Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons: 26 December 2021

Image: Autun creche/RG

We are continually reminded that Christmas is about family, how we define that is of course open to a number of interpretations, but as one who in recent years has often spent a rather alone Christmas, this concept of cramming Christmas with cheery joy and familial reunion does need some careful reworking. Why? The problem is with how we see Christmas. Christian religious people have an edge on others, in many of our older traditions there is not one single day to celebrate but a series of feasts that spread out over our traditional twelve days to culminate in the Feast of the Epiphany or `Theophany on January 6th and then we continue, like the Magi and shepherds returning to normal life, in memory and celebration to be led through bleak January to the feast of Lights at the Presentation of the Lord, which we often call Candlemas on February 2nd. In many places the crèche is kept out until that day, a visual reminder of the events and meaning of the Incarnation, Birth and Manifestation of Christ our true God.

If we take a moment to look at these homely reminders of our feasts, we can see in the custom setting the scene in our localities and of adding different figures and personalities into the crib, such as those terra cotta Provençal images, or the wonderfully carved Austrian, German and Neapolitan cribs, we become part of an endless stream of people who have made these feasts their own, and by becoming as children have entered into the great mystery of the simplicity of love at the heart of our redemption in Christ. I really wish we could revive the folk tradition of this type of art, create in our homes and churches a kind of religious heirloom that teaches us on so many levels, add into the story figures that represent our age and personality. I suggested to a good friend of mine that it is a lovely custom to place near our in our crib settings, photographs of loved ones who have died, to remind ourselves this is no fairy story, but a small sacred place, where with us heaven and earth mingle.

I wrote this because on this Sunday which we name for the Holy Family, there are many who feel a real absence of family, of companionship and estrangement. The readings, laudable as they are, have problems for some of us. The language of familial relationships in both the first and second readings sit uneasily with some. Those who know a different, difficult parental relationship, or who have had none may ask us what this means for them, and in an age where we aspire to treat men and women as equal, does this analysis of husband /wife fit with our experiences? The Holy Family is not a normal one either, in the icons of the nativity Joseph is not shown in a contented guardian mode, rather he is perplexed, worried, and seems cast outside the scene of activity. Into this birth come the ox and ass, shepherds with their sheep, the magi and their camel, and a cast of others who have found a way there through traditions deep in our ancient faith. If anything this feast is one which should say, family is important but it comes in many guises, family is not only blood, but the waters of baptism and the oil of chrismation and confirmation, family is the repentant one being welcomed , family is those loving friends who bind up the wounds of the stranger. Family belongs to the kingdom first, and that is what this feast should help us see, at the end of all things, we belong with God, in that family too numerous to count of every race and nation. In our alternative second reading these words of Hannah struck me as something important: "I prayed for this child, and the LORD granted my request. Now I, in turn, give him to the LORD; as long as he lives, he shall be dedicated to the LORD." Then they worshiped there before the LORD.'(I Sm 27-28)

On my Ordination day my late Mother wrote me a letter about my calling and in it she quoted those words of Hannah, often I think of them in the context of those we lose in death, or relationships changed irrevocably, all of us have to hand over to the `Lord everyone in our life, and one day we entrust ourselves into God's hands. This is not morbid, nor sentimental but a deeper reality, for looking at our crib we see this played out there. God in Christ handed himself to us in loving trust, but in his resurrection he calls us to join Him is handing over all that God loves, this is ultimate gift, ultimate generosity, ultimate trust. Why should we do this, listen to our Gospel: "After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, "Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety." And he said to them, "Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" (Lk 2:47-49) That is where in the end our true family will be, in the Father's House.

Lectio

Caedmon's Hymn

Translated by Elaine Treharne

Now we ought to praise the Guardian of the heavenly kingdom,
The might of the Creator and his conception,
The work of the glorious Father, as he of each of the wonders,
Eternal Lord, established the beginning.
He first created for the sons of men
Heaven as a roof, holy Creator;
Then the middle-earth, the Guardian of mankind,
The eternal Lord, afterwards made
The earth for men, the Lord almighty.

Joseph

GK Chesterton

If the stars fell; night's nameless dreams
Of bliss and blasphemy came true,
If skies were green and snow were gold,
And you loved me as I love you;

O long light hands and curled brown hair,
And eyes where sits a naked soul;

Dare I even then draw near and burn
My fingers in the aureole?

Yes, in the one wise foolish hour
God gives this strange strength to a man.
He can demand, though not deserve,
Where ask he cannot, seize he can.

But once the blood's wild wedding o'er,
Were not dread his, half dark desire,
To see the Christ-child in the cot,
The Virgin Mary by the fire?