Christmas Musing

The link in the title is to Pope Benedict's sermon from Midnight Mass this year. This being a time of year when, between reflection, prayer, sentimentality, waiting for Father Christmas, and so forth, anything, including such a delightful sermon, can led me to record vaguely related thoughts. :)

Here is an excerpt from the sermon:
"God’s sign is simplicity. God’s sign is the baby. God’s sign is that he makes himself small for us. This is how he reigns. He does not come with power and outward splendour. He comes as a baby – defenceless and in need of our help. He does not want to overwhelm us with his strength. He takes away our fear of his greatness. He asks for our love: so he makes himself a child. He wants nothing other from us than our love, through which we spontaneously learn to enter into his feelings, his thoughts and his will – we learn to live with him and to practise with him that humility of renunciation that belongs to the very essence of love. God made himself small so that we could understand him, welcome him, and love him....The Son himself is the Word, the Logos; the eternal Word became small – small enough to fit into a manger. He became a child, so that the Word could be grasped by us. In this way God teaches us to love the little ones. In this way he teaches us to love the weak....How are we to love him with all our heart and soul, when our heart can only catch a glimpse of him from afar, when there are so many contradictions in the world that would hide his face from us? This is where the two ways in which God has "abbreviated" his Word come together. He is no longer distant. He is no longer unknown. He is no longer beyond the reach of our heart. He has become a child for us, and in so doing he has dispelled all doubt. He has become our neighbour, restoring in this way the image of man, whom we often find so hard to love."

I believe that Benedict is one of the greatest theologians of the past century. He could deliver a talk on the Incarnation which could win applause from every doctor of the Church in the heavenly courts. Yet here he is writing as "Papa," and indeed, for a moment, practically sounds like a Franciscan. (For one of my favourite recollections of a friar's sermon at Christmas, see this past post. ) God's 'becoming small' and being 'no longer distant' has many implications, and I shall mention a few ideas (more feelings... at Christmas, I allow myself to display those publicly) which entered my own mind.

Francis of Assisi's devotion to the 'babe of Bethlehem,' honoured to this day in the nativity scenes in parishes and elsewhere, is well known. Some of his contemporaries note that, when he spoke of the poor child in the manger, Francis would be so moved that he would begin to dance for joy. Personally, and nearly always, I prefer the gospel of John to Luke or Matthew. I feel the tears and awe far more at the image of "In the beginning was the Word..." than at thoughts of mangers and the ox and ass (possibly because I'm a city girl who shrinks at the smell of animals and at how dreadful it would be to give birth in a stable.)

I love my Franciscan Order dearly, but my intellectual side (which predominates - I have plenty of feelings, but do not trust them) :) always did concede that, popular and widespread though Franciscan preaching was and is, it tends to reduce the Incarnation to a babe in a manger and a desolate man on a cross. The Logos can get lost somewhere. But 'the Logos' can often be too remote for us, where a helpless child, a Galilean carpenter, bread and wine which somehow is His body and blood, can speak to the heart.

My own spirituality tends towards the apophatic. It is inconvenient at times - I should like to tell Jesus of my woes and have him embrace me, but I am left with the Logos in a cloud of unknowing. I believe every word of Christology and doctrine, but don't think we can understand what it means. As I've said in the past, I have no notion of who God is, yet believe I received his body and blood this morning. It inspires awe, adoration, worship indeed, but it can be qutie lonely. In the very awareness of how beyond us is true perception of divinity, God can seem very far away.

I have no idea what the total connection is here, but I shall share an experience which is loosely connected to this general post. Yesterday, I received a wonderful birthday surprise. A dear friend sent me a collection of CDs, recorded by an order of Sisters of which I'd never heard (but whose voices were angelic), which included many a popular hymn from my youth. I'm a musicologist, trained as an operatic singer, and, were I to remain totally 'true' to this background, I'd have to say the music (though not its performance) was dreadful. (I'm not going to do so - bear with me a moment.) Most of it was a combination of poetry which could come from the hands of Father Faber or Victorian ladies with vapours, and music which all calls to mind "Come Back to Erin Mavaurneen."

Listening to this music brought me to tears (and those which spring from warmth, memories, and even that sentimentality which scholars and musicians are supposed to eschew. I'm giving myself permission to record this publicly because even Papa Benedict did not wince at "God becoming small.") It removed the remoteness of the Logos for a moment (though I cherish the Logos immensely), and brought back memories of a God who eased our pain, wished the adoration with the warmth of a little child. "Speak the word of comfort; my spirit healed shall be." "How can I love Thee as I ought? And how revere this wondrous gift, so far surpassing hope or thought?" "Of all friends, the best thou art. Make of me thy counterpart."

It just occurred to me, only in writing this, that those simple hymns captured a great deal of what 'it's all about.'

Happy and Blessed Christmas.