We are approaching the 4th Sunday of Advent, which means Christmas, the celebration of the Birth of Jesus, is just days away.
For just about every person reading this reflection, there is something about Christmas that moves and touches us in ways that no other holiday or holy day does. For someone like me who grew up just a few miles from the village that is thought to be the real-life setting for Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Christmas has always been very special indeed, even a bit magical.
But I wonder how Mary and Joseph felt as the first Christmas neared? Like any first parents, they were no doubt a bit anxious about the whole thing. In light of the paschal mystery and our faith in the person, message, and meaning of Jesus, we have the tendency to romanticize their experience and his birth. But I doubt that that was the actual situation for them.
After all, Mary was near term and yet they had to journey from the familiar comfort of their home in Nazareth to the tiny hamlet of Bethlehem, traveling on a donkey over rough and dangerous roads. Once there, they found no suitable lodging, especially for the birthing that was imminent. Thus, their joy as expectant parents must surely have been tempered by the fears and anxiety of an imminent birth in an unfamiliar and unusual setting, as well as the uncertainty that lay immediately before them as new parents.
And all this was just on the human level! What about how all this fit with an angel announcing his birth nine months earlier and with a perplexed Joseph counseled by angels during fitful dreams? How were they to align such miraculous beginnings with the birth of their son in a strange town and in an animal’s stable?
As we approach Christmas, let the adults among us (children are excused) reflect at bit on the anxieties, perplexities, hopes and promises of Joseph and Mary. All of us, but especially parents, can relate to the unsettling mix of anxiety and promise that this couple experienced at this very special but most challenging moment in their young marriage.
For just a bit, then, let’s let go of the wonder of the approaching Christmas and sit in prayerful reflection with all that is implied by the nitty-gritty reality of one of the foundational truths of our faith: the Word became flesh!
Rev. Lewis S. Fiorelli, OSFS
Provincial
Wilmington-Philadelphia Province
