Sunday in Octave of Christmas 27.12.09 Christ to be born in our time
Sometimes in films or plays the Virgin Mary is portrayed as giving birth to the Christ Child with the normal labour pains associated with birth. This, however, cannot be correct as the Church has always understood that the birth of Jesus was painless to Mary. He passed through her flesh like sunlight through glass, or as He later passed through the wall of the tomb.
Mary was spared this particular suffering but she suffered a great deal later on in her role as Mother of all disciples of Our Lord: Woman, this is your son. To bring children to birth in faith is harder than bringing them to birth in ordinary life, and requires a great deal of sacrifice and suffering.
Mary’s future suffering was foreshadowed by Simeon in today’s Gospel: a sword shall pierce your soul. She would suffer to see her Son suffer. Then she would suffer to see Him rejected and despised even in future generations. She who can see so clearly that He should be honoured suffers all the more when He is dishonoured.
So we think of Mary in these Christmas days, that it was not all joy for her. Certainly in Bethlehem on the night of the birth it was unrestrained joy, but the shadow of suffering lurked close by.
This closeness of joy and suffering we express in the Church’s liturgical calendar where Christmas Day is followed quickly by the feasts of St Stephen and the Holy Innocents, a reminder of the red of suffering staining the pure white of joy.
Christ has been born, but we could say He still is waiting to be born in the hearts of men. He has come to the earth but has not yet penetrated the hearts of the people. Not until they accept Him fully can Our Lord be said to have come to birth fully.
On this line of thought we could say that we, as the Church, suffer the pain of childbirth as we try to bring all our sons and daughters to the fulness of faith. How we suffer when we lose one of our children to worldliness; or when we find it so hard to bring one outside the fold inside. How much resistance of every kind there is to the simple truth that God is our Father and Jesus Christ our Saviour.
What do we mean by penetrating the hearts of people?
At the end of the Second World War people on the allied side were very jubilant, dancing in the streets, hugging complete strangers, so relieved were they that the terrible destruction had stopped.
I do not suppose those people in that moment of joy would have expected that the war just finished was the last war there would ever be. They were just glad for at least a reprieve for a time. Human nature was still the same and there would be always danger of war while people were subject to greed, hate, anger and the like.
There needs to be a change of heart. Christ must be born in each person’s heart so that these sinful qualities can be removed. When we pray for peace it is not just absence of war we seek, but absence of malice. Not just the putting away of weapons but the burying of all grudges. When we reach this extra level of change we can say that Christ has penetrated our hearts.
Mary loved totally and so made herself vulnerable to whatever happened to her Son. If she had been hard and indifferent to Him she would have suffered less, but would be less helpful to us.
Her great love becomes a channel by which her children (including us) can learn love instead of hate. In this she is our Mother. She brings us to birth. The more our hearts are purified of sin the more alive we become; the more Our Lord can be said to be born in our midst.
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