God Incarnate in Our Lives

Dear Sisters and Brothers—

Dominic Milroy, in the London Tablet, wrote about a cold, grey day in London just before Christmas. On a crowded subway car, everyone was carefully avoiding all eye contact in the spirit of alienation and solitude that seems to characterize most public transportation in this era. At the second stop, his eye caught a splash of bright red, which turned out to be a very large balloon in the hands of a small Black child who was clearly delighted with his trophy. It was not an ordinary balloon but a special Christmas balloon, on a polished wooden stick with a bright gold knob at the top. The mood of the subway car lightened a bit as the boy entered the packed car with his family.

At the next stop, the insistent silence was shattered by the arrival of a fair-haired girl of about seven who was screaming as she clutched her father’s jacket; she had Down’s Syndrome. There was nothing to be done to comfort her, and everyone simply tried to pretend that she wasn’t there. Everyone, that is, but the boy with the red balloon. The author reported: “First, I noticed him standing on tiptoe, with a look of concern as he tried to identify the source of the crying. Then he disappeared, but the red balloon started making a hesitant journey down the carriage, held aloft on the stick above the heads of the crowd. When we reached the next stop and the doors opened, the little black boy appeared next to me and stood in front of the little girl. As even more people struggled into the carriage, he said, in quite a loud and grave voice: ‘Hello, this is for you. Happy Christmas. Goodbye.’ Then he disappeared into the crowd.”

The author continued: “The effect was instantaneous, electric, and cumulative. Everyone heard the words and turned to look at what was happening. The little girl stopped crying, clutched the balloon, and started to show it to her father, to me, and to all her neighbors. That was what we had suddenly become: neighbors. It seemed astonishing at the time, that one small gesture could change the sense of everybody’s grim and silent alienation into the sudden warmth of community… I don’t know, of course, whether the boy was Christian, Muslim or ‘agnostic’, but what was clear was that he had quite simply given away to a complete stranger what was at the moment his most precious possession. We all had the sense that what had happened was important. How might the world be changed if everyone acted like this?”

What we celebrate at Christmas did not begin and end in Bethlehem. Every gift we give, every generosity we extend, every offering of forgiveness we give and receive, every reconciliation we make possible, every stand we take for what is right and just, renews the Incarnation—God becomes “flesh” in these human, but deeply holy, acts. God is incarnate in the Bethlehems of our homes and in the Jerusalems of our busy lives. A child’s hug and a spouse’s embrace, a hand offered in forgiveness, the all-night vigil with the dying parent—these are all experiences of God-made-flesh, the advent of the Prince of Peace.

As we celebrate that blessed event in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, we hold in our hearts that very city today, so much in need of peace. We hold also Tel Aviv and Gaza City. Kiev and Bakhmut. Haiti and South Sudan. Michoacán and Guerrero, Mexico. Myanmar and Afghanistan. Yemen and Syria. We pray for peace in every corner of the world. We promote non-violence by acting non-violently in our everyday encounters with those we love and those with whom we disagree.  For we remember the words of Howard Thurman, in his poem The Work of Christmas:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart.

From all your parish staff, a very merry Christmas and a blessed 2024 to you and yours.

Oremus pro invicem.
Fr. Greg