December 13, 2011 Dear Friend: Pax et Bonum!

Christmas is soon coming and I find myself compelled to share with you, dear friend my reflections for the coming of Jesus. Last night, I have been staring at the stars and, somehow, was reminded of Christmas. This feast is, indeed, a feast of light for us Filipinos. It is not insignificant that our basic symbol for Christmas is not the Christmas tree, but the parol, a symbol of light. And as anyone will have noticed, almost everywhere everything is getting lighted. Lights dripping from lamp posts, wrapped around trees, draped over gates and roofs, white and multi-colored, steady or blinking, arranged in fanciful shapes as stars, candles, presents, trees, and even belens. Christmas is undeniably about light; but what kind of light? I want to answer the question in a somewhat circuitous, indirect fashion, and ask you to bear with me. During the Christmas season, we begin reading the wonderful infancy narratives in the Gospel according to Matthew and Luke. I have come to believe that we have neglected the end of Matthews account of the visit of Magi. The wise men had been warned in a dream that Herod planned to murder the child, and so, Matthew writes: They returned to their country by another way (Matthew 2:12). Literally, the verse simply means that the Magi went home via an alternative route. But the poet T. S. Eliot, in his poem, The Journey of the Magi, suggests a deeper meaning. In the poem, one of the wise men, years after the event, recall, and ask himself about the meaning of that encounter with the Christ child in Bethlehem. He asks: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was birth certainly, But this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods It seems that having seen the Child, the wise men could never be the same again. What they had seen had so profoundly upset all their securely held values and beliefs, so overturned their old world, so questioned their old selves, that they could not return to business as usual. The experience of the birth of the Child meant death; the death of their old gods, their old dreams, the old dispensation, their old selves. And so, they had to go home, as Matthew put it, by another way. What is the point? The point is that the light that emanates from the stable of Bethlehem is not just a warm, cheerful, comforting light. We always symbolize God as a candle. But in our electric age, candles are only used as decor. However, the Child is certainly not a decorative light. It is a searing, unrelenting, penetrating light, that if we really knew what it meant for our lives, we would avoid it like a plague. Jesus knew this. John writes: The light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hate the light and do not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. (John 3:19)

The light of Bethlehem is not just grace, but judgment. We deceive ourselves if all we see is cute little baby Jesus, asleep in the hay, and we go away with nice Christmas feelings of seasonal good will. If we dare come to the light, we take the terrible risk of the darkness of ourselves being exposed, of hearing sentence passed on the idolatrous ways we live and love and act, of our very lives being questioned. For this vulnerable child asleep in the manger is God in the flesh. In Him, we see the humility of God, and recognize at the same time, to our shame and confusion, our pride: the way we build our sense of selves on the comforting feeling that we are somehow superior to others; the contempt in which we hold those less intelligent, less physically appealing, less religiously committed, than ourselves. God as giver and gift, and are thus, confronted with our pathetic patterns of hoarding: our constant attempts to hold on to without letting go, to manipulate and possess entirely and for ourselves alone, possessions, people, achievements. We see in the Babe Gods total pouring out of the self, and we are stricken to see so much of the self in all we do: how unfailingly we end up doing the "right thing for the wrong reason; how even our preaching and caring for people are so tainted with self-interest and self-promotion. In the Child, we behold Gods fidelity to His promises, and a light is cast on the trail broken promises, of failed commitments, of betrayals and deceptions that compromise so much of our adult lives. He is the refiners fire (Malachi 3:2). The Anglican theologian Rowan Williams puts it like this: Christmas is a beauty that is the beginning of terror: the Burning Babe, who has come to cast fire on earth. Before His presence, the idols fall and shatter. Somber, spoil-sport, kill-joy words, I hear you say. Are you trying to take all the joy out of Christmas, you ask? Not at all, I am simply concerned. In a few weeks, Christmas will be over, and like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight, the spell will be broken, the lights put away, and everything restored to its old self. Do we return to business as usual? Every year it is the same thing, Karl Rahner observes. A certain amount of Christmas Spirit, a few pious and humanitarian phrases, a few expensive presents and the trouble of having to say thank you afterwards. And then everything goes on as before. Is Rahner describing us? Or, like the Magi, do we go home, having made the pilgrimage to Bethlehem, by another way? How do we allow Christmas to transform us? If we humbly step into the light of Bethlehem, then we are allowing it to probe and search and strip us bare, to question us, to turn us upside down, to call us to dying of an old self which is also the birth of a new self. I remember a poster that read: The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable. Am sorry if I sound like giving another homily, my point is not of making you miserable this season, but that of setting you free, the mystery at the heart of the incarnation and the Franciscan Greccio must penetrate our hearts: Divinity becoming human so that we might become divine. At a time, I thought that the only way to God was up. I had this impression that if we wanted to look for God, we should set our eyes upwards, heavenwards, just like the statues of saints we see around us, who seem to be always gazing up to heavens. Or, if not heaven itself, we should look for him at least in the higher places of this world, the cleaner and holier places of our lives. If I wanted to be close to him, then I needed to become a better person: Get rid of my wickedness. Get rid of my weakness. Try my best to avoid sin and be a holier, more prayerful, more generous person. As I went farther along this spiritual journey, I realized how frustrating that could get. Prying yourself out of bed, for example, on Sunday morning just to experience that height of Catholic boredom called the Sunday Mass; forcing yourself to be humble when you really prefer to advertise your latest accomplishments; or trying to shut up when its so much easier and so much more fun to say something mean and witty. This business of trying to be good

and holy-it can get pretty tiring and frustrating after a while. I realized that I was missing the whole point of our faith, the very essence of Christmas. Not that we should avoid sin; we certainly need to exert every effort to do that. Not that we cant become holier persons; we should never give up praying for that grace because more than human effort, holiness is a divine grace. But, that God is found in everywhere. This Jesus is about a God who descended from heaven to be one of us. This Jesus is not a God who came and went but a God who came and stayed. Jesus is about God becoming one of us-even if it means smearing Himself with the mud of our earth, with the stench of our sweat, and the stain of our blood. This Jesus is about God whose love wants to be as close as possible to us, even for the sinner and slob in us. This Christmas if we want to look for God, let us look for Christ, the God who became and, to this day, remains flesh and blood. And where is Christ to be found? Where is His hiding place? The Christ Child was not found in the Holy of Holies of the Temple of Jerusalem, but in the stable, surrounded by the stench of animals, and visited by the poor. In his public ministry, He was found, more often than not, in the company of the lepers, the poor, the tax collectors, and the prostitutes. Jesus can be found, not only above us, but also around us and especially below us. For even among the sinners and slobs in us, we shall find Him. Jesus is first and foremost Emmanuel, God with us, not God with all the answers, not God with all the solutions, not God who take away all suffering, not God to do away with all pain on earth, but God keeping us company, giving us strength, and hope and love, especially when we are so down and out. It is God saying that I will live a human life, and suffer a human death so that I can be one with you, completely. We look into our lives and we find a God who does not spoon-feed us, but one who leads us, who asks us questions and respects our freedom and allows us to choose to freely follow him, who invites us and gently waits for our response but, who also meantime, assures us that no matter how we respond for now, He will always be just there, in a quiet waiting presence. May the Lord, who is our Light, guide our personal journeys this new year. Hope I was able to bring you the spirit of Christmas it is Him, our only Hope. Have a Merry, Merry Christmas and a Happy, Happy New Year. Come let us listen, come let us not miss Him! In Cor Unum et Anima Una, Mark Joseph Calano