A colleague of mine noticed several years ago one of those marvelous phrases of multiple meaning strewn throughout our scriptures, the familiar reference to the magi who, “having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, . . . left for their own country by another road.”
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor. The magi mysteriously shimmer as faces in the sky, forever peering back behind Calvary to their encounter with the baby lying on the stable floor among oxen and asses, a revelation so mysterious that its depths still baffle them, ever preventing them from being satisfied.
Loving God,
whose angels proclaimed
the saving name of Mary’s child,
grant that we might live each day
No one can say that the classic pattern of the liturgy of Christmas is light on the tragic side of human existence. It has its themes of the census, the exclusion from the inn, the martyrdom of Stephen, the massacre of the innocents, the flight into Egypt, and now this serious evocation of the wound of historical existence, of submission to the narrow way of becoming a unique person through utter dependence on others
Back in the 1950s you opened up the newspaper on the first January certain to find the cartoonists trotting out the images of the little baby in diapers imprinted with the new year’s numbers, and old Father Time with his hourglass and scythe.
Something about this time of year makes us resolve to do all manner of things better. Almost all our good intentions will be history in a week or two. But there is also that other aspect of this time of year, the part that taps us on the shoulder and whispers that our lives are speeding away, faster and faster, evaporating as we speak.
God of good news,
today you begin again to reshape our lives and communities.
You do not start from the outside, but from within.
You begin in the hidden place.
The Child we seek
doesn’t need our gold.
On love, on love alone
he will build his kingdom.
Sorting through the stack of cards that arrived at our house last Christmas, I note that all kinds of symbols have edged their way into the celebration. Overwhelmingly, the landscape scenes render New England towns buried in snow, usually with the added touch of a horse-drawn sleigh.
The icon of Jesus painted by John is his gospel is not a naturalistic rendering. The other gospel writers also created distinctive impressions of Jesus with an artistry wholly unlike modern biography or journalism.