Come, Thou Long-expected Jesus

On my mantle I have arranged the couple dozen figurines of my Fontanini nativity set, each character frozen in a perpetual gaze. The young pan piper seems lost in his melody, and another youth leans against a fence, musing toward my hearth. The shepherds and most of the sheep lift their faces to my ceiling. The goose girl and the old garlic farmer, too, pause to watch. An ox and donkey rest in the stable, ready to chew their cud, while a token angel hovers in the background. Joseph and Mary kneel near them, hands raised in anticipated adoration. The two look down at an empty manger, because high church tradition and common sense ask me to leave it so until the Day comes to celebrate Jesus’ actual birth. Each creature in my crèche holds its breath in a resin-bound chest. Waiting for God.

I, too, wait. But what kind of God do I expect?

I wait for an accessible God, a Holy Infant, who in his vulnerable innocency softens our fearful and resistant hearts and makes a manger his crib. How gentle is a God who thinks it best to slip unobtrusively into the human race amid only a couple dozen witnesses. Such action St. Isaac of Syria calls “exalted humility.”

The Word who became human clothed himself with humility, and thus spoke with us in our human body…Creation could not behold him unless he took part of it to himself and thus conversed with it: only thus was creation able to hear the words of his mouth face to face.*

I wait for a restoring God, a Saving Victim, because life’s experiences deny us the naiveté of “children nestled all snug in their beds.” When the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Child matures, his creatures behold him but cannot bear to hear his words. His humility descends even lower, for far from respecting him at least as a decent human being, his own ravage the very body designed to embrace them. How merciful is a God who thinks that his bloodied hands give best the healing touch a broken creation needs. He willingly makes a manger his coffin.

I wait for an intervening God, a Warrior King, as thousands of African women protest unrestrained mass rapes in Congo, and Port-au-Prince residents hope in vain for homes. I plead for his sovereign power to rescue the oppressed and destroy evil once and for all. How just is a God who thinks that truth and righteousness must prevail. Yet, as in the Bethlehem grotto, he seems to have hidden himself.

I finally catch a glimpse of the Warrior King in the hazy cosmic distance of the last book of Holy Scripture. St. John’s apocalyptic vision reveals he is not at all what I would expect: a Lamb looking as though it had been slain. But this humble, sacrificial Lamb standing in the midst of the throne of heaven is more like a royal lion. He takes command of all judgment of the world and ushers in an everlasting kingdom of peace. Infinitely outnumbering my token figurine, angels encircle the throne and sing; this time every creature in heaven, on earth and sea, joins in**:

 Worthy is the Lamb,

who was slain,

to receive power

and wealth

and wisdom

and strength

and honor

and glory

and praise!

Returning to my Fontanini crèche, I defy tradition and common sense to place my tiny lamb figurine in the empty manger. Someday, God will make it his throne.

Come again, long-expected Jesus.

 

*Daily Readings with St. Isaac of Syria, p. 66

**Revelation 5:6-13

CONCENTRATING THE HEART

I enjoy riding the mountain trails of Colorado although it bangs my body around and occasionally scares me. The grandeur in the high country is nothing less than a display of lavish beauty and stark ruggedness. Mt. Antero, at 14,269 feet, is one such extravagant example that my husband, Dennis, and I recently explored by his KTM motorcycle and my Polaris quad. Once we had arrived near that gusty, barren peak, we felt ourselves on another planet.

After bumping over a few miles of boulders and then a talus slope to the tree line, the way climbed over switchbacks sometimes reaching a 30-degree angle. I had to work deliberately not to panic. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught glimpses of what a riding buddy, Kent, calls a “cat walk.” This is trail slashed across the side of a mountain with a drop off for a shoulder. I did not dare look off the trail before me or I could center, that is, fixate, on the plunging edge and head straight for it.

Within a few hundred yards of the very top of Mt. Antero Dennis helped turn my quad around when it became obvious I was on the verge of overreaching my skill level. In the struggle to dodge large rocks amid slippery, chalky shale and dirt, I was making small mistakes and could not accelerate enough to keep the quad from dying or sliding backward. On an increasingly narrow, steep trail with a huge drop off…well, one cannot make too many mistakes.

Riding the Rockies by ATV has a way of clearing the head. All concerns but the immediate become peripheral. My job at hand is to keep the rubber side down. When my mind starts to wander, the trail rises to meet me in rather unpleasant ways. And I must look just far enough ahead to avoid upcoming obstacles, but not so far ahead that I lose sight of what I need to handle at the moment.

The holy Church Fathers had a theory about what clears the head, or as they put it, concentrates the heart. One of them, Isaac, a Syrian saint of the fifth century wrote,

Blessed is the person who knows his own weakness, because awareness of this becomes for him the foundation and beginning of all that is good and beautiful.

For whenever someone realizes…that he is truly…weak, then he draws in his soul from the diffuseness which dissipates knowledge, and he becomes all the more watchful of his soul…

But no one can perceive his weakness unless he has been remiss a little, has neglected some small thing, has been surrounded by trials…Only then, by comparing his own weakness, will he realize how great is the assistance that comes from God. When someone is aware that he is in need of divine help, he makes many prayers. And once he has made much supplication, his heart is humbled…

As long as the heart is not humbled, it cannot cease from wandering; for humility concentrates the heart.

Whether maneuvering high mountain trails over boulders, slippery shale and cliffs, or making a speech, interviewing for a job, encountering marriage or parenting problems, starting a new business, or admitting an addiction, all unsettling challenges have this in common. We need to concentrate our hearts in order to stay the course. And nothing clears the head like a good dose of humility.