Dear sisters and brothers in Christ, dear friends,
This year I spent the first half of Advent participating in meetings in Rome, and while there, had an opportunity to pay a brief visit to Naples, and to a small neighbourhood which is completely dedicated to the making of presepi, nativity sets. The presepi of Naples are a bit ramshackle, resembling the dwellings of the poor of the city 300 hundred years ago when the tradition took root. The scenes depicting ancient Bethlehem, created by the artists and craftspeople of Naples, are crowded with the hard working weather-worn people of the village. These individually made terracotta figures, with papier-maché techniques to clothe each character with simple garments often reflecting their daily labours, show the faces of the people Christ came to save. The figures are seldom smiling, nor are they sad, but they often reflect the weariness and longing of the human condition. They need a Messiah, the coming of God into their tired difficult lives, and yet many of them appear not to notice the birth of the Christ Child.
These figures have awakened within me a prayer about our need for a Messiah in our wounded world, and the challenge of recognizing and welcoming him where and when he does come. This prayer is my quiet offering to you this Christmas season.
O hidden author of my being
You speak in a language I am slow to understand.
I sense that your voice descends quietly
like snow over the prairie fields at night outside my window
Yet I struggle to know the notes of the melody your creation sings.
My ears often cannot distinguish your words,
Your whisper like a distant galaxy, a million stars beyond my reach.
Your touch, I trust, is near, and deep,
Reaching out like a field of ten thousand yellow flowers in the warmth of Summer;
But in the fray of comings and goings
And the brokenness of so much around and within,
I cannot feel the balm of your hand in mine.
My eyes are not attuned,
And I don’t recognize the way you stand before and beside me,
The landscape of the paths you walk.
And yet, you summon
And I know that I am summoned.
O hidden maker of this human condition,
here of all places, you choose to show us your face.
You come into the rubble
Unannounced (except by angels most could not hear)
Lying with the unadorned sublime wonder of a newborn
in the strewn hay and scattered trappings of your new home.
You say, with one enfleshed word,
I cast my lot with you human beings.
I want to taste and feel what I have created
I want to know from the inside the human heart,
And for that human heart to know me.
Your embrace covers the beginnings and endings
Of all the ages, yet it is not some vague
Accord with the human condition.
It is an embrace of each one of us in our ragged lives.
You come to lift stone by stone
And make a path for us to walk
To ease our distress, to shoulder our load.
O mysterious and ever gracious author of this human condition,
Help us too, each one of us, in our power and in our poverty
To cast our lots with all that is truly human.
With your tiny hands and small beating heart,
Come to us anew and teach us to love as you love this humanity,
To embrace the wondrous and tumultuous, longing and rejoicing fragments
Of this life you have given us.
To remember your love even in the midst of our own contradictions and struggles.
Open our eyes to see your tender embrace tucked in amidst the rubble
And give us courage and resilience to sit with the wounded
and walk with the suffering and to trust that you are there in the midst of it all.
As you did once long ago, show us your face, today,
in our daily lives, in our weary world.
Lord, let us see your face.
Merry Christmas, everybody!
