Reflection on Christmas Eve

Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. What was God thinking? I walked around the dining room several times preparing for this homily, looking at all the stables or creches, French for crib – a prettier word. And the stables are lovely. One is an umbrella. The clothes of the Holy Family are lovely. The cows, two of them in particular, are spectacular. The babies are all alike. None of them have crowns or hold scepters. They are not speaking or holding court or accepting gifts. Some are sleeping. A couple of the babies are alert. Mary is holding some while a few are in very nice looking mangers, almost ornamental mangers. The settings are lovely and move us to awe at the Christ Child. And the Christ Child is a baby, an infant.

Really, it is a fair question, what was God thinking to come to us as a baby? A baby. A vulnerable baby! The baby, like all newborns, is helpless. The one power that babies have, by their vulnerability, is to call us to love. The baby is a call to us to love. This is not the stuff of reason. God is not thinking clearly. God is loving.

When I was maybe 13 I learned about Bibles being chained to lecterns and the accusation that Catholics don’t read the Bible. I thought about that. I thought about all the people who could not read, then and now. I thought about the image we Christians have of God, that He was born in a stable and died on a cross. If that’s all we’ve got, no words, just that image, that’s enough. More than enough. We’ve staked our lives on this baby born in a stable. Poor. Homeless. Already under threat by Herod. And with worse to come.

The birth of any baby is a joy. Christmas is a celebration of joy to the world. It is right for us to give gifts and eat cake and ignore, for a moment, the shadow of the cross, the enormous suffering of people who are not here beside us. We humans are not really made to hold two thoughts in the center of our minds at the same time. So today we look at the baby. We discover again a helpless, vulnerable baby drawing love from us. We laugh in amazement at this new life. We light the house and the windows and the courtyard and the electric star at the top of the tower. Together we gain strength to maintain our community of love and to share it with our poor world.