This is the third day of the “12 Days of Christmas” leading
to the Epiphany. In 1944, Fr. Alfred
Delp, S.J. was writing in his cell in Tegel Prison, writing to us the faithful
about Christmas, and our response to the encounter. His last writing would be about Epiphany,
which means “opening”. It would for him
be the opening into the afterlife. He
would be hanged by the Nazis the day after Epiphany.
How would we respond to the encounter of the Nativity if we
were actually there?
Years ago in a prayer and study group at Manresa Jesuit RetreatHouse near Detroit, a woman sat in prayer for days following Christmas, and
shared the following story.
"I had imagined my way to the manger lighted by the
star. The path through the arid
vegetation was well worn, and my feet could feel the little stones through my
sandals. The path itself seemed to draw
me, giving me a sense of what “forward” was.
I was in kind of a fog of this feeling of the power of the path when I
realized that I had come upon the manger.
It was just a rough structure, just enough to hold up a roof, a kind of
alcove into which animals could…"
"...As I was looking at the baby, my eyes drawn to the
swaddling, and the way it embraced and comforted him, Mary gently lifted him…and held him out to me!"
" 'Take him; he’s yours,' she said!"
The woman began to weep now,
as she had wept there in prayer. Her
vivid description of the experience had brought us along, and as she was drawn
into this unexpected gesture of Mary, we were too.
What about you? Here is Mary, holding out Jesus to you. She is telling you that
he is yours. She is waiting for your response. How will you
respond? This is what Fr. Delp is asking us. He challenges us not to make in our minds kitschy
nativity scenes with a cute little baby Jesus and a sweet little family of
three, with ox and ass and drummer boy. He challenges us not to walk away from
the manger. He asks us what difference
it makes to us that Jesus was God taking our flesh.
When I revisit the woman’s experience, and I find Mary
holding out the baby to me, I recall that my tears on her telling were awe and
gratitude and honor. That she would give
me her precious child! But this year as I went back to that moment,
I took the baby to my breast in embrace, and felt him rooting at my breast for
food. I felt embarrassed and then
inadequate. I recalled having held one
of my newborn daughters that way, and can still physically recall the feeling
of their rooting, their tiny mouth searching intently. I had looked with humor and confusion at my
wife, and can hear her saying, “Hold her in your arms, but not against your
chest.”
And I remembered that my cute little baby daughter…needed…to…be…fed!
To accept Jesus into our life is to care for Him. The God who is
born to us is really human, really flesh.
The incarnation means this.
God made man is a God who needs us to respond, not just watch, or pray,
or even adore.
I think now as I write how this unspeaking newborn infant
and His calling me to responsibility brings to mind the Gospel of a few weeks
ago, calling us to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked….
Christmas calls us to incarnation as well, to know that we
are flesh, that our faith is faith-in-the-flesh, just as this baby that Mary is
holding out to us as our own needs to be FED!
Perhaps you will find some light in sitting with this story,
sitting with Mary holding the baby out to you. For some tips on Ignatian
contemplation, praying by entering the story, click here.
Tomorrow: The Pope’s “piccolezza”
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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