TEARS IN THE STRAW
My heart realizes, as I begin this annual Christmas reflection, it is
not what I had been meditating on for several days. I had just finished answering several
letters, and cleaning this place in preparation for His birth when I thought of
taking a mid-afternoon break.
I flipped on the Discovery Channel.
There was a replay of the 2000 documentary “North Korea- Children of the
Secret State.” [It can be viewed on Google just
by typing in the title – the secretly filmed excerpts from Ahn Chol are
extremely powerful and not for the faint of heart.] Suddenly I found myself contemplating the
Holy Child in the manger. Not the Child
of bright eyes and smile we all know from countless works of sacred art. Rather
suddenly I was hearing the cries, seeing the tears of a newborn – hearing in
His voice the cry of every suffering child, every suffering human being.
My heart was also aware His tears are both sweet and bitter. The sweetness is of being born, seeing love
in the eyes of His Mother, the love-protective presence of St. Joseph.
The bitterness, a foretaste of the gall which He would be given upon the
Cross…
Cross... Manger... Cave of Bethlehem...
Cave of His tomb and Resurrection!
As His Mother lifts Him from the manger, to place Him in our arms we not
only hold Love Himself, we hold the one lifted up on the Cross for us, raised
up in Resurrection, in His Ascending to the Father.
He IS the one lifted up by every priest in Holy Mass, lifted from the
paten and placed in our being in Holy Communion!
A dear brother priest, in his annual Christmas letter, reminds us,
quoting Pascal, that we search for Him because: “You would not be seeking Me if
you had not already found Me.”
Countless of our brothers and sisters, in some mysterious way, have found
Him even without knowing Him – because they struggle to be real persons under
even the most horrific conditions, such as the courage shown by those trapped
in oppressive societies who, like Ahn Chol, risk their lives to be a voice for
their brothers and sisters.
In his book: “ Circling the Sun – Meditations on Christ in Liturgy and
Time”, Robert D. Pelton stresses that: “ The smile of the Infant holds the
secret of everlasting life.” [p. 24].
He then proceeds to tell the story of a conversation between a Crusader
and his Muslim jailer about their differing understanding of God and when the
Crusader shows a carving of the Holy Child in the arms of His Mother the
reaction is one of astonishment to say the least!
Fr. Pelton then teaches: “ There it is: the scandal of the Gospel…..The
Infant’s smile scandalizes for the same reason that the cry of anguish torn
from the full-grown and crucified Jesus, swaddled this time in pain and blood
and loneliness, scandalizes.” [pp.25/26]
I volunteer at least one day, frequently several days a week, at a soup
kitchen here in the city. Often Jesus
arrives in the arms of a mother, or in a stroller. Sometimes He cries, sometimes He
smiles…sometimes He comes in as a teenager, battered by a life of heartache, as
an adult worn out with mental illness or addiction, or as one of the working
poor or lonely elderly.…in a word, the great chance to truly see Him is where
He tells us, in Matthew 25:35ff, He can be found, touched, seen:
“I was thirsty…a
stranger…naked…ill…in prison….”
A woman who was in my life a great teacher about the Child was the
Servant of God Catherine Doherty, Foundress of the Madonna House Lay
Apostolate.
Catherine was a nurse on the Russian front in WWI, was wounded when the
revolution occurred, almost died of starvation during that same period, and
there were other times when she suffered assaults and heartache, such as when
she would challenge racist-Christians to meet Christ in their black brothers
and sisters.
Yet not once in all the years I knew her did I ever hear her speak of
those who tried to kill her. Rather, Catherine truly loved and forgave
her enemies, and indeed anyone who hurt her.
This is perhaps the most scandalous thing this Holy Child ever did!
He neither used His power to prevent evil the way WE would expect God
to, nor did He use His power to destroy evil doers, the way WE often wish He
would!
“Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift.
Certainly, as the Lord tells us, one can become a source from which rivers of
living water flow (cf. Jn 7:37-38). Yet to become such a source, one
must constantly drink anew from the original source, which is Jesus Christ,
from whose pierced heart flows the love of God (cf. Jn 19:34).” [ Pope
Benedict, encyclical “God is Love.”]
There it is! This beating Heart
of the Little Child in the manger, lying there with tears in the straw, will
grow and beat until on the Cross His Heart will stop beating, for a time, so
that in stillness, surrendered, vulnerable, It may be opened wide, wider even
than the entrance to the cave through which the Mother beckons us: “Come,
see Him smile upon you!”.
The wound in His Heart, the very Heart beating in the Child in the
manger, lanced open, is the portal from which cascades the merciful love
of God for every human being!
Indeed in his Apostolic Letter for the Year 2000 Pope John Paul teaches
us that in Jesus not only is God speaking to us but is searching for us: “The
Incarnation of the Son of God attests that God goes in search of man….It is a
search that begins in the heart of God and culminates in the Incarnation
of the Word.”
My prayer, for the suffering children in North Korea and around the
world, for the protection of all children in the womb, for the homeless we
serve in the soup kitchen, for those extraordinarily courageous, generous men
and women who put their lives on the line each day for our protection and
well-being: in the military; those who as first responders rescue us in
emergencies; those almost invisible men and women without whose fidelity to
their tasks we would be shivering, hungry, in the dark, like millions of our
brothers and sisters in so many countries – yes my prayer for every human being
is that we will see and contemplate the Holy Face of the Child, of the
Crucified and Risen One, receive the gift of His tears of joy, tears shed in
anguish and understand how truly beloved we are!
Christ IS born! Christ has died. Christ IS risen!
Fr. Robert Papi,
Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate 
