This year I find myself wishing for a soulful or soul-filled Christmas. There is just something about the enforced gaiety of the Christmas season that almost seems contrived, wooden. I’d rather sit in front of a warm fire and send out good thoughts of some who I would love to see again this year. The daughter I haven’t seen since she was a year old who turned forty one this year. My parent’s dead now the better part of fifteen years. All the others who have loved me into being who I am, and yet somehow departed after walking along side for a season.
Oh, I’m not “blue” or sad, just journeying inward and upward. I suppose that’s how it was for Mary and Joseph, those two young people so long ago upon whom shone the light of a star and the fate of all mankind. Can you imagine what must have been running through their minds when the first labor pains struck? What on Earth was about to be born? Angels foretold his coming, but what would he be like? Would he even look like either of them? How do you define “normal” for a son of God? I imagine there was awe at what was about to happen, and fear, and deepening wonder at the star overhead. Must we celebrate that momentous night with gaiety when our hearts feel anything but gay? With commercialism when He was “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly?”
Perhaps what we need to do instead is to steal away to a parish church and sit there alone in the candle light and like Mary, “Ponder these things…” in our hearts. What does this baby now cradled against Mary’s breast mean to me? What gifts can I bring to the stable this night to give to Our Lord? What can I offer to the one who loves me more than I shall ever be able to understand or respond to? What does it mean to me that my Savior was born to a craftsman and his wife, in a barn, and laid into a feed trough? He could have “Called Ten Thousand Angels” the hymn says, and yes, he could have been born in the finest bedroom, in the biggest mansion, to the daughter of Caesar or Herod the Great…but he chose to come to ones such as you and I. What are we to make of that? How radical, how revolutionary, is that in the face of our culture that puts personal status and upward mobility above all else?
So have a soulful Christmas. There, in the candlelight of the sanctuary, or in your own room lit by the soft glow of the tree lights, contemplate the manger scene, stand yourself just outside the stable and hear the cry of the infant and the low calling of the animals within, and let the wonder and awe of it all wash over you. Yes, have a soulful Christmas and may the babe in the manger, Our Lord, be born in your heart this Christmas. Amen.
Oh, I’m not “blue” or sad, just journeying inward and upward. I suppose that’s how it was for Mary and Joseph, those two young people so long ago upon whom shone the light of a star and the fate of all mankind. Can you imagine what must have been running through their minds when the first labor pains struck? What on Earth was about to be born? Angels foretold his coming, but what would he be like? Would he even look like either of them? How do you define “normal” for a son of God? I imagine there was awe at what was about to happen, and fear, and deepening wonder at the star overhead. Must we celebrate that momentous night with gaiety when our hearts feel anything but gay? With commercialism when He was “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly?”
Perhaps what we need to do instead is to steal away to a parish church and sit there alone in the candle light and like Mary, “Ponder these things…” in our hearts. What does this baby now cradled against Mary’s breast mean to me? What gifts can I bring to the stable this night to give to Our Lord? What can I offer to the one who loves me more than I shall ever be able to understand or respond to? What does it mean to me that my Savior was born to a craftsman and his wife, in a barn, and laid into a feed trough? He could have “Called Ten Thousand Angels” the hymn says, and yes, he could have been born in the finest bedroom, in the biggest mansion, to the daughter of Caesar or Herod the Great…but he chose to come to ones such as you and I. What are we to make of that? How radical, how revolutionary, is that in the face of our culture that puts personal status and upward mobility above all else?
So have a soulful Christmas. There, in the candlelight of the sanctuary, or in your own room lit by the soft glow of the tree lights, contemplate the manger scene, stand yourself just outside the stable and hear the cry of the infant and the low calling of the animals within, and let the wonder and awe of it all wash over you. Yes, have a soulful Christmas and may the babe in the manger, Our Lord, be born in your heart this Christmas. Amen.
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1 comment:
Good thoughts, here. It reminds me of my most soulful Christmas in memory. A few years ago, I had some radiation treatment for an overactive thyroid. So I had to stay away from children and even my own wife for a week until my radiation levels returned to safe. That left me home alone on Christmas. I spent the evening in candlelight watching Mass at the Vatican. A choral concert at Cambridge University. Reading my Bible. Praying. My family didn't believe me when I said that I wasn't lonely
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