Dec 26 2009
Christmas with St. Francis at the Belen (Part 2 of 2)
by Fr. Catalino G. Arevalo, SJ
It is a lovely story, and all manner of lessons might be drawn from it: how a child-like spirit can create fresh ways of bringing the Gospel to people; how altar and manger become one at Christmas night, the newborn savior being our true life’s bread; how over the crib falls already the shadow of the cross. But perhaps the simplest and best thought is just this: Bethlehem teaches us, that at the heart of being a Christian is loving our Christ, Mary’s Son, with all our heart and soul. The deepest meaning of the Christmas mystery is that God became one of us, “born of a woman, born under the law”. He became a child, so that in him and in his flesh, as the Nativity Preface has it, we might see the beauty of God which is invisible to the eyes of the body, and seeing, we might fall in love with thr God we cannot see.
For Jesus of Nazareth, the Savior of Israel’s amid all humanity’s long expectation, “desire of the everlasting hills”, who “sits now at the right hand of the father”, is not a distant figure now lost in the mists of ancient history. He is not even someone once sent by God who has disappeared ”into the incomprehensibility of God”. No, Jesus of Nazareth, by His life, death, and resurrection forever lives truly as the Crucified and Risen One. He lives now. He lives among us, remaining forever true man, a real historical person, present to the world and to us, near to us, – a person we can love, a person around whom we can throw our arms in friendship and affection, and in the simplicity of unfeigned love.
Of the great and somewhat fearsome German theologian, Karl Rahner, we are told that he once found himself engaged in a lengthy and rather abstract discussion on Jesus Christ, with a learned university professor, a rather rationalistic academician. Let Rahner himself tell us what happened:
At one point, I intervened with, “Yes, you see, you are actually only really dealing with Jesus when you throw your arms around him and realize right down to the bottom of your being that this is something you can still do today.” And my professor-friend replied, “Yes, you’re right of course, if you don’t mean it too pietistically.”
Like Francis at Greccio, we must be able to hold Jesus in our arms as the Child of the manger; or look lovingly upon the Nazarene walking his via dolorosa; or clasp to our breast the Crucified and Risen One dwelling among us and within us. We must, in faith, come truly to love him as Friend and Brother.
In the modern classic children’s story, The Velveteen Rabbit, we are told that in order to become real people, we have to allow ourselves to be loved, loved “strongly and even somewhat roughly”, loved as humans love each other, with all the wear and tear that such loving involves. Only thus, over long, often painful and scarring years, will we become real. True, true. But I often think of what Fr. Robert Griffin CSC once wrote: “The Velveteen Rabbit has it wrong. If you love something, someone strongly enough, it is you, and not the loved object, – who becomes real.”
Through his incredible faithful life, Francis learned to love Jesus “strongly and passionately enough”, and over the years, he grew to become real and more real: real like his Master, in all the longings of his soul; real like his Master even to the bearing of wounds on hands and feet and opened side; real and like his Lord as perhaps no other person has ever become.
May our hearts be simple enough this Christmas to kneel with Francis before the belen. May we become enough like little children to let the radiant beauty of God in the Christ-child touch our souls and open them to mystery and faith. In the half-light of the cave of Bethlehem, may we be embraced by amazement and longing, so that Mary’s child and God’s own Son may enter into our lives again, as a gift which is greater than all we could hope for. May all our pain and weariness, our anxiety and distress, our fears and doubts, fall from us, and may “the dear Christ” touch with all newness all things within us so that we may believe and know, that we are truly accepted by the Father; that we are infinitely cherished and incredibly loved.