Christmas Reflection
“Let there be light!” You would think God would get tired of
repeating the same command over and over.
The earth is shapeless, barren, wrapped in the darkness that veils the
face of the abyss? “Let there be light!” (Genesis 1:2-3) Night descends over Egypt at noon?
Over the spot allocated to the Hebrew slaves, “Let there be light!” (Exodus 10:21-23. Jerusalem is blind and drunk, sunk deep in
the dark pit of wanton idolatry? “Let
there be light!” (Isaiah 9:1) Darkness and the shadow
of death hang over the world? “Let there be light!” (Luke 1:76-79)
The command never changes, but the light does. Its
source remains the God who most often wears a robe of cloud and fire in
Scriptures, but the quality of light shifts through the filters of changing
circumstance. Into the primal darkness breaks the first light, as yet undivided
into sun, moon and stars. Through the
night out of season that shrouds stubborn Egypt breaks the sun to warm and
illumine the beleaguered Israelites. Into
Jerusalem’s long season of blindness breaks the light of God’s word to waken
the slothful and light their way to life.
But when the entire world is shrouded in death’s dark shadow, God breaks
through the clouds in person: not in sunlight, not in word, but in the Child
who is the “sun of justice,” the Word who was from the beginning, the law of love embodied as well as spoken,
the light of the world.
December 25: we are in the neighborhood of the
longest night of the year. The ancient
Romans tried to break the iron fist of winter darkness with a festival in honor
of the birth of the Unconquered Sun on December 25. It is possible, though not definite, that the
Christian community took their cue from the custom to celebrate the newborn
light of Christ.
At Mass during the Night, in the Roman Catholic
liturgy, we hear: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone” (Isaiah 9). In the
service held at dawn, the proclamation is firmer: “Today a light will shine upon us, for the
Lord is born to us; and he will be called Wondrous God, Prince of Peace, Father
of future ages, and his reign is without end” (Entrance Antiphon, cf. Isaiah 9:1, 5; Luke 1:33) No need to attend Catholic services to have heard this declaration ring
out over and over in the “Alleluia Chorus” of Handel’s Messiah! On Christmas morning, the announcement takes
on new majesty: “In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and
without him nothing came to be. What
came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race.”
And the final, ringing proclamation that we are not talking just about the
past: even now, even today, “the light
shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it!” There, we may think, it’s done! But no, there is a coda, a coda we want
almost to whisper in awe: “And the Word
became flesh, and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:1-14). And this Light of the world is still here, Emmanuel, God with us.
How odd that St. Benedict never mentions
Christmas. The Church in Rome had
celebrated the Nativity of Christ on this day as early as the fourth
century. Liturgical history for the
regions outside Rome is sketchy for the period, but if Benedict himself had
never experienced it, surely some of his monks had. Yet the Rule says not a word about it.
Ah, but St. Benedict does indeed write of Christmas’s
fallout: light. The Rule announces the light of Christ that felled Saul of
Tarsus to the ground and raised him to become St. Paul. It is the light that wakens us to the
unremitting work of conversion. In the days after Christmas, when the
adrenaline from the holiday rush subsides, the to-do list grows short, and the
nights are still long, it might tempting to fall asleep amid comforting visions
of a warm little stable dancing in our heads, until something new stirs our
sense of purpose and energizes us to wake up and move forward. St. Benedict cries out to us then: “Let
us get up then, at long last, for the Scriptures rouse us when they say: It is
high time for us to arise from sleep [Rom 13:11]” (RB Prologue 8). Look what awaits us! “ Let us open our eyes
to the light that comes from God….(RB Prologue 9).
Christmas has reminded us forcefully that the
light that comes from God appeared and still lives among us in the Word made
flesh, Jesus Christ, as we have seen.
What does this living, vibrant, unquenchable light enable us to
see? As the gospels unfold, Christ lays
a finger on every corner of our experience and shows us in action a new way to
live where once shadows veiled our path.
Mind you, it’s not always as comforting as the Christmas crib can be
when we see there only a harmless baby, sweetly devoted parents, nice clean
attractive shepherds carrying cute little lambs, and some colorful strangers
from the east bearing exotic gifts. This
light shakes us out of bed and onto our feet.
But we might already have been warned of that at
Christmas, had we looked more carefully.
A harmless baby? Really? A Child who transforms human history, indeed
human being, into the true image of God is harmless? Sweetly devoted
parents? Nothing sweet about what their
devotion demanded. They were ready to
shelter the Child on cold winter’s night, to uproot themselves and flee into
enemy territory to protect him from Herod’s ambition, to build and rebuild a
home in which they won’t be able to keep him long. The bland Virgin of the Christmas cards became
the tower of strength who would let her son go when he must, who would
challenge and support him when it was time, who would stand beneath the cross
and watch him die. Nice clean,
attractive shepherds with little lambs?
Hard-working people, disdained by their society, they inspired the story
of that good shepherd of whom St. Luke would write, the one who goes out into
the wilds and looks everywhere to find one lost sheep, perhaps dirty and
bedraggled under a thorn bush, and carry it home. Colorful strangers bearing gifts? Strangers certainly, prefiguring the races
and cultures who would travel far from their native beliefs to follow the light
that leads to Christ. And those races
and cultures prefigure all of us, when the light uproots us from the comforts
of familiar thoughts and ways to follow the source of the Light.
At Christmas, we have a powerful preview of all
those whose lives are transformed by the Light:
the faithful members of the household who obey when difficult
circumstances don’t offer much in the way of understanding; the workers who go wherever the Word takes
them to do whatever love requires of them to bring the lost out of the darkness
into the light; the onetime strangers
who see the light and follow it down highways and byways to a new way of
life. In other words, we see gathered in
the light of the crib obedience, service, and conversion personified.
None of these Christmas characters were Benedictines. None of them had ever heard of St. Benedict
and his Rule. But they have something to
teach us, during Christmas and afterwards about the Light who wakes us up daily,
in every liturgical season, and transforms our hearts through the practice of
those very Benedictine values, obedience, service and conversion.
St. Benedict never mentions Christmas. At least, not exactly. But he offers us a way of life that unfolds
from the great gift at the heart of Christmas:
“the light that comes from God.”
Copyright 2014, Abbey of St. Walburga
Copyright 2014, Abbey of St. Walburga
