Regina! What a rich, nourishing reflection! The photo of your Christmas breakfast table made my mouth water. And I loved the photo the tree of life tapestry and your thoughts around it. Am glad you added at the end that you were telling about family traditions developed over years. Too daunting otherwise. But such a richness now, layered and built up for us as written.
I think of new parents at Christmastime, especially first-time parents. The miracle of their first baby - soft, warm in their arms - melting, breaking open their hearts - their shy offer to let family and friends and nurses hold her or him - an unutterable amazement, shared and endearing.
I wonder whether Mary and Joseph invited their visitors - shepherds and magi and who knows who else - to hold baby Jesus. I can't imagine otherwise, but we don't see it in story or image before Simeon and Anna.
A short passage in Aquinas dwells comes to mind:
"The newborn infant works wonders of reform and perfection on its parents, piercing the hard shell of defense that has hidden them from uninterested or hostile strangers. With that shell broken, a beaming kindliness, understanding, cleanliness is let loose on the world; even strangers passing by are warmed by the fires of nobility, of generosity, of self-sacrifice that have been lighted by the infant in the hearts of a man and woman. We miss most of the truth when we dismiss all this in terms of 'doting' or 'proud parents.' These people are not proud but humble, humble from the personal confrontation of the mystery of creation.
"Mother and father know, with an overwhelming sense of humble gratitude, that the soul which gives life to their infant, spiritual and immortal, reaching out to the ends of the universe and beyond to garner truth, soaring to the heights of God Himself to fill the cup of love, this soul was none of their making. They know, and stand in silenced awe, that they were not even the instruments of the production of this soul. . . . For a spirit, such as this soul, is not made out of anything, it has no parts, it is not produced in slow stages; not even God Himself could give an instrument a part to play in the wondrous work of creating a human soul. These parents know that their child is much more God's than their own and, in that knowledge, come close to the joy in the hearts of Mary and Joseph on the first Christmas night."
I remember when I first held our daughter in my arms. A soft, fragile bundle of new life, entrusted to me, to my wife and me. I was shattered. Everything changed. All my previous attachments were loosed. It was not unlike the loosening towards which the gospels urge us. THAT was Christmas. That lit up the heart of Christmas. I thought of my parents. "They loved me like THIS?"
Your family traditions for celebrating the birth of Jesus seem to me to bring that moment - every bit of that moment - and more - into the arms and lives of your own children. Your family's Christmas traditions are a rehearsal for the births of their own children - and a glimpse of their own births to you, and of yours to their grandparents and their parents before them - all threaded together, imaged in the baby, the poverello, in Bethlehem.
I reckon I've stumbled into a riff here. I'll close it with a link. One way or another, I try to put this into the hands of new parents at Christmastime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6m0NfrEn_k
Regina! What a rich, nourishing reflection! The photo of your Christmas breakfast table made my mouth water. And I loved the photo the tree of life tapestry and your thoughts around it. Am glad you added at the end that you were telling about family traditions developed over years. Too daunting otherwise. But such a richness now, layered and built up for us as written.
I think of new parents at Christmastime, especially first-time parents. The miracle of their first baby - soft, warm in their arms - melting, breaking open their hearts - their shy offer to let family and friends and nurses hold her or him - an unutterable amazement, shared and endearing.
I wonder whether Mary and Joseph invited their visitors - shepherds and magi and who knows who else - to hold baby Jesus. I can't imagine otherwise, but we don't see it in story or image before Simeon and Anna.
A short passage in Aquinas dwells comes to mind:
"The newborn infant works wonders of reform and perfection on its parents, piercing the hard shell of defense that has hidden them from uninterested or hostile strangers. With that shell broken, a beaming kindliness, understanding, cleanliness is let loose on the world; even strangers passing by are warmed by the fires of nobility, of generosity, of self-sacrifice that have been lighted by the infant in the hearts of a man and woman. We miss most of the truth when we dismiss all this in terms of 'doting' or 'proud parents.' These people are not proud but humble, humble from the personal confrontation of the mystery of creation.
"Mother and father know, with an overwhelming sense of humble gratitude, that the soul which gives life to their infant, spiritual and immortal, reaching out to the ends of the universe and beyond to garner truth, soaring to the heights of God Himself to fill the cup of love, this soul was none of their making. They know, and stand in silenced awe, that they were not even the instruments of the production of this soul. . . . For a spirit, such as this soul, is not made out of anything, it has no parts, it is not produced in slow stages; not even God Himself could give an instrument a part to play in the wondrous work of creating a human soul. These parents know that their child is much more God's than their own and, in that knowledge, come close to the joy in the hearts of Mary and Joseph on the first Christmas night."
I remember when I first held our daughter in my arms. A soft, fragile bundle of new life, entrusted to me, to my wife and me. I was shattered. Everything changed. All my previous attachments were loosed. It was not unlike the loosening towards which the gospels urge us. THAT was Christmas. That lit up the heart of Christmas. I thought of my parents. "They loved me like THIS?"
Your family traditions for celebrating the birth of Jesus seem to me to bring that moment - every bit of that moment - and more - into the arms and lives of your own children. Your family's Christmas traditions are a rehearsal for the births of their own children - and a glimpse of their own births to you, and of yours to their grandparents and their parents before them - all threaded together, imaged in the baby, the poverello, in Bethlehem.
I reckon I've stumbled into a riff here. I'll close it with a link. One way or another, I try to put this into the hands of new parents at Christmastime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6m0NfrEn_k