A Reflection for the Saturday of the Third Week of Advent
“This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about” (Mt 1:18).
Matthew’s tale of the conception and birth of Christ does not start with a languid scene setting: “It was a quiet morning in Galilee, that deficient, hopeful region nestled like a snapdragon in the mountainous arrhythmic heart of northern Israel. The sky was cerulean, the birds were winsome, and the defeated gray stones kept their secrets. Mary came out of her home, glum and apophatic, looked around, sighed and mumbled to herself yet again, Nothing fun ever happens around here.”
Instead, Matthew gets straight to it, reels off incredible, shattering actions one after another. A child is conceived; it is through the Holy Spirit; the husband plans to divorce; an angel appears; the child will save everybody; the prophets have been fulfilled; the Savior is born.
Every sentence counts, every stake raised as high as it can humanly go. We do not have time for long literary wind-ups. This is not The Mill on the Floss. We hop dead center into the action because it is all urgent; it all really matters. There is a time and place in literature for exposition, for Eliot’s loving description of the river. But in the Gospels, the authors get out of the way and let the character’s actions speak for themselves.
Will evangelists tell the world that we, quite simply, loved others in word and deed, and let ourselves be loved? Or that we didn’t?
After all, Christ, and all of us, will be known by what we do. We will not be judged ultimately by the sky we were born under, the family that raised us, the raiment that adorned us, the treasure we gathered, the vegetation that surrounded us. We will be reduced, essentially, to a bundle of declarative sentences about how we lived life.
Will evangelists one day report that we followed our deep seraphic dreams; that we obeyed our conscience over a death-dealing law; that we welcomed into our fearful lives the most outrageous and dazzling creature known to mankind? Will they tell the world that we, quite simply, loved others in word and deed, and let ourselves be loved? Or that we didn’t?
Get to know Joe Hoover, S.J., poetry editor
1. Favorite Christmas Hymn
2. Favorite Christmas Tradition
The way you wake up every Christmas and it just feels like Christmas.
3. Favorite Christmas Recipe
Povotica: this insanely good Croatian pastry roll my mom makes only this time of year, even though she’s not Croatian.
4. Favorite Poem You Wrote This Year
