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Behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people! (Luke 2:10)
Such were the consoling words of the angel sent to announce to shepherds in a field the news of Christ’s birth at Bethlehem.
From now on, surely life would be different from what they had known before! How could it not be, if the eternal Son of God was born in flesh of the Virgin Mother?
Yet, one might wonder how long it was before the initial jubilation of these shepherds wore off a bit. Was it a matter of days? Weeks? Months? Years?
Or, did the vision of angels in the night, followed by those incomparable moments at the manger, never quite leave them? Could it have been that they never let go of that night, or that something about that night never let go of them?
Unlike the contemporary average attention span for new information (2-3 seconds, isn’t it?), did they daily treasure this gift of God in their hearts, while they awaited the Great Day of the Messiah’s revelation to Israel?
Are their descendants still waiting for that day? Or, did the poor shepherds recognize it when it came on Good Friday and Easter Sunday morning? Or, when at Pentecost, the Spirit filled the disciples with flames of zeal for the now glorified Messiah?
For the Church this year, does the old Christmas story amount to Glad News for a Glum People? A pain-filled rather than Spirit-filled people? A shame-filled clergy? Will there be no consolation to be had this year?
If anyone needs or deserves consoling, shouldn’t it be the victims of abuse, from small children to teenage boys to young and vulnerable priests?
Yes, it’s a grim picture not likely to radically change or be taken care of in a month or two, or a year or two or three.
Still, God has come in the flesh, and that must count for something, right? Surely it does count, and for everything we long for: faith, hope, charity. God has planted the divine in the midst of the pitiably human.
The Pure One at the heart of a degraded humanity. And since he dwells in us now, we can call upon him at any time, and at all times, for the salvation we so desperately need.
He has filled the human story with superlatives and divine extremes, something we’re never exactly comfortable with, but to which we must cling lest we fall into the quicksand of complacency.
Take, for example, the gospel word to the Madonna House community, known as the Little Mandate. Rather than dumbing it down as Russian extremism, what if one really takes it at its word and tries somehow to do it, live it, become it? I’ll quote it here, putting the superlatives and extremes into italics:
***
Arise—Go! Sell all you possess. Give it directly, personally to the poor. Take up My Cross (their cross) and follow Me, going to the poor, being poor, being one with them, one with Me.
Little—Be always little! Be simple, poor, childlike.
Preach the Gospel with your life—without compromise! Listen to the Spirit. He will lead you.
Do little things exceedingly well for love of Me.
Love…love…love, never counting the cost.
Go into the marketplace and stay with Me. Pray. Fast. Pray always, fast.
Be hidden. Be a light to your neighbor’s feet. Go without fears into the depth of men’s hearts. I shall be with you.
Pray always. I will be your rest.
***
I can tell you quite confidently that if you try this particular gospel package on for size, it will be several sizes too big for you.
One line here or there might have appeal for a time, but even then I can guarantee you that that time will pass, and when it does, even parts that seemed simple to you in the beginning, now no longer seem remotely possible or even accessible.
Once at our Cana Colony, many years ago now, I had several of the children dress up in some aspect or other of their parents’ clothes when they came to Mass one weekday morning.
I must admit it was something of a funny sight seeing the kids so dressed, but the reason for same became clearer when I asked them to come up and stand before the altar during the homily.
The first reading that day was taken from Colossians 3:12 ff., which goes something like this: Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, bearing with one another, forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another … and so forth.
I then passed on a sign for each one, bearing the words on St. Paul’s list, the point in all this being: the gifts of God are so much bigger than we are, so much vaster, that we are as dwarfed by them as these children are dwarfed at this young age by their parents’ clothing. But with time, we can grow into the gifts God gives and wear them well.
It all seemed like a good enough idea at the time, but looking back, I’m not so sure I was able to be clear about what goes into “growing into the gifts.”
Decades later, I have a better idea of what is involved. We are still called to practice the Gospel to the best of our ability, poor and limited as this might be. But what really happens is that we begin to get an inkling of our inability, even our lack of desire, to bring about the kingdom of God.
Deeper and deeper these repeated experiences go, and we find ourselves at that unique gospel crossroads, where we have not given up reaching for the superlative, and yet realizing how often and how profoundly we fail to even remotely approximate these goals. We are like another Don Quixote tilting at windmills to no avail.
But it remains a noble effort nonetheless. Better to fail at windmills than to succeed at being a cynic; that is, better to reach for the impossible and the unattainable and fail over and over than to succeed at being mediocre and choosing the easy way out!
There is something about failing at things divine that is, well, divine, and attracts the loving attention of the Lord. It is the humility of the cry, “Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner!” that welcomes the Lord who alone brings salvation. If we are willing to live this way, the Glad News can be ours in any epoch of history, even our own.
But it comes at the price of realizing what a wretch I really am, but able to be transformed nonetheless, proving the old adage of the Church fathers: “God became man that man might become God.”
How good God is, indeed! Christ is born! Glorify Him!
