This year Christmas was very different. No parties, half-empty churches, reduced or cancelled family gatherings, empty restaurants, empty or cancelled Christmas markets, empty or stranded planes and cruise ships… Most of all, empty lonesomeness.
Which makes me think of the first Christmas. That was also a very simple kind of Christmas for Mary and Joseph. That first night there were no celebrations, no parties, no blinking decorating lights. Just silence, darkness, poverty and a sense of rejection – “there was no place for them at the inn”. It was too full to welcome Joseph, his expectant wife and his unborn child. There was no room for another baby!
Which again makes me think of other Christmases. Full entertainment venues, markets, shops and, yes, our local churches for midnight mass. Indeed, we had grown used to very full Christmases. Not only are the turkeys stuffed, but so are our stomachs! Christmas markets were overcrowded, children’s rooms filled with myriads of sophisticated toys, Christmas lunch and dinner tables were overloaded with abundant food and drink. Patrons were squeezed in to fit in crowded restaurants and hotels.
Like the full inn of Bethlehem our lives have become crowded with people rushing to find a place in this land of plenty – our consumer society. We wallow in this overflowing abundance of goodies, comfort and pleasure. Our needs are well-catered for and amply satisfied. The next level is to fill up every nook and cranny of our lives. The inn of life is filled to the brim, leaving no place for the stranger, the weak, vulnerable, little people.
And then a strange little virus makes quick work of this excessive and empty fullness. Suddenly we are aching to meet and hug someone we love, to shake hands fearlessly, to belong to someone.
Who knows, could this be a wake-up call inviting us to revisit the emptiness we’re so terrified of? Is it a chance to face and embrace the emptiness of a poor stable and a simple cradle so that we can receive what we are so hungry and thirsty for – the other?
Our hearts will remain empty if the cradle remains empty. I am not talking just of the cradle of Bethlehem. I am talking of the emptiness of a heart that has been shut to a child; of a womb that refuses to be filled with life. I am speaking of a life that is too bloated with ambition, greed, power and comfort to welcome a stranger. I am speaking of the fickleness of families which dissolve life-long commitments towards spouses and children. I am speaking of the empty fullness of greed, self-centredness and self-sufficiency.
If only the emptiness of our misguided lifestyles were to become like the humble, empty cradle-crib, ready in its simplicity to receive the little, helpless child come down from heaven. If only we let go of what we think we possess, to welcome the One whom we really need – the little child.
Only then will we discover what a full life really means. We will discover that in the Christmas cradle-crib it is not only Baby Jesus who is born, but our own real selves, provided our hearts are not so clogged that there is no place for Him when He comes.
Fr Paul Chetcuti, member, Society of Jesus