Sheer Grace

It was early December.  Christmas was still over three weeks away.  “I need stamps with a Nativity scene, please,” I said to the postal worker I faced through the plexiglass COVID barrier.  “We’re sold out of those.  I’m sorry,” was her unconvincing apology.  I offered that any religious Christmas scene would be fine. It received the same response.  I left the building with a sheet of sea otters frolicking in the snow and icy water which was described to me as a Christmas seasonal stamp. I would like to think this shortage was the result of an overwhelming demand for religious stamps that exceeded the abundant supply.  Forgive my doubt.

Undeterred, I subsequently went online to our favorite greeting card website and clicked on the Christmas category.  Seven out of the total ninety-seven focused on the birth of Christ.  Your smartphone calculator will tell you that’s around 7 per cent of the total.

Are the United States Postal Service and Greeting Card companies subscribing to the same marketing data service?  Is it accurate that less than one in ten Americans celebrate Christmas as the gift of the Incarnation?  The quiet night in the Middle East a couple millennia ago that changed everything forever!?

Maybe it’s not marketing.  Maybe it’s big money entities intent on reshaping the social, political, and cultural landscape.  Or could it be special interest groups that are hostile to a Christianity perceived to be a threat to alternative lifestyles?  Or the most disturbing consideration of all: maybe the overwhelming majority of people in our country just don’t care.  They’re simply indifferent to the celebration.  It’s a day that merits a shoulder shrug, or maybe a polite smile.  It conjures up childhood memories of sweet sounds and smells that vanished from relevance with coming of age.

Wake Up Call

If this be true, permit me to share a message to shake us from our collective slumber:

“Awake, mankind!  For your sake God has become man.  Awake, you who sleep, rise up from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you.  I tell you again: for your sake, God became man.                                                                                                             
You would have suffered eternal death, had he not been born in time.  Never would you have been freed from sinful flesh, had he not taken on himself the likeness of sinful flesh.  You would have suffered everlasting unhappiness, had it not been for this mercy.  You would never have returned to life, had he not shared your death.  You would have been lost if he had not hastened to your aid.  You would have perished, had he not come.                                                               
Let us then joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption.  Let us celebrate the festive day on which he who is the great and eternal day came from the great and endless day of eternity into our own short day of time…..For this reason, when our Lord was born of the Virgin, the message of the angelic voices was: Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth.                          
For how could there be peace on earth unless Truth has arisen from the earth, that is, unless Christ were born of our flesh?  And he is our peace who made the two into one: that we might be men of good will, sweetly linked by the bond of unity…..Ask if this were merited; ask for its reason, for its justification, and see whether you will find any other answer but sheer grace.”  ~ FROM A SERMON BY ST. AUGUSTINE, BISHOP, 354-430 A.D. (ALL EMPHASES IN THE ORIGINAL).

Bishop Robert Barron’s explanation of societal indifference to the Incarnation might fall under one of his frequent sermon themes: Theo Drama versus Ego Drama.  Rather than seeing our lives inextricably intertwined with the Theo Drama of salvation history and the unfolding of God’s plan for all humankind, “most of us are stuck in the boring and narrow confines of the Ego Drama. I’m producing it, I’m directing it, I’m above all starring in it. It’s the story I’m making up on my own terms for my own purposes.” 

Drama Queens?

Can you picture Mary and Elizabeth caught up in separate Ego Dramas?  First of all, there’s no way Mary makes a four day journey for an extended visit to support her cousin’s final months of pregnancy.  Mary is saying,” I’m a teenage mom carrying the promised Messiah.  It’s all about me now.  I want support from everybody around me.  No unnecessary exertion or stress.  I want the best nutrition, the best midwife, and my husband’s undivided attention.”

But after Mary shares the angel’s message with her mother, she urges her daughter to visit Elizabeth anyway.  After all she’s advanced in age and this is going to be a difficult pregnancy and delivery.  “You should go out of respect for your elders.”

So Mary goes out of obedience, but demands a caravan.  When she arrives, her cousin glances up from the table where she is sewing something for her unborn child.  She doesn’t get up because she is six months pregnant and had another fitful sleep disturbed by back pain.  “Cousin Mary, what a surprise”, she deadpans.  Elizabeth has already heard of Mary’s suspicious pregnancy which she suspects is going to upstage her own story.

I could go on about Mary’s Ego Drama when Joseph insists that they comply with Caesar Augustus’ census and she finds herself 90 miles from home surrounded by strangers with no overnight housing, and realizes she’s about to have her baby.

I hope you’ll forgive my irreverence in depicting life apart from Theo Drama to make the point.  This Christmas is a time for us to find or rediscover our role in the Theo Drama being played out in our world today.  And there aren’t any “tryouts” so we don’t have to worry about getting a part.  We don’t even have to catch the Director’s attention by our unique talent.  St. Augustine said it best: “…ask for its reason, for its justification, and see whether you will find any other answer but sheer grace.”