favorite activity was looking at mail-order catalogs. Even an ordinary catalog was filled with marvels. I can still hear Juanito’s voice, filled with wonder, exclaiming: “¡Mira, Rosa, Mira!” (Look, Rose, look!) And I was led to see for a moment with his child’s eyes.

The Wise Men must have had something of a child’s eyes to be able to see the remarkable in the commonplace. After all, babies are born every day, and this particular birth was not outwardly extraordinary. The family was not prominent; the surroundings were poor. To exclaim, “¡Mira!” and fall down in wonder before such an unexceptional scene: this required eyes open to what was not readily visible. Yet it was at this ordinary scene of a family with a newborn that they knelt, then presented their royal gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Today the Risen Christ is always with us. The goodness of God is all around us and within us. Not only does every newborn share in the glory of Christ, but also the struggling teenager and the elderly person approaching death. Each star, each sunrise, the people we meet, our meals, our computers — before all of these do we not hear the voice of the Spirit whispering, “¡Mira! Look!” and calling us to gaze in wonder?

Wonderful God,
grant me the eyes to look with wonder on your world
and to see myself and all creation
with the heart of Christ.

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’
(Matthew 2:1-2)

The refrain goes like this:

Standing, standing,
Standing on the promises of God my Savior;
Standing, standing,
I’m standing on the promises of God.

(Words and music: Kelso Carter, 1886)

For centuries, God’s people had been holding to the promise of the longed-for Messiah. Simeon, for one, was “looking forward to the consolation of Israel,” as Luke tells us (2:25). His consolation, and ours, comes with the birth of Jesus. Though his birth, life, death, and resurrection we claim the promises of God as firm, never to be broken. God’s promises can be relied upon even when we can’t rely on ourselves or on the strength of our own virtue or faith.

What are these promises? Obviously, God never promised us that all would be sweetness and light in this life. I asked Sister Elizabeth what she saw as the promises of God, and together we came up with the following list:

Mercy: tender mercy, restful mercy, challenging mercy

Peace: “not as the world gives,” says Jesus, but a more sturdy peace even in the midst of strife, a peace which takes root in our hearts and the world through mutual compassion and reconciliation

Love: a love that is creative, unending, unfailing, unconditional

Presence: God-with-us (Emmanuel) both when we are aware of it and when we are not, both when everything is going well and when life is so dark that the very existence of God seems unlikely

Fidelity: in Sister Elizabeth’s words, the promise of God is “to see us through to the other side of suffering and death” — a promise grounded in the Resurrection of the crucified Jesus Christ from the dead.

Here is verse 2 of “Standing on the Promises”:

Standing on the promises that cannot fail,
When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail,
By the living Word of God I shall prevail,
Standing on the promises of God.
Standing, standing,
Standing on the promises of God my Savior;
Standing, standing,
I’m standing on the promises of God.

__________

For in [Jesus] every one of God’s promises is a “Yes.” For this reason it is through him that we say the “Amen,” to the glory of God. (2 Corinthians 1:20)

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.” (Lamentations 3:22-24)

“Santa’s real, Mama!”

Mother shook her head and said nothing.

The little boy persevered: “Yes, he’s real, but he’s dead.”

Mama ignored him.

“He’s dead, but he still comes,” the child insisted.

Was he confusing Santa with Jesus? (We adults, on the other hand, too often confuse Jesus with Santa, as in, “He’s making a list, checking it twice…”)

Yes, Jesus is real. He died, but he lives, and he still comes. He came as a baby on that first Christmas, and he comes still.

I am reminded of the inscription over the entrance to Carl Jung’s home (the same words are carved on the family gravestone): “Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit” (Bidden or not bidden, God will be present). It is true indeed ― God loves us far too much to stay away.

The word became flesh and dwelt among us,
full of grace and truth.
(John 1:14)