The First Sunday of Advent
Meditation: Jesus enters the world as a helpless infant in Bethlehem.
Lizzy was born on March 20, 2017, and Cecilia was born on May 5, 2019, so there is only a 1.5 month lapse between them. This means that I was significantly pregnant with both of them throughout two winters, two Advents, and two Christmases. I like to go to confession each Advent to prepare for the celebration of Christmas and, interestingly, I had almost identical things said to me by two different priests at two different churches, one in December of 2016 and the other in December of 2018.
In both, I confessed my marital struggles and my own weaknesses, lamenting how I felt these things were getting in the way of me really allowing myself to feel the joy and hope that this season brings. Both priests counseled me to look inwards–on a basic, biological level–to the child growing within me. They both stated that my pregnancy could give me an intimate and unique insight into the mind and heart of Mary, Our Lady, who spent her Advent pregnant too. They suggested I unite myself to Mary’s pregnancy and anticipation, awaiting this wondrous child who would forever change her life and, indeed, the lives of the entire world.
I know that Lizzy and Cecilia’s lives will not change the lives of every living human being on this planet. But these two priests reminded me that the state of pregnancy itself is the fullness of the Advent season. In pregnancy, you are anticipating this totally new life who will soon come and transform your life forever. And with both Lizzy and Cecilia, this is exactly what happened.
I have always proclaimed Christmas to be my favorite holiday. I remember clearly trying to explain why to my husband before we were married. I fervently argued that even as the world around us is beginning to die, as winter inexorably comes and seems to either devour or force into hiding all traces of life, then is born into the world the reminder of new life to come. The return of the sun to the world echoes the coming of the Son. Christmas is more a season of hope and light than any other holiday (including all the summer holidays) because the Light comes to us when we most need it. Just when we are becoming complacent to the sucking tide of despair and mediocrity, Christmas comes to remind us that our lives are about hope and joy, not about despair and grief. It is a time when people remember to come out of themselves to remember others, to focus on their loved ones, and even to focus on those most abused and forgotten in our society. It is a time when the best qualities in human beings yawn, stretch, and wake to remember what being human actually means.
“Okay, okay,” my husband told me all those years ago. “You don’t need to cry. I get that you love Christmas.”
Yes, I love Christmas. And I find myself excited for Cecilia’s first Christmas, even as I find myself aching that Lizzy is not here to celebrate it with us. I know that parts of decorating for Christmas will be excruciating, as I unpack Lizzy’s Christmas books, her Christmas angel bear that lights up and plays Christmas songs, and her stocking with bright red cardinals embroidered on it underneath the gold script that reads “Elizabeth.” But Lizzy’s absence cannot serve to corrupt what Christmas is to me, mostly because Lizzy herself is not a corrupting force. In life, Lizzy was a bright, shining, joyful, and loving presence who made everyone around her stop, smile, and appreciate their own lives just a little bit more. In death, Lizzy is a reminder of what life actually means, how precious all life is, and how we cannot waste the time that is given to us.
This year, the hope inherent in the Christmas season will not serve to make me hope for the impossible: that I can rewind time and alter circumstances in such a way that Lizzy never died. No, the hope I have this Christmas season is crystallized in one person: Cecilia. Cecilia is about to be 7 months old, and her fragility still terrifies me. Yet, she is also brimming with life and the awesome and boundless potential for life. She is developing at a pace that would be mind-blowing if we could watch it sped up on a National Geographic camera. She is literally the embodiment of hope for the future, the promise of things to come, and the essence of what to fight for and work towards.
And yet Lizzy still infuses every cell in my body and every part of my heart and mind. She is with me through every day in memories and thoughts and prayers. Lizzy is my reason–the very logic that informs who I am and what I choose. But Cecilia is rapidly becoming my purpose; she is why I choose to work and fight and strive without ceasing for her life. Because Cecilia not only needs every chance before her to live her own life; Cecilia carries the burden of needing to live the life that was taken from Lizzy. This tiny child sleeping on my breast has no remote concept of the weight that she will have to carry throughout her life. I therefore owe it to her to make sure that I do everything in my power to lessen that burden.
In the most concrete way, hope breathes and sleeps in my arms in the form of Cecilia, just as, some 2,000 years ago, Hope breathed and slept in the arms of a young woman named Mary. And just as three scholars on camels followed a brilliant star through the moonlit desert, seeking a promised birth fulfilled, I spend my days and nights tracking the shining light of Lizzy, asking her to show me the way home.