Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
December 25, 2020
The great Spanish poet, Federico Garcia-Lorca once wrote:
Solo el misterio nos permite vivir, solo el misterio.
Only Mystery makes us live, only mystery.
It is a profound insight, for a people living in the middle of a storm, searching for answers in the debris of lives overturned by disease, masked robbery, politics, poverty, racial strife, family strife, burden.
Only Mystery makes us live, only mystery.
There are no answers, Garcia-Lorca seems to say, only quest.
There is no straight road
No straight road in this world
Only a giant labyrinth
Of intersecting crossroads
But, isn’t that labyrinth, aren’t those intersecting crossroads what we celebrate tonight? Isn’t that what we need in the middle of a storm?
To know that …
God had a plan to start small, to see what our life was like from the beginning and so in the silent night of human expectations he appeared in a cave, in a stable, in a tiny place. That is an insinuation no one expected but then…
Only Mystery makes us live, only mystery.
What do we know?
From that unpromising start in that little town of Bethlehem, God and the human race began to dance down the rocky road of courtship and engagement. In that long entanglement there would be and will be laughter and tears, joy and sorrow, clamoring exaltation and cowering disappointment.
What do we know?
This week we have been searching the western sky for a star, or what we are told is an aligning of planets. Was it that same star, that amalgamation of planets and of fates that led those astrologers, those priests unnamed, unknown, unnumbered from the Zoroastrian courts of Babylon to an isolated little town on the outskirts of Jerusalem? What do we find in that star but …
A light which lives on what the flames devour,
a grey landscape surrounding us with scorch?
Can our hearts pick our way through that grey landscape to Bethlehem tonight? Can their dry chambers be fitted out with straw and scorch to hold the Little One warm while the political forces that made those Zoroastrians go home by another route still try to hold us in thrall?
What does this night offer us? The chance, perhaps to become something other than ourselves? There is a drama to be played and each of us must take our part.
Who will we be?
Can we become Mary, the mother, whose living heart, burning with the embers of charity would cradle that sweet baby, all the way, all the way to the cross where her life’s blood would spill over with his as it has done this night? That, even in the terrible hour of death her heart could be raised up with his in recompense for the conflagration of this world? Can we become Mary tonight?
Can we become Saint Joseph? Can we stand sheltering the tender flesh of Christ from the storm? Saint Joseph who knew so much and said so little. Saint Joseph our inspiration, our patron, our protector, our silent companion. Can he show us the way tonight as we search around ox and ass to seek the face of heaven purloined for a time by us? Can Saint Joseph clear the path for us as we bend down to see him? Can we become Saint Joseph tonight?
Can we become shepherds? They were huddled on that hillside keeping watch over their flocks by night and in a light, another glorious light they saw a vision of angels announcing the Lamb of God, the One so long needed by shepherds, so long expected by shepherds, by all of us shepherds. Can we become the shepherds tonight?
Can we become angels, the herald angels singing? Can we fly to the Bethlehem of human hearts and siren-like announce Good News to those willing to hear, those needful of angel-song? How I wish we could always be like those angels, firm of purpose and single-minded in their pursuit of the Almighty in the most obscure places. If we cannot every day, can we become those angels tonight?
Can we become townsfolks, those denizens of inns excluding the Son of God from their foundations? Can we become those curiosity seekers who wonder why shepherds and Zoroastrian priests go to visit stables in the middle of the night? They bend down to see too. They long too though they know not for what they long. They need too, though, like us at times, they may not always recognize their need or its remedy caked with straw and bound by the swaddling clothes of townsfolks’ expectations. And yet, they reach out. We reach out.
Tonight we are invited to come to Bethlehem. Seemingly, there was nothing there but crowds, confusion and a mess. People were filling the inns. Folks must have been pushing and shoving. And into the midst of this chaos comes the Lord. No matter how we try to sanitize it, there is nothing ideal about Jesus’ birth. Born in a stable, born to poor folks, born without any authority. Yet, there he is. He is a treasure, a mystery, a mysterious treasure. That little baby comes tonight to bring us joy, joy that will only be fully realized at Golgotha and in the garden on Easter. Jesus did not have an ideal birth, but he made the world ideal through that wretched birth. We do not have ideal lives but God gives us what we need to make our lives and the lives of others more manageable, even wonderful. In the deepest part of our hearts we know that. We know it through the pain. We know it through the ugliness and bitterness. We know it through the doubt. We know that through the contagion. We know it. We know, no matter how much suffering we must endure that God made us for joy.
That is mystery
As in mystery, all mystery, all true mystery we have more questions than answers, but, O the pursuit!
Only Mystery makes us live, only mystery.
Only Mystery can unmask the Truth for us. It is the mystery of our lives, fought and floundering, hardly making sense at times and falling, failing, the mystery of our hard lives made suddenly soft by the touch of a baby’s hand, reaching out to us starfish-like, hanging on and dependent.
And it is that mystery, ever ancient, ever new that confronts us tonight in the guise of that red infant, squalling and swaddled in straw and star and storm.
It is that mystery of the Word made Flesh that we encounter at this altar.
It is that mystery of the Incarnate deity that we find in the Word propped open for us, in the candle-lit faces of one another, in Christmas carols lustily sung, in this little town of Bethlehem where we live on this silent night.
Only Mystery makes us live, only mystery.
