Mary, Mother of God

Christmas II – The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 67; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21

Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comesWherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,This bird of dawning singeth all night long;And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

So hallow’d and so gracious is the time – these lines from the first scene of Hamlet say it all. We tend to think of time as a progression, as moment following moment, day following day, in a relentless flow, the kind of time a clock or calendar can measure. But we can also experience time as depth, as having quality as well as quantity – a good time, a dangerous time, an auspicious time – a time marked by its significance.

On the dark battlements of Elsinore Castle, Marcellus speaks of the time of Jesus’ birth as a hallowed, a holy time, a time in which life grows still like the surface of a stream so that you can look down into its depths and see something timeless, something beyond ourselves. Marcellus reminds us, it is also a gracious time – a time that we cannot bring about ourselves but a time that comes upon us as a free and unexpected gift.*

So hallow’d and so gracious is the time – a time that brought about an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a feeding trough for animals. An unusual sight to say the least. Unexpected – like the burning bush Moses encountered. And like Moses we are drawn to look closer. Along with shepherds, Mary and Joseph, we have to ask, what is the meaning of this scene set before us?

Do not swaddling clothes, these band of cloth, not look very similar to a shroud wrapping a body? Are we looking at a mummified corpse or a living child? Are we looking then at birth or death? …or both?

In some renaissance paintings and all Orthodox Christian icons of the Nativity the feeding trough is portrayed in stone. The manger looks like a sarcophagus. The same image appears in paintings of the resurrection of Christ. Are we looking at death or birth? And if birth, what kind of birth might this be? The first Christians spoke of death as a dies natalis, a birthing unto eternal life.

Why has this new-born been placed into a feeding trough? For whom is the baby to be food? Did you know that the word sarcophagus means flesh–eating? Is it worms that will do the eating or… for whom has this food been presented?

So hallow’d and so gracious a time cause us to look into the depths of events with the eyes of faith. In one of our Eucharistic Prayers we pray, “Grant that all the [people] of the Church looking into the signs of the times by the light of faith…” Another prays, “Open our eyes to the needs of our brothers and sisters…” There is more here than a young couple with a new-born who have been forced by circumstance into an awkward and uncomfortable situation. Why have we along with shepherds been invited by the angels to seek out this sign?

So hallow’d and so gracious is the time – a time in which life grows still like the surface of a stream so that you can look down into its depths and see something timeless and beyond ourselves: birth, food, resurrection, the poor, sacred banquet, the burdens of so many people, family, burial, the plight of children in our world, death, the Eucharist.

I’ve experienced watching tourists get off a bus, take pictures of the entrance of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp and without ever entering the camp get back on the bus and drive away. It is one thing to look upon this scene but what is the meaning of this infant wrapped in bands of swaddling clothes lying in a feeding trough?

Shepherds look and reflect. Joseph also looks. Does he dream? Mary looks and keeps turning this sight over and over in her heart.

What do you see in the depths of this unusual and unexpected sight?

_{*See The Life of Jesus by Frederick Buechner, Weathervane Books, New York, 1974.}