“Joy to the world!” the song rings out. But not everyone feels joyful at Christmas. Anyone who is sick, bereaved, lonely, or unemployed may find trying to sing about joy a bitter irony. Someone who has lost a child may find the sentimental songs about Baby Jesus unbearable. How can we pray with the all-too-familiar Christmas Gospels in such circumstances? How can we get beyond our sadness and suffering to experience the Incarnation?
When Mass was in Latin, each Gospel read at Mass began with the words In illo tempore, literally, “at that time.” Beyond the literal translation, the phrase meant something deeper; “that time” was not a particular year in the first century but another dimension, in which God is with us at all times, out of time.
Let’s try crossing over into illo tempore—through our imagination.
Pray with Luke 2:1–7.
Ride with Mary, nine months pregnant, on the back of a donkey for 90 miles on rough roads from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Feel the pain in her back, the fatigue, and the jolts as the donkey slips and almost stumbles. How would you feel if you ended a long and exhausting journey only to find you had no place to stay? Anxious? Scared? Helpless? When her labor started, how did it feel to lie on the dirty ground? Did the innkeeper’s wife perhaps find a local midwife to help? Or did this teenager and her husband have to figure it out for themselves? Did they have any hot water to wash the newborn? Forget all the traditional religious art in which Mary is fully dressed, neatly combed, and welcoming strangers. How did she really look? How did she feel? Did her milk come readily? How did she comfort a crying, hungry baby? What else do you see, hear, smell? What do you feel? Is God saying something to you? What do you want to say to God?
Pray with Matthew 2:13–15.
Be with Joseph as he awakes from a dream telling him to flee to Egypt. This is the second time God has spoken to him in a dream, a strictly one-way conversation. There is no opportunity to ask questions. There are no helpful instructions. How is he going to transport a new mother and a tiny infant more than 400 miles in the middle of the night? How does he feel about this massive responsibility? I like to think the timely gift of gold from the Magi might have just sufficed, perhaps to hire camels—not exactly comfortable, but fast enough to elude Herod’s henchmen. How does Joseph explain the situation to Mary? How do they prepare the baby for the journey? Is there anyone more helpless than a newborn? Too young to understand what was happening, Jesus could surely sense the anxiety of his parents—the only security a small child knows. What do you make of the image of the Son of God beginning his human life hunted by killers? What else do you see, hear, or feel? What do you want to say to God? Is God saying something to you? Listen.
Pray with John 1:1 (or 1:1–5).
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
In John’s Gospel we have no stable, no straw, no animals, no shepherds, no familiar images—just God’s Word, from before the beginning of time. And the Word was made flesh and continues to dwell among us.
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Thank you! And most of all, thanks be to our GOD for giving you the gift of writing words that enable those of us who read them to think how very blessed we are and have been by Him sending His only begotten Son into our world that is filled with need of every imaginable and unimaginable pain and suffering. Words that are filled with Hope🙏🏻
I’ll start where you ended because the Prologue of John is poetry for me and then it’s reassurance that God is always. Then I love how you described Mary as a teenager, uncombed, looking for help to give birth, something completely new for her, all alone in strange surroundings, wondering what to do with this Creature Who is more than just any Baby and will she be able to feed it, cradle it and make it feel safe?
And Joseph, yes, that gold that he probably thought he could use to improve his carpentry shop now has to be used to take an unexpected and dangerous journey to an unknown destination with a Child Who is his responsibility and his wife.
What about this Child Whose very beginning is colored by poverty, homelessness and danger? Yet this Child will bring Joy to the world and Salvation and Peace because He is the Root of Jesse, Key of David, Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace and Emmanuel.
Thank you, Barbara, for taking me away from my self-involvement in my pain and suffering and instead focusing on the Child Who is coming to save me. It was a beautiful and inspiring reflection.
Merry Christmas, Barbara
Thank you for this extraordinary thought for those who are suffering. Let us accompany them with our prayers. Have a very Merry Christmas.
Thank you Barbara. This was very fitting and what I needed to contemplate on right now. I can feel the hand of God in your words.
Thank you for being the lector at Mary Ann Donnelly and my wedding.
Mary Ann continually assists me In dealing with my dyslexia by supplying me with your inspirational readings and books.
Thank you
Merry Christmas and God bless you.
Thanks Barbara. Indeed the sense of pain is also prayer which fits well in the Ignatian “application of senses”.
Thank you Barbara. Praying with the Gospels is so very powerful as we are led to feel and experience something of what Mary and Joseph must have been feeling. The prologue in John’s Gospel is especially amazing and touches me deeply.
God became human in the lowliest of circumstances. In communion with the lost, the displaced, the suffering, the poor. What are we to make of this? I believe our reaction should be that we, at last, are found, we have a place, suffering remains real and searing but there is healing, we become rich through poverty. The gospels of Mark and John tell the story of Jesus’ birth in a different way to Matthew and Luke: an extraordinary diversity.
Barbara:
How is your health? It is good to hear from you. Great contribution. I hope to hear from you.
Thomas S. Larson
Thank you. Doubt right from the very beginning. My assessment is influenced by my 21st-century perspective. No way. I think. On a donkey, delivered in the cold, raw outdoors. My children were delivered in hospitals surrounded by nurses and doctors. The occasion is joyous for us because God has become man. Only surpassed by the Resurrection, it is here in Bethlehem that my faith and wonder begins. Needs to begin. The Evangelists tell us what happened. Mary, I suppose, must have told them. Why Lord? It’s difficult for this 21st-century man to fathom. I would have done it differently. So the story of your arrival confounds us and it is here where my faith must begin. This is how your life on earth began. I wish it had been otherwise. Safe, comfortable, clean, celebrated. But I suspend my doubts and my 21st-century frame of reference and believe the accounts given to us are true. This is how God came into the world. It’s cause for profound meditation. Thanks again.