Christmas Spirit

Cast of characters:

Mary, teenaged virgin, four days pregnant

Elizabeth, old woman, Mary’s cousin, several months pregnant

John, Elizabeth’s son, fetus-in-utero

Jesus, blastocyst floating around in Mary’s womb

Oh yes…and the Spirit.

I always thought "Visitation" was a play with a cast of two.  Two veiled women, hugging and sobbing and laughing.  Old woman, large with child, holding the young woman’s face in her hands, looking so lovingly into her eyes, seeing there the angel’s secret.  Young woman with her hand on the bulging belly of her middle-aged cousin, closing her eyes and feeling the life doing somersaults within.  A woman thing.  A Chick Flick.

Well, yeah, there are the two Easy Riders, John and his still-floating cuz Jesus.  But a close reading of this Gospel (Luke 1:39-45) tells us that while the women were doing all the celebrating, it was the Spirit that kicked things off.  At the sound of Mary’s greeting, it is John who does somersaults and alerts his mom, the same alert that he will live for in the desert on the other side of his mother’s uterus:  Ecce!  Agnus Dei!  Look!  The Lamb of God!

The Gospels are a lot like our spouses and kids.  We think we know them…and so we fail so easily to see all that is there.  I honest-to-God never noticed that the Holy Spirit was in this scene.  I’ve neatly put the Trinity in chronological order: Father-Creator...Son-Savior…Spirit-Guide.  The Father sent the Son, who in turn sent the Spirit. 

I’m consoled by this, by the fact that the Holy Spirit was there.  I need help, you see, at Christmas.  There’s a curmudgeon in me, a humbug that peers out from a darkness that does not give way to the light of the star.  I dunno why.  My wife and kids don’t know why.  Over the years this has softened, as I’ve learned to “get over it”, or to “let it go” or to “get with the program.”

But halfway through this Advent, I’ve been to a sneak preview of the Manger, and it opened my eyes to the Spirit of Christmas that began at the Visitation.  I realized that I’ve been called not to “get over it”, or to “let it go” or to “get with the program”, but to Join the Dance.

Next:  Dance: Steps...and Embrace.  

Then: Three Wise Men and a Doofus.