Midnight Mass in St. Peter’s. Our sweet human new Pope cradles the “Gesu Bambino” in his arms, walking with
his wobbling gait to the recessional hymn of the same name. In front of him are eight young children,
just waist-high to him, in brightly colored clothes of their various cultures. At the elaborate Manger scene, Francis places
the baby Jesus in the manger, blesses and thanks the little children one by
one, even giving one of them a zucchetto
(the papal skullcap) that he had momentarily placed on his own head, in a
smiling, mute blessing.
Was it merely coincidence that Pope Francis and
the procession to the altar for Midnight Mass at St. Peter’s passed the Pieta
on the way, and again at the end of Mass, the recessional, “Gesu Bambino” with
full choir, orchestra and organ vibrating the incense-smoky air? Here the stiff plaster Gesu Bambino in the soft arms of the smiling old Shepherd of Rome
and there in Ferrara marble the flaccid corpse of the King of Heaven in the
arms of his grieving Mother….
Yesterday we considered the caveat from Fr. Delp in Nazi
prison on the eve of Christmas 1944, on the way to the Nazi gallows himself the
day after Epiphany. Fr. Delp warned us: “One must take care to celebrate Christmas
with a great realism. Otherwise, the
emotions expect transformations the intellect cannot substantiate. Then the outcome of this most comforting of
all holidays can be a bitter disappointment and paralyzing weariness….”
For me, validity of the symbol of the journey to the Manger
by way of the Pieta was reinforced on the recessional, the strains of the sweet
Gesu Bambino hymn still reverberating
in Brunelleschi’s grand dome in clear D major, but bent to an ominous minor key
in passing the Pieta a second time.
The reality is that the story of salvation is not
accomplished at Christmas; the stage is merely set. Delp’s warning is that we look at the baby in
the manger not merely with emotions that warm our hearts with joy, but with our
intellect as well, that notices once, then twice that the joyful throng passes
by the Pieta once, and then twice.
We are called not to joy but through joy,
transformed to hope that just as the story does not end at the manger, it
does not end at the cross.
FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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