A first Christmas of darkness

A few weeks ago, the renowned Jesuit composer Fr. Manoling Francisco gave an Advent recollection at the Our Lady of Pentecost. “The Courage to Hope” was meant to encourage us to see beyond our trials and to recognize the many forms that hope and the discourse on the Messiah can take.

I was struck by Father Manoling’s discussion on the Gospel infancy narratives, or the Christmas story, as told by the evangelists.

Luke’s infancy narrative is our bright Nativity scene: the Holy Family is cradled by the songs of the angels, adored by shepherds and their flock, warmed by the glow of gentle stars caressing a peaceful, velvet night.

Matthew’s infancy narrative, on the other hand, is dark: Jesus is born into a world torn apart by war, fear, the screams of slaughtered innocents. There is no romanticized manger, no angelic choir. The story is about displacement, oppression, the greed of kings, and the yoke of empires.

They are two sides of the same story. Therefore, Father Manoling said, we must also realize that God inserted himself, in the person of Jesus, and into a world of sin. His story is the story of suffering humanity.

To meditate on this phrase: we, too, must acknowledge its converse. The story of the oppressed is Jesus’ story. His story is of those who endure beneath the heel of the privileged and abusive. His story is of those who are torn from their homes because of one country’s hunger for the fruits of another.

Jesus’ story is of the refugees, who are sometimes laughed at and ridiculed because they have to flee their homes, who are merely pitied before people shift to another topic to avoid the sight of suffering.

Jesus’ story is of the people who don’t own much but treasure what little they have. Of the homeless, the hungry, the neglected, the ridiculed. Of those who have neither the money nor luxury to bathe, eat, or sleep. Of those who labor for hours for a pittance, who show up to work with threadbare clothes and hearts full of desperation.

They are all refugees, forced from a life of dignity because someone’s greed keeps them contractual or unstable. They are all refugees because they were forced from their country, when the powerful decided to make excuses for their privilege, when the ruling class found ways to keep the poor uneducated, unknowing, starving, desperate.

We are all refugees.

The word contains within itself the dream of every single person: to find refuge in a world of violence and war, both in physical battlefields and online, both around us and in our own hearts. We all seek safety, whether we admit it or not. We are all vulnerable, whether we know it or not.

How unjust, then, is the one who laughs at those who flee war, at those who starve, at those who trek for months to cross borders? Such a person is laughing from the safety of their borrowed homes, their fragile security, their temporary lives.

When we see the world from the lenses of seeking refuge, and from the twin infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke, then a Christmas replete with lights is merely one side of the celebration. It is the side that is romantic, comfortable, the one that humans seek and think that they must find as a sign that God is present.

Many believe that Christmas should be sparkling with songs, glitter, and gold—and then ignore, even mock, those who cannot afford to light their homes any day of the year, or those whose lives have been darkened by calamities, or those who do not fit into the mold of a pretty holiday season with its drapery and trimmings.

To ignore the poor, to forget misery, is not only to lie to ourselves, but to ignore the Christmas that Matthew wrote about: where a man and a woman, lost in the cold of a desert, sought any means necessary to flee persecution and protect their infant son. They knocked on doors and were turned away. They fled to exile when their king ordered the massacre of infants.

Whether the story has any historical basis has no bearing when one thinks of the message that it conveys. That we are all equal, and our makeup and finery are merely our means to blind ourselves to the reality in which the first Christmas was born.

Father Manoling closed his talk with Adrien Candiard, a Dominican based in Egypt, who writes extensively on hope. Hope is not merely optimism, Candiard says, but the courage to face reality, to continue to love and serve despite this reality, to believe in a God who works with man and does not merely hand out gifts.

Hope is a recognition of human responsibility, of partnership with God, of our role to leave the earth better than we found it—we of frail humanity who live short, temporary lives.

Christmas, therefore, is not the glorification of riches, but a reminder of impermanence. Kings will fall. Empires will crumble. Humans will die and their memories will be lost. What remains is a humanity forever hungry for permanent refuge, a humanity forever seeking goodness in a dark world, a humanity forever thirsting for the light of genuine human kindness.

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