Third Sunday of Advent
Meditation: Jesus comes into the world to die for the world.
We are born to suffer and die. This is the problem that walks with me, dogging my every step. Memories of Lizzy dance with tiptoes, glinting like fairy lights around every corner, and yet the problem of human pain and death thuds dully behind every footfall. There is no escaping it.
In Advent, there is also no escaping the cross. Jesus comes to us to die. He is born to endure indescribable suffering, followed by a bloody and excruciating murder. How do we resolve the broken, despairing man on the cross with the pristine infant, bathed in light and laying in a manger?
The fact that there is no true Advent without Lent–no anticipation of joy without the shadow of Golgatha–is part and parcel, to me, of what makes Catholics realists. We know exactly how precious Christmas (Christ’s mass) is because of what will follow; we value the birth of our Lord even more deeply in the light of his death. You see, we know he’s coming to die. Coming to suffer. Coming to be with us.
O Come, O Come Emmanuel. Emmanuel, meaning “God with us.” Our God is a God who chose to love us so deeply that he came to be with us in the closest, most intimate, and most immutable way possible. He became us. He became us so that we could not say, “You don’t know what it means to suffer and despair!” No, we have a God who did not come down from the cross when he was taunted by the thief at his side. We have a God who did not choose to be rescued by legions of angels when he cried out, “My God, my God–why have you forsaken me?” We have a God who, when he was resurrected, came back to us with holes in his hands, feet, and side.
Jesus affirms what it means to human more deeply than we can ever understand. And when we celebrate Christmas, we are celebrating the fact that he came to die for us. When we speak about “tidings of great joy,” the joy that is coming is that Jesus will die, and through this, we can be restored to life. We are literally celebrating the fact that someone else is freely electing to pay for our sins.
In order to truly celebrate Christmas, we cannot lose sight of these things. We put out our nativities and give gifts to echo the three wise men who gifted Jesus with gold for his kingship, frankincense for his priesthood, and myrrh for his martyrdom. And Mary just kneels there, silently accepting it all.
What would you do, if, lying in your hospital bed after the birth of your baby, someone presented you with formaldehyde to use upon your child’s future dead body?
It’s not like these things flew right over Mary’s head. So what is happening in her heart as she nursed this God-become-child? In her arms, she held the life of the world, born to die so that death itself could be unmade.
When Lizzy was born, I too held my own personal miracle. I too held this unthinkable, unspeakable gift that filled my world with light. But I am not Mary, and I could not see her death as I held the newborn Lizzy. I could not see my own suffering to come. And I could not see Cecilia.
For two years, all I could see and all that I could be was Lizzy. And because of this, I learned more about myself and more about human life than I ever could have known prior to her birth. She was my light, my joy–my own personal version of “God with us”–of God being with me and showing me what it means to love and be loved.
Christmas does not eliminate suffering. Neither does it nullify or diminish it. Christmas is Christmas precisely to remind us that suffering is not the whole story. In the midst of suffering, with no end in sight, as wave after wave of pain or grief crashes against the shores of your broken mind, you cannot compass the idea that the suffering will end. Hope is, at times, too painful to allow exactly because you are so terrified that your hope will be unfulfilled and you will be left alone to suffer without end.
But Christmas is that time that affirms that yes, one quiet night in human history, with nothing much going on, hope was born into the world. One night, poor shepherds and farm animals midwived the King of kings as esoteric intellectuals from the East followed a burning star that betokened a great prophecy about to unfold. And most stunning of all, on this night, a Jewish teenager nursed her precious newborn son, knowing that within him lay everything that she was and was ever meant to be, and offered him up to the world that would one day kill him.
I cannot pretend to surrender to Lizzy’s death as Mary surrendered to the death of Jesus. Mary’s every breath was surrender, and I am just not there. I do not know if I ever will be. But there I think there is something to be said for the mute heroism of Mary. I think there is something in that moment in which Mary, having just given birth, takes her newborn son, wraps him in swaddling clothes, and lays him in a manger. There is something about the silence of that night, the wonder of the awestruck witnesses, and the utter humility of the stable or cave in which it occurred. For most of us, there is no seeing around the radiance emanating from the child-God. But, for me, this Christmas, what I can see more than anything else is the quiet knowing on Mary’s face.
And so I wonder as I wander this Christmas, not only how Jesus, my Savior, did come for to die–but how Mary, his mother, held this in her heart and said not a word.