What is the greatest Christmas carol? It’s one we virtually never hear sung. It was sung by Mary, the pregnant teenager, as she visited her cousin. It is the Magnificat! (Luke 1:46-55). She tells us what Christmas is all about. The Son to whom she would give birth will change the world in unforeseen ways. (The Magnificat was considered so subversive, that in the 1980s the government of Guatemala banned its recitation in public!)
Most of us celebrate the Christmas of our children. Yet, the gospels are very clear that Christianity is an adult religion. The adult Jesus, fully human/fully divine, humbly born and placed in a manger, who grew in wisdom, age, and grace, called adults and challenged all adults who were to be his followers. In lyrical fashion Jim Strathdee states the challenge.
“When the song of the angels is stilled,/When the star in the sky is gone,/When the kings and the shepherds have found their way home,/The work of Christmas begins:/To find the lost and lonely one,/To heal the broken soul with love,/To feed the hungry children with warmth and good food,/To feel the earth below the sky above!/To free the prisoner from all chains,/To make the powerful care,/To rebuild the nations with strength of good will,/To see God’s children everywhere./To bring hope to every task you do,/To dance at a baby’s new birth,/To make music in an old person’s heart, and sing to the colors of the earth.” (“I Am the Light of the World,” © 1969 Jim Strathdee, Desert Flower Music).
May the joyous song of Mary and the awesome challenge of Christ fill our hearts as we celebrate the birth of God becoming one of us. Merry Christmas.
(Excerpted from “An Adult Christmas” by Jake Empereur, SJ. in the October 2011 issue of Ministry and Liturgy.)
Dr Don Russo