Home

Day of Renewal

Roundtable

O'Malley's Best

An Unnerving Message in Christmas

A week or so ago, a young mother brought her six-month-old daughter to an AA meeting. Well, of course everybody wanted to hold the baby, right? And go goo-goo at her. And get terminally infected by her smile. When it came time for one grandmother to speak, who'd held the child for about a half-hour, she said, "Did any of you know that holding a baby can cure migraines?"

God really got it right at Christmas. We can easily resist Jesus on the cross, the same way we can wince and quickly distract ourselves from a drunk lying in a doorway, reeking and comatose. And you don't have to be too inventive to dodge Jesus-Meek-and-Mild as too prissy, too much of a pushover, and at rock-bottom just a desolating bore. And (in the rare moments he's allowed an appearance) we can even shun the fulminating Jesus scourging moneychangers from the Temple. Too much a contradiction to the dismissable Jesus-Meek-and-Mild we were brought up with, too ill-mannered, too searingly intrusive. In fact, there's a considerable segment of the population who can dismiss Jesus entirely as an utterly groundless fabrication surrounded by legends of bellowing angels and screeching demons and unsophisticated peasants trumpeting an impossible resurrection from the dead.

Ah, but you have to have a blast-furnace firewall in your heart to resist a baby, right?

Yep. God really got it right at Christmas.

Here's an approach to God we find not only irresistible but congenial. It's a God we not only yearn to embrace but also a God we can take care of, protect, dominate. It's a God who's surrendered his power. As St. Paul says in Philippians, "he emptied himself" to become one of us.

But there's another temptation inherent in accepting God as a baby. We can ignore the "message" built-right-into that divine infant in the manger. The message in Jesus on the cross is: "I'm inviting you to be like me." The message of Jesus-Meek-and-Mild forgiving and healing is: "I'm inviting you to be like me." The message of the fulminating Jesus scourging money-changers is: "I'm inviting you to be like me." And I'm pretty sure that the message of the Baby Jesus is not just "Soften your hearts, and let me enter them," but also "I'm inviting you to be like me."

I have a further hunch that invitation might be the most repellant of all. All right, we can reach out to our fellow human beings in agony, just as we would reach out to Jesus suffering on the cross. We can try our best to imitate Jesus' kindness, solicitude, mercy, forgiveness. There are even times-perhaps as rare as the times we're encouraged to think of Jesus with the money-changers-when we're willing enough to stand up and say, "Just stop that. It's wrong!" Oh, but it's far, far more abhorrent (once we've graduated from diapers) even to consider imitating God-as-a-baby, God who's surrendered his power, God who "emptied himself."

What is the God-message unnervingly offered by an infant? Utter vulnerability. The wonder that arises all-unbidden when you are smaller and weaker and more helpless than anything else you encounter. The tabula rasa who responds to an empty box with uncomplicated monosyllables like "Ooo!" and "Aaah!" Someone for whom everything on earth is "Wow!"

Because the price of finding life full of wonder again is surrendering all our so-hard-won sophistication, control, all our protections from being afraid. It means admitting, "I can't do it alone." It means being gullible again, being taken-in-because unless you're willing to be taken-in, you'll never see the inside of anything, never understand what's truly important in human life.

Copyright © 2008, McQuaid Jesuit