Making Senses of It All

I am a week late, but do find it fitting to write on the feast of St. Nicholas, the same St. Nicholas who punched out a heretic.

The feast of St. Andrew on Nov. 30 begins a novena too little known in North America. Colloquially called the St. Andrew's Christmas Novena, it is a short prayer to be recited 15 times each day until Christmas Eve, to help prepare the soul for the coming of our Lord.

Hail and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born Of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in the piercing cold. In that hour vouchsafe, I beseech Thee, O my God, to hear my prayer and grant my desires through the merits of Our Savior Jesus Christ, and of His blessed Mother. Amen.

This prayer will always have a special place in my heart because of the man who encouraged me to pray it in the first place: Father Abbot Hayes, O. Praem. And although it does have special resonance for me since it came from him, I also love this prayer because it situates my focus and attention on the very wonders, and also the very grittiness of Christianity. I love my religion because it not only soars into the heights of transcendent wisdom, it also descends upon the common place features of the natural world.

There was an hour and moment, sanctified by the presence of the Son of God for sure, but still a moment, and an hour.  There was a virgin, most pure, which speaks of the wonderful and the beautiful, but she was young, fragile and yet strong.

There was a place, an actual place, in Bethlehem, not some made up imaginary dreamland, but a place which could be touched, seen, smelled, felt. It felt cold; piercing cold. It would be easy to look at some of the beautiful nativity scenes and forget it was still a poor place: a barn or a cave. Nevertheless, it was cold. It perhaps smelled of animals, and everything that comes with being surrounded by animals.

And yet, this little child, this little baby with His mother, is God. He can be held, seen, felt, smelled, touched. The very warmth of his little body; the coos of his little voice; the gentle and yet exhausted smile of His mother; the wonder and awe of his father. This is the place of Christmas, the experience of Christmas, that God became man in the humblest of places, of times. He is beyond expectations. He is Wisdom. He is God. And when Christmas comes, we are reminded in a very real way, He is also man.