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by Peter Kreeft
While Christmas is so familiar that we sometimes wonder whether anything fresh
and true can be said about it, there is a way to explore its meaning that may
seem new to us today, yet is in fact quite traditional, dating back to the
Middle Ages and the ancient Fathers of the Church.
Modern interpreters often argue about whether a given Scripture passage should
be interpreted literally or symbolically. Medieval writers would question the
"either/or" approach. They thought a passage could have as many as four "right"
interpretations, one literal and three symbolic.
These were:
This symbolism is legitimate because it doesn't detract from the historical,
literal sense, but builds on and expands it. It's based on the theologically
sound premise that history too symbolizes, or points beyond itself, for God
wrote three books, not just one: nature and history as well as Scripture. The
story of history is composed not only of "events," but of words, signs and
symbols. This is unfamiliar to us only because we have lost a sense of depth and
exchanged it for a flat, one-dimensional, "bottom-line" mentality in which
everything means only one thing.
Let's try to recapture the riches of this lost worldview by applying the
spiritual sense of the Christmas story to our lives. For that story happens not
only once, in history, but also many times in each individual's soul. Christ
comes to the world - but He also comes to each of us. Advent happens over and
over again.
There are two ways to connecting the historical and the spiritual senses. The
Jesuit method, from St. Ignatius' "Spiritual Exercises," tells us to
imaginatively place ourselves into the Gospel stories. The older Augustinian
method tells us to look for elements of the story in our lives. We shall be
using this latter method as we survey the scene in Bethlehem for the next four
weeks.
Look at your Nativity set. Around the Christ Child you see four people or
groups: Mary, Joseph, the wise men and the shepherds. We are all around the
Christ Child, defined by our relationship to Him; we are all Marys, Josephs,
wise men or shepherds.
The Shepherds
Let's consider the shepherds first.
They are peasants: simple, hard-working, honest people. Under our layers of
modern sophistication and education, we are all peasants. It's the peasant soul
in us, the child in us, that hears angels, that is hailed by the heavenly glory,
that dares to hope and wonder with awe.
The shepherds are outdoors, exposed to God's sky, not protected by human
artifice. Even when we're in an office, surrounded by technology, the
shepherd-self in us is always in this situation. No place is safe from God's
invasion.
They are "keeping watch by night." In the darkness they wait and watch, like the
little child at the center of our souls. And it's in the darkness that the
heavenly light dawns. In the silence is heard the angels' song. Kierkegaard
said, "If I could prescribe only one remedy for all the ills of the modern
world, I would prescribe silence. For even if the Word of God were proclaimed,
no one would hear it; there is too much noise. Therefore, create silence."
The shepherds are "keeping watch over their sheep," as our soul watches over its
body with its flock of desires, responsible for the care and direction of our
herd or instincts. It's as we go about this humdrum daily business that
supernatural grace comes to us through the ministry of angels. We do not usually
see them, as the shepherds did, but they are there. In heaven we will recognize
them, and their role in our lives. "So it was you all the time! It was you who
were there...then..."
"The glory of the Lord shone round about them." This is the shekinah, the
heavenly light that had appeared visibly over the Ark of the Covenant and on
Mount Sinai. We can still see it, but only with the inner eye of faith. Only if
we believe, do we see.
"They were afraid." We fear the unknown, the opening skies, the passages between
worlds, like birth and death. Even when the angel says, "Fear not," the event is
no less momentous, The awe is now joyful, not fearsome; but it's still
"awe-full." It is "good tidings of great joy." Joy can be as awesome as fear.
The Good News, the incredible event of the Incarnation, is the most joyful and
the most awesome news we have ever heard.
The angel tells the shepherds that this event is "to you." Not just to "mankind"
in general, but to us, these ordinary individuals - Almighty God comes to our
fields, stables, offices and homes. This is no prerecorded message; this is God
calling us up personally.
The shepherds' response is immediate and practical: "Let us go to Bethlehem."
The angel's message has power; it moves people to go. When Cicero addressed the
Roman senate, everyone said, "How beautifully he speaks!" But they remained in
their seats. Yet when Demosthenes addressed the Greek army, they leaped up,
clashed spear upon shield and said, "Let us march!"
The angels are like Demosthenes. Scholars, seeing angels, say, "Let us interpret
this." Shepherds, seeing angels, say, "Let us go." Karl Marx was profoundly
right when he said, "Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the thing is
to change it." Both bad religion (Marx's) and good religion (Christ's) change
the world.
Unlike the wise men, the shepherds have no gifts to bring Christ. They are poor
beggars - like us. "Just As I Am" is our song. They come with dirt under their
fingernails and in their souls. They come to receive, not to bargain; to wonder,
not to understand. They run to Bethlehem to fall on their knees - that is, to
fulfill the ultimate purpose for which we were all created.
Like us, the shepherds need to come only a short way to meet Him, from the
fields to the stable. But He came an infinite distance to meet them; from heaven
to earth, from eternity to time, from infinite joy to squalor, suffering and
death. He desired that meeting with all His heart. For that meeting the very
stars that sang on that holy night were created as mere stage props. What the
simple shepherds do is the highest and holiest thing any saint or mystic ever
does, on earth or in heaven.
It is the thing we shall be doing for all eternity: loving and adoring God. We
had better learn from the shepherds and start practicing now.
Wise Men Still Seek Him
"WISE MEN still seek Him," reads the bumper sticker.
Fools think they are wise, so they do not search. The three wise men go on a
pilgrimage, on a search, because they know they are not wise.
Just as saints know they are sinners but sinners think they are saints, good
people do not call themselves "good people" and wise men do not call themselves
wise.
Thus, the wise seek. And all seekers find, according to our Lord's own promise.
But only seekers find. If the wise man in us will travel far from home, comfort
and security, then we may arrive at Bethlehem.
As Pascal says, there are only three kinds of people: those who have sought God
and found Him (these are reasonable and happy), those who are seeking God and
have not yet found Him (these are reasonable and unhappy), and those who neither
see God nor find Him (these are unreasonable and unhappy). Everyone in the
second class makes it into the first; all seekers find. But only seekers.
The wise men came from "the East," the land of the rising sun, the symbol of
hope. Any pilgrimage we begin in seeking God, in any part of our lives, is
undertaken for this motive. Hope is one of the three most necessary things in
the world, one of the three theological virtues. Hope is our energy, our
trigger, our motive power.
They make their pilgrimage from East to West. Oriental wisdom must turn West to
find Christ, and the West - Rome - must go East. For Christ is born at the
center. He is at the center of all things metaphysically, so it's fitting that
He be born at the physical center of the world as well, between East and West,
North and South, between ancient and modern times. All time centers on Him; all
dates are B.C. or A.D. Everything is relative to Him. He is the absolute.
The East's mentality is mystical and mythical. The Eastern mind has no trouble
believing in the supernatural. It needs to make a pilgrimage to the material and
the natural, to the Christ in whom all truths in myths become historical fact.
He is the dying and rising God myths point to like a star.
The West, on the other hand, has a practical, materialistic mentality. This was
true of Rome and it's still true of the modern West. It must make a pilgrimage
to the East, to the spiritual and the supernatural. Christ is everything: Each
culture can become whole only in Him.
The wise men have seen His sign. They were eagerly looking, ready and alert like
the shepherds, "keeping watch by night" over their flock of responsibilities -
the heavens. The stars were their sheep. The earthly shepherds were surprised by
angels from heaven, while the heaven-gazing wise men were surprised by a baby in
a cow barn.
Like the shepherds, they came - a long, dangerous journey. But nothing is more
dangerous than missing Christ. Life itself is a journey, a pilgrimage. The image
of the road is perhaps the most powerful in all our literature, especially all
our great epics: "Gilgamesh," "The Odyssey," "The Aeneid," "The Divine Comedy,"
"The Lord of the Rings." For man, as distinct from everything else, life is a
search for our true identity. Man alone has an identity crisis. And that true
identity is found only in God, for He alone, as our Author and Designer, has the
secret of our identity in His eternal plan. "Your life is hid with Christ in
God," says St. Paul, and "our citizenship is in heaven."
The wise men come to worship, just as the shepherds do. That's why they are
wise; not because they know the means, the way, but because they know the end;
not because they lift their heads to the stars but because they bow their knees
to the Baby. Wisdom is not the pride of cleverness in knowledge, but the
humility of holiness. "The fear of the Lord, that is the beginning of wisdom."
Different from the shepherds in every way but one - rich, not poor; Eastern, not
Western; clever, not simple; from afar, not from near; unearthy, not earthy -
yet they are like the shepherds in "the one thing necessary": Like Mary, they
sit at Jesus' feet. They know the end of their pilgrimage. They know the
ultimate purpose of human existence; adoration of God and love of man in Christ,
the God-man. Whether we are like the shepherds or like the wise men therefore
matters not at all. "In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male or female,
slave or free."
They bring gifts. They open their treasures. Some of us have rich talents to
bring to Christ; others, like the shepherds, have only themselves, their
poverty, their work. What matters is not what we give but whether we give, how
much we give (all, like the widow's pence), and how we give (freely, "for God
loves a cheerful giver").
Remember: Life too is a gift. God gives us our lives, our very existence, and
then His life in substitution when we forfeited ours by sin. Our fundamental
response to God must be like His to us: the gift of self.
For that is the inescapable law, since it is the very nature of ultimate
reality, the Blessed Trinity itself. The Father eternally gives Himself to the
Son, and the Son in return eternally gives Himself to the Father, and the Holy
Spirit eternally proceeds from them as this mutual gift of love, so real that He
eternally becomes a distinct Person. Marriage and childbearing are holy because
they dimly reflect this ultimate reality on a biological level.
Gold, frankincense and myrrh were their gifts, and must be ours. Gold is for
Christ the King. Frankincense is for Christ the prophet. Myrrh, burial spices,
is for Christ the priest who will offer Himself up to death in sacrifice for us.
We too must give Christ our gold, our homage, acclaiming Him king of our lives.
The fullness of His kingdom is us, our lives; for His kingdom is the Church and
we are the Church.
We must give Him our frankincense; we must smell, taste and see His words, His
prophetic good news. He is Himself His news; the message is the messenger.
And we must give Him our myrrh, accept His death for us, participate in His
death and burial to be saved. "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" The
wise men were there, even though their bodies had returned 33 years before
Calvary to the East or to the dust. At Mass we become present at Calvary. We
offer our gifts - extensions of our selves - and He transforms them, gifts and
selves, into His Body.
Three wise men, three gifts, three offices (prophet, priest and king), three
parts of the human soul (intellect, heart and will) because the Inventor and
Designer of man is three. The medieval mind saw Trinitarian echoes everywhere,
for a very good reason: Everything is made by the Trinity, and what is made must
reflect its Maker. Our fear of "fanciful symbolism" is fanciful; our preference
for the "realistic" is unrealistic.
The wise men are warned in a dream and protected against Herod. That in us which
seeks and finds wisdom - the soul - is not harmed by the powers of the world.
Even Socrates knew that "no evil can happen to a good man." Our modern-day
Herods may have killed the bodies of 18 million holy innocents since Roe vs.
Wade, but they cannot kill those innocents' souls, only their own.
"They returned praising God," for they came seeking God. As St. Augustine says
in the last, great sentence of his "Confessions": "They that seek the Lord shall
find Him, and they that find Him shall praise Him."
The wisdom-seeking wise man in us, the intellect, can praise God too. The
computer in us knows nothing of praise, any more than the computer outside us
does, but the God-seeking intellect does. A computer can calculate, but only a
man or woman can praise. It is the end for which we were created.
Joseph & The Power of Obedience
Being the "strong silent type," Joseph says little in the Gospels. Yet he does
much just by being there and by being himself: Joseph the just; Joseph the
worker; Joseph the foster-father, the reliable, the available.
Like most men in most cultures, Joseph speaks by his daily work. In this
ordinariness, Christ is present, a man as human and even as ordinary as Joseph,
a carpenter.
Like Mary, who quietly pondered in her heart (Luke 2:19), Joseph stands there in
the manger scene, in silent readiness. That is how Christ comes to him, to Mary,
to us.
Christ had invaded Joseph's life most intimately just when it seemed God had
abandoned him to tragedy: His beloved Mary was pregnant, but not by him.
Joseph suffers in silence. Noise, fussiness, rebellion and busyness cover over
inner hurts; perhaps that's why there is so much of these qualities in our
world.
Joseph responds to his crisis both justly and charitably; in him "justice and
peace meet together." He resolves to "put Mary away," i.e,. to break the solemn
engagement rather than live a lie. That is justice. But for Mary's sake,
"privately." That is charity.
Then the angel came to him, as he had come to Mary earlier and would come later
to the shepherds. Only the gentiles, the wise men from the East, had no angel.
But they had the stars to guide them, and they too were God's messengers leading
to Christ, as St. Paul says natural reason can do (Rom. 1:19-20).
The angelic message, as usual, begins with "fear not." For the fear of the Lord
is the beginning of wisdom, and Joseph was a wise man. But it is not the end.
Fear exists to be overcome with love (1 John 4:18).
The angel, God's news broadcaster, announces the good news, the ev-angel-ium:
that this apparent tragedy was God's work. God, not man, certified by His angel
that this revelation, this Word of God, this Christ, was from God, and not man,
from a divine father, not a human one.
Joseph provided for Mary and Jesus: travel to Bethlehem, shelter for the birth
and later safety in Egypt from murderous Herod. But Joseph could not afford a
horse, only a donkey. He could not get a room in the inn, only a cattle stall.
He may have thought himself a failure as a provider, as many a man feels today
if he cannot afford to give his family "the best." But he has not failed; he can
be "the best." Look how Mary and Jesus turned out under Joseph's providence.
But his work was for them, not for him. He was no work addict. He is not always
in his carpenter shop; but he is always there for his family.
Even Satan cannot defeat this simple man. Satan inspires Herod to slaughter the
innocents, as he inspires our modern Herods to the holocaust of abortion. But
Satan fails because Joseph obeys God's angel and provides for his family: two
deeds of ordinariness that are more powerful against the very forces of hell
than anything else in the world. Take away all the Nobel Prize winners and
humanity would still survive. But take away obedience to God and loyalty to
family, and even with a million Nobel Prize winners, humanity is doomed. And
these are precisely the two traditional values most imperiled in our time.
When the threat passes, Joseph takes his family home. Home - that holy word,
symbolic of heaven. Homecoming was cruelly delayed but Joseph was patient and
did not run ahead of God, whatever the circumstances. Travel to and living in a
foreign land were no vacation then; rather, they involved real hardship. But to
run ahead of God onto our own path is to run out of the only real safety
(however dangerous it appears) into danger (however safe it appears).
If Joseph had been less obedient, Mary and Jesus may not have survived. The
gates of hell cannot prevail against the Church, but the same divine Providence
which wills that end also wills the means: our faithfulness, our free choice to
trust and obey, like Joseph.
Joseph appears briefly 12 years later when Jesus is lost and found in the
Temple. Surely he shared Mary's pain of loss and joy of finding, as we do
whenever we lose Christ in disobedience and find Him in reconciliation. We too
find Jesus in the Church, where He is even now "going about His Father's
business." Unlike Mary, Joseph was a sinner. Mary shared only our pain in losing
Christ; Joseph also shared our guilt. No sinner was ever so humanly close to
Christ as Joseph was.
We hear absolutely nothing more about Joseph. The rest of his life is as silent
as Christ's silent, Joseph-like years. These years are like the hidden troughs
of a wave which propel it forward: The visible froth on the crest is only the
effect. Never think God has put you on the shelf; He has only planted you in the
ground.
The last thing Scripture says about Joseph is that Christ was subject to him and
Mary and grew in soul and body (Luke 2:51-52). Obedience is food. Christ grew by
obeying. Later He said "Doing the will of Him who sent me and bringing His work
to completion is my food" (John 4:34).
Christ practiced first toward Mary and Joseph the substance of what He preached,
the way of obedience, the simple secret of all sanctity, Mary's "fiat," the
will's "yes." "Son (of God) though He was, He learned obedience through
suffering" later at Calvary, because He had first learned it earlier in
Nazareth. The perfect fruit was plucked on Calvary only because it had grown and
been nourished under Joseph's and Mary's care. That is what parenting is:
spiritual gardening.
Thus Joseph, like Mary, shares in the work of redemption. And so do we. That is
the ultimate dignity of daily work and obedience. It saves the world. Our acts
of love to God and neighbor can save souls from hell, souls we have never met in
this life. (What a merry meeting it would be to encounter them in the next!)
Like the angels, we are unseen actors behind the scenes of the play, helping
with the stage sets or the lighting, unspectacular but necessary roles in the
great drama of salvation. And that is the significance of our daily work (and
that of St. Joseph the Worker). It is the sacrament of the ordinary.
Mary: Humankind's Only Boast
In the Nativity scene, everyone is grouped around the Christ child. For He is
the center of everything.
"By Him and for Him all things were created" (Col. 1:16). Even the animals, even
the star, group themselves around Him. But especially, people surround Him.
We've so far explored three of the four persons or groups around Christ in the
creche, and we've searched for the significance of the shepherds, the wise men
and Joseph in our own lives. Now we turn to Mary, the fourth and most important
figure near Jesus, the one who surrounds Him with her very flesh.
Immediately a problem arises. How can we identify with an immaculately conceived
woman who never experienced original sin; the woman who is "our tainted nature's
solitary boast," as Coventry Patmore sang of her? How can we discover in
ourselves the privilege of being Theotokos, the Mother of God? We can find the
simple shepherd, the questing wise man or the silent, faithful Joseph in
ourselves perhaps, but how can we find Mary?
Yet, find her we must. We must beware lest we set Mary at a distance, as
medieval people set Christ at a distance and because of that, turned to Mary
instead as the loving one, the close one, to close the gap. This is a mistake,
of course, for there is no gap; or rather, Christ Himself closed it. And so does
Mary, for she sends us right to Christ, and Christ sends us to the Father, so
that there is not gap left. No gap between Father and Son: "He who has seen Me
has seen the Father." No gap between Christ and Mary, for her task is to show
unto us, the blessed fruit of her womb, Jesus.
Mary shows us the way. Christ does not show us the way. He is the Way, the Truth
and the Life. Finally, there is no gap between us and Mary either, for we can
all find Mary within ourselves, if we are Christians. Mary is the archetypal
Christian.
But she was immaculately conceived! Yes, but so is the supernatural life of
grace in our souls. To be Christian at all, to be baptized and born again by
water in the Spirit, is to have something immaculate in us that can endure the
very light of heaven and the gaze of God: a share in divine life. To us too, the
angelic salutation comes: "Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you!" If we are
not full of grace, if the Lord is not with us, we are not saved.
The angel said to Mary, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the
Most High will overshadow you; hence the holy offspring to be born of you will
be called Son of God" (Luke 1:35). But we are addressed by the same angelic
news. Our soul, like Mary's body, is to receive God Himself if only we, like
her, believe, consent and receive; if only we speak her truly magic word fiat,
"let it be." It is the creative word, the word God used to create the universe.
If we speak Mary's word, then the Word of God is born in our souls just as
really as He was in Mary's body and just as really as He is in the Eucharist.
What happened in Bethlehem, what happens in our souls and what happens when we
receive the Eucharist is the same event under three different modes. It is
simply the most important thing that ever happened or can happen. It is the
Incarnation.
That's why Mary is the archetypal Christian. In her happens the thing bigger
than the Big Bang, more creative than creation, the thing that also happens in
us. Kierkegaard says, "Do you think it is a great thing for God to crate the
universe out of nothing? I will tell you a greater thing He does: He creates
saints out of sinners."
That too is truly creation, bara. This unique Hebrew word means not to make out
of something but to create out of nothing. Only God can do it. It's what David
prays for in Psalm 51: "Create in me a clean heart, O God." The Incarnation - in
Mary and in us - is God's answer to that most fundamental of all human needs.
But how can we identify with Mary if she is a type of the Church, the very house
of God? Because we are the Church, the body of Christ, the house of God.
In Mary is both virgin and mother! Yes, and so are we. The divine life in us is
also virginal, with no fleshly father. "What is born of the flesh is flesh, what
is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6). And we conceive, bear and nurture
that precious seed of divine life in our souls as Mary did in her womb; we too
"mother" God. That is why St. Paul says, "For me to live is Christ," and "I
live, nevertheless not I, but Christ lives in me."
But Mary was assumed into heaven! Yes, and so shall we be, in the Resurrection.
But Mary is the Queen of heaven! Yes, and she is our mother, and a mother loves
nothing more that to share with her children all her privileges. Even now she is
helping Christ prepare our heavenly home, decorating our rooms for us.
But Mary is a woman; how can a man identify with her? Because as the saints say,
to God we are all feminine. Even the Latin word "soul," anima, is feminine.
Woman symbolizes the soul in its relation to God better than man does. We do not
impregnate God; God impregnates us with His life.
The very receptivity, the very secondness, of the feminine is thus raised to
privileged status, as the Magnificat shows. The lowly, quiet, womblike,
receptive power of the soul, the response to the divine husband's initiative -
this is the highest and most precious thing in us. Mary is our true self.
When you look at your Nativity set, at this most natural and ordinary thing in
the world, a mother and a newborn baby, you are reading a pictorial newspaper
headline that announces the most extraordinary event in history; the Maker of
Mary was made by Mary; the One who surrounds the stars is surrounded by Mary's
womb; the Creator consented to come into His creature because she consented to
have Him.
And unto us as well. Every time we consent to His perpetual proposal, every time
we make an act of faith, and every time we receive the Eucharist, we redo Mary's
fiat and make Christmas happen.
About The Author:
Peter Kreeft has written extensively (over 25 books) in the areas of Christian
apologetics. He teaches at Boston College in Boston Massachusetts. He is on the
Advisory Board of the Catholic Education Resource Center.
(1) the historical or literal, which is the primary sense on which the others
all depend;
(2) the prophetic sense when an Old Testament event foreshadows its New
Testament fulfillment;
(3) the moral or spiritual sense, when events and characters in a story
correspond to elements in our own lives; and
(4) the eschatological sense, when a scene on earth foreshadows something of
heavenly glory.
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