This week, we end our time of waiting and preparation, and receive the One who comes to us as a small child. Our hymns sing of the glory of the Lord shining forth, a star guiding one and all to a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. They will ring with will sing of arrival, resolution, triumph! As if the one coming towards us has finally and completely arrived.
Yet the arrival of God in flesh hardly looks, or feels, triumphant. Surely Mary, holding a wet and wiggly child to her breast, wondered how his chubby, flailing arms would show the strength of God to the world. Surely both Mary and Joseph wondered how their small child would bring down the mighty they would soon cross the desert to escape. Like Mary and Joseph, our life is full of change that is out of our control. We to are surrounded by powerful people, a volatile world, a changing parish community.
Before feeding her newborn child and fleeing to find sanctuary in a foreign land came the birth itself. Honestly, I feel like we are all in the midst of birth pangs, and we are not quite sure what is being born. For so many, birth is a time of grief as we are afraid for our health, the birth of the child to come, and sometimes wonder if we truly want to birth a child into the world we see around us.
Birth is also beautiful, surrounded by the curiosity and wonder of a family that is changing to welcome a new member who will grow to become someone we cannot predict.
Friends, during this season when we welcome God into the flesh, into our flesh, I do not know if you are exhilarated by hope or exhausted by grief. Or, if you are like me, you vacillate between the two. Know that whatever you are experience, God is with you, with us, in it.
Emmanuel, God is with us!
— Mother Maria
