As the festive garlands are put up the Christmas tree and the Nativity set is being carefully arranged on the top of our old piano – its usual spot, as the variety of Christmas Eve dishes-in-the making begin to take more and more space on kitchen countertops, I keep half –thinking, half-praying “for who were you born, my Lord Jesus”? for us –the lukewarm Catholics? For the perfect? For the sinners? The unbelievers?
We, the lukewarm first, since we create vast majority. Some of us are desperately, wide-eyed and panicky are trying to balance demands of work, family, tradition, faith – and definitely losing it. Others are simply giving up on the tradition (at least) because it seems too much.
Then there are also those who give up on You – mostly because they cannot put up with their own injuries, or own guilt. Wounds open deep and wide on the 24th of December.
If You, my Lord, Great Transcendental God were born as a Child on that Holy Night for only the best, the most faithful, the perfect, those who have everything ready, just as the wise maidens had their lamps filled with surplus oil – then we, the rest, are lost on this December night and the holy Star that You lit for us does not dispel that darkness that surrounds us.
Small things can teach as well as great theological lectures.
As I look down on my half-burned cheesecake (the kitchen stove is well past its initial glory) which becomes an instant symbol of my own perpetual imperfection, I suddenly realised that there is hope for the likes of me. Hope. I have heard about it for years in sermons heard during Christmas – but only now it has struck me as reality. My hope is based on the Bethlehem Stable and its condition. The Stable was not vacuumed and mopped, and overhang with Christmas lights. Most probably the only light was an olive lamp, dim – and the Star outside, lit by God for His son. The Stable was also genuinely dirty as its usual inhabitants, the field animals are hardly clean.
Whatever the Holy Family had for supper certainly did not consist either of 13 meatless dishes (as in Polish tradition) nor the roast turkey with cranberry gravy.
The Christmas presents – craze for which is a recent invention fuelled by greed and desperation of the post 2nd world war western civilisation – were what the Shepherds brought: simple items of food: cheese, bread? The Three Kings of Orient took their time coming, a year perhaps? So no gold yet.
Jesus chose the Stable, not the palace – to send a message that He is coming to all of us. He comes to his good and faithful children, such as the Shepherds – and loves their humble company. He also, however, comes to the unbelievers, the half-believers, the imperfect – those who drag their feet to the church on Sunday or remember only dimly when they were there last. He comes to alcoholics, drug addicts, sex – addicts, habitual liars, dishonest businessmen. He comes to the corrupt politicians, the euthanasia – pushers, the abortionists, the human traffickers, the drug dealers, to the jihadists.
He comes – and especially to them – to the hurt, the abandoned, the lonely, the suffering, the hungry and the tired. He is here for the dying, those in pain, those who feel their life has been wasted. He is accessible to all who may but cast a single look at Him in his innocence and self-induced smallness and thus experience even a gleam of hope of God’s mercy. This God- Child born in the Stable is our only true, real, concrete hope of happiness and peace, indeed. Merry Christmas to us all!