God told the world He was going to send it a king and the world waited. The world thought, a golden fleece will do for His bed. Silver and gold and peacock tails, a thousand suns in a peacock's tail will do for his crib. His mother will ride on a four-horned white beast and use the sunset for a cape. She'll trail it behind her over the ground and let the world pull it to pieces, a new one every evening.
Jesus came on cold straw, Jesus was warmed by the breath of an ox. "Who is this?" the world said, "who is this blue-cold child and this woman, plain as the winter? Is this the Word of God, this blue-cold child? Is this His will, this plain winter-woman?" The world said, "Love cuts like the cold wind and the will of God is plain as the winter. Where is the summer will of God?"
Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear It Away
God is not Santa Claus for grown-ups; Santa Claus would never have given us as the first Christmas present a poor, homeless baby in a feed box. If you have ever seen disappointment in the face of a child on Christmas morning, you can imagine the general reaction of the world-underwhelmed, to say the least.
Much of the world continues to be crestfallen at the gift, and understandably so. "Take up your cross and follow me," the Christ-child ultimately says. The best marketers couldn't sell this holiday gift item with a line like that, especially when the cute baby winds up nailed to said cross. This is possibly why the world would prefer to prettify Christmas by wrapping it up in a bright box decorated with magical stars, wise men bearing gifts, angels, etc. The world shuns the magi with their frankincense and myrrh, making them into the prototypical holiday shoppers; the intense glory of the angels is forgotten as they are reduced to a cute home-decorating fad; and the black night into which the Star of Bethlehem shone becomes blotted out by the glow of light displays.
On the whole, the world would prefer a Christ-mass stripped of darkness.
After having spent a little more than two years at the Dan Corcoran Catholic Worker House, I approach Christmas with a much sharper sense of darkness. We have all felt hunted by the darkness at one time or another, but there are days-make that weeks, months-here at the house when one tragic story after another washes in the door, like the advancing tide.
A few weeks ago the police called, asking whether we could pick up a homeless woman. She came to Winona to stay with relatives but was rejected by them, and she spent her first few hours here sobbing, so upset I thought she might be psychologically unstable. She was not; she was merely poor-materially and even more so in spirit. She was a bitter, broken woman.
The birth of Jesus is God's response to her darkness, a darkness that folds over all of humanity, afflicting each one of us to varying degrees. God's heart ached so fiercely for that woman, and for all of us, that he came not to a palace to be laid on golden fleece and peacock feathers, but to a manger to be laid on cold straw. He was born not of a queen but of a poor teenager. His birth
was announced first not to kings but to lowly shepherds stinking of sheep and sweat. "You have nothing to fear! This day a savior has been born to you, the Messiah and Lord. . . . Let this be a sign to you: in a manger you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes." What sign is it to find the savior of the world in a feed box? This is God saying: I am with you, here in your homelessness, here in your poverty, here in the dark.
The glory of that incarnation here at the house can be as striking as a bright star. Take the broken woman who came to us: As the weeks went by, she shed some bitterness and emerged as a tough woman who could work two jobs at once, shower affection on our dog Ellie, enjoy cooking sweet things, and even laugh once in a while.
Often, though, the tide of darkness passing through our house is fierce, and we feel totally overwhelmed by it. I am thinking of the young mother who we have helped now and then for more than a year. When she and her young children stayed with us again recently, she had placed a restraining order on her boyfriend because he habitually smashed her head into walls and his fist into her eyes. She managed to find housing quickly, and our hopes were raised that she had left that situation. But we soon learned the boyfriend was back-along with welts on her neck that she casually dismissed as the result of his "playfully" choking her. Our best efforts to help her are not enough, and we are left to wonder what will become of her and her children.
This is why we need Christmas and a God who is not Santa Claus, but who loved us enough to enter the darkness with us in order to bring us into the light. As we pray, we remember the Gospel of John:
"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory. . . . Whoever came to be in him found life, life for the light of the world. The light shines on in darkness, a darkness that did not overcome it."
Jerry Daoust, Winona Catholic Worker