The clutching hand of the baby

Christmas is one of the great European exports.  You’ll meet Santa Claus and his reindeer in Shanghai and Dar-es-Salaam; a long way from the North Pole.  More seriously and less commercially, the story of the Nativity is loved even in non-Christian contexts (I discovered that one of the best and most sensitive recent film re-tellings of the story was one made by an Iranian Muslim company).  The weary annual attempts by right-thinking people in Britain to ban or discourage Nativity plays or public carol-singing out of sensitivity to the supposed tender consciences of other religions fail to notice that most people of other religions and cultures both love the story and respect the message. 

It isn’t difficult to see why.  For a start, the story is a compelling and dramatic one.  A long journey through a land under military occupation; a difficult birth in improvised accommodation.  And alongside these harsh realities, the skies torn open, and blazing angelic voices summoning a random assortment of farm labourers to go and worship in the outhouse; or a mysterious constellation in the heavens triggering a pilgrimage by exotic oriental gurus to come and kneel where the farm labourers have knelt.

The story says that something is happening that will break boundaries and cross frontiers, so that the most unlikely people will find they are looking for the same thing and recognise each other instead of fearing each other.  There is something here that draws strangers together.  It’s what some of the old carols mean by talking about the ‘desire of all nations’ –as if what human beings really wanted was not revenge, endless cycles of miserable scoring off each other, but being able to stand together in shared astonishment and gratitude – held together not by plans and negotiations but by something quite outside the usual repertoire of human events.  By something just inviting us to recognise we’re loved – if we could only stop and see it.

The clutching hand of the baby is, for most of us, something we can’t resist.  The Christmas story outrageously suggests that putting our hand into the clutch of a baby may be the most important thing we can ever do as human beings – a real letting-go of aggression and fear and wanting to make an impression and whatever else is going on in us that keeps us tied up in our struggle and violence.

Even more outrageously, the story suggests that this particular baby, the one born in the outhouse, the one who is rescued at the last moment from a village massacre like the ones that happen so regularly in forgotten civil wars today in Congo or Sudan – this baby is the place where the power of the creator of the universe is completely present. And what on earth might it mean to say that the ultimate power in the universe is more like a baby clutching at us in blind trust than it’s like the President’s bullet-proof motorcade?

Rowan Williams, in Radio Times magazine, December 2010

St. Cyril of Jerusalem on Advent

We preach not one advent only of Christ, but a second also, far more glorious than the former. For the former gave a view of His patience; but the latter brings with it the crown of a divine kingdom. For all things, for the most part, are twofold in our Lord Jesus Christ: a twofold generation; one, of God, before the ages; and one, of a Virgin, at the close of the ages: His descents twofold; one, the unobserved, like rain on a fleece; and a second His open coming, which is to be. In His former advent, He was wrapped in swaddling clothes in the manger; in His second, He covers Himself with light as with a garment. In His first coming, He endured the Cross, despising shame; in His second, He comes attended by a host of Angels, receiving glory. We rest not then upon His first advent only, but look also for His second. And as at His first coming we said, Blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord, so will we repeat the same at His second coming; that when with Angels we meet our Master, we may worship Him and say, Blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture XV

St. Gregory the Great on the Second Coming

Christ says: When these things come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand. It is as if the Truth openly warns His Elect by saying: when the evils of this world mount up, when dread of the judgment is shown even by the trembling powers, lift up your heads, that is, be joyful in your hearts, because the world, of which you are not friends, is drawing to its end; the redemption you have been seeking is coming close. In Scripture the head is often used for the soul, because as the members are ruled by the head, so thoughts are governed by the soul. To lift up your heads therefore means to raise the heart to the joys of the heavenly fatherland.

They, therefore, who love God, are bidden to be glad, and to rejoice, because of the end of the world; since soon they will meet Him Whom they love, and that is passing away which they have never loved.  Far be it then from any of the faithful who desire to see God that they should grieve over the stricken world, which we must know will end in these catastrophes.  For it is written:  Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becometh an enemy of God (James 4:4). Who therefore does not rejoice at the approaching end of the world, testifies that he is its friend, and by this he is revealed as an enemy of God.

But let this be far from the faithful, far from the hearts of those who believe through their faith that there is another life, and who love it in very deed.  Let them grieve over the ruin of the world who have planted the roots of their hearts deep in the love of it, who neither look for the life to come, nor are even aware that it is.  But we who have learned of the joys of our heavenly home must hasten to it as speedily as we may.  We should desire to go there with all haste, and to arrive by the shortest way.  And with what miseries does not the world urge us forward?  What sorrow, what misfortune is there, that does not press upon us?  What is this mortal life but a way?  And what folly would it be, let you carefully consider, to be weary with the fatigue of the way, and yet not eager to finish the journey!

St. Gregory the Great, Homily I, 12 November 590

He is the Way

He is the Way.
Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.

He is the Truth.
Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;
You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.

He is the Life.
Love Him in the World of the Flesh;
And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.

W. H. Auden, from For the Time Being

Prayer for a New Mother by Dorothy Parker

The things she knew, let her forget again –
The voices in the sky, the fear, the cold,
The gaping shepherds, and the queer old men
Piling their clumsy gifts of foreign gold.

Let her have laughter with her little one;
Teach her the endless, tuneless songs to sing,
Grant her her right to whisper to her son
The foolish names one dare not call a king.

Keep from her dreams the rumble of a crowd,
The smell of rough-cut wood, the trail of red,
The thick and chilly whiteness of the shroud
That wraps the strange new body of the dead.

Ah, let her go, kind Lord, where mothers go
And boast his pretty words and ways, and plan
The proud and happy years that they shall know
Together, when her son is grown a man.

Dorothy Parker, Prayer for a New Mother

Love and necessity control all law

Love and necessity control all law; and there should be no law that cannot be enforced and applied in love. If it cannot, then let it be done away with, even though an angel from heaven had promulgated it. All this is intended to help and strengthen our hearts and consciences. In this way our Lord himself teaches us how we should humble ourselves and be subject one to another.

Martin Luther, Church Postil, Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

What is this trumpet?

What is this trumpet, which declares war against hell, rolls back the stone from the tomb, thunders forth life to the dead, and gives to all as they rise from their graves victory amid light everlasting? What is it? It is that to which the Lord referred above: The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God. Not this the trumpet that from a horn of wood or brass gives forth a mournful bellow, calling to war, but the Voice that comes from the heart of the Father, from the mouth of the Son, the call to life to those that are in heaven and in hell.

And, at the last trumpet. The trumpet that in the beginning called the world from nothing, the same on the last day shall recall the world from death; and that which in the beginning raised man from the slime, the same at the end shall recall him from the dust.

St. Peter Chrysologus, Sermon 103

Martin Luther on the Tenth Leper

As plain as it is, great is the example this Gospel presents to us. In the leper it teaches us faith, in Christ it teaches us love. Now, as I have often said, faith and love constitute the whole character of the Christian. Faith receives, love gives. Faith brings man to God, love brings man to his fellow. Through faith he permits God to do him good, through love he does good to his brother man. For whoever believes has every thing from God, and is happy and rich. Therefore he needs henceforth nothing more, but all he lives and does, he orders for the good and benefit of his neighbor, and through love he does to his neighbor as God did to him through faith. Thus he reaps good from above through faith, and gives good below through love. Against this kind of life work-righteous persons with their merits and good works terribly contend, for they do works only to serve themselves, they live only unto themselves, and do good without faith.

Martin Luther, Church Postil, Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity

St. Ambrose on the Gospel of St. Luke

It is in the form of history, we said, that this book of the Gospel was written. So we see that, compared to others, Luke puts his care into reporting facts rather than formulating precepts. Even, in the manner of a story, it begins with a story: “There was,” said he, “in the days when Herod reigned in Judea, a priest named Zacharia,” and he continues until bout this episode. This is the same reason why those who want to recognize in the four animal figures revealed by the Apocalypse the emblem of the four books of the Gospel hold that this one is represented under the features of the bull. The bull is the sacerdotal victim (Leviticus 4:3): there is therefore a relationship between the bull and this gospel which, beginning with the priests, ends with the bull charged with the sins of all and immolated for the life of the whole world. He is the sacerdotal bull. He is both the bull and the priest: the priest, because he intercedes for us – for “we have an advocate,” and it is he, “with the Father” (1 John 2:1) – the bull, for his blood has purified us and redeemed us.

St. Ambrose of Milan, Commentary on Luke, Prologue

Large Catechism on the Second Article of the Creed

If now you are asked, What do you believe in the Second Article of Jesus Christ? answer briefly: I believe that Jesus Christ, true Son of God, has become my Lord. But what is it to become Lord? It is this, that He has redeemed me from sin, from the devil, from death, and all evil. For before I had no Lord nor King, but was captive under the power of the devil, condemned to death, enmeshed in sin and blindness.

For when we had been created by God the Father, and had received from Him all manner of good, the devil came and led us into disobedience, sin, death, and all evil, so that we fell under His wrath and displeasure and were doomed to eternal damnation, as we had merited and deserved. There was no counsel, help, or comfort until this only and eternal Son of God in His unfathomable goodness had compassion upon our misery and wretchedness, and came from heaven to help us. Those tyrants and jailers, then, are all expelled now, and in their place has come Jesus Christ, Lord of life, righteousness, every blessing, and salvation, and has delivered us poor lost men from the jaws of hell, has won us, made us free, and brought us again into the favor and grace of the Father, and has taken us as His own property under His shelter and protection, that He may govern us by His righteousness, wisdom, power, life, and blessedness.

Martin Luther, Large Catechism, II.27