Some Advent Meditations

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AMDG

Last night I was working on a party poster for Baby Jesus. It says, "Happy Birthday Jesus" on it, with pictures of Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus in utero going through Bethlehem, trying to find lodging for the night, going from inn to inn, seeing people sleeping in the streets or around campfires, then finally getting directions outside the walls of the town to some caves used by cattledrivers and shepherds.

I have a Mexican grandmother and one of my favorite Christmas traditions is La Posadas.
In this tradition, children carry statues of Joseph and Mary on the donkey, or sometimes they dress up for the parts, and go from house to house in the neighborhood. Now, only one house, at the end of their nights journey lets them in, and then there is a fiesta inside, but every single other house turns them away, with any number of excuses (all scripted of course) "We can't be bothered, go away" "We are all full up" "No room!" "Let us go to sleep in peace!"
It is a very beautiful tradition and I have often been struck by how apt it is for our culture today.

Now, as I draw my specualtive imaginings of the characters who turned away Joseph and Mary and Baby Jesus on that fateful night, I wonder as I wondered over and over again when I was a child, "How could anybody turn a desperate man, and a pregnant teenager and the unborn child out to be born in the streets late on a cold winter night? How could anybody do that to anybody? Let alone to the Son of God who came to save you from your sins!" I think about the man or woman or men and women that night who ignored Our Lord and Our Lady and St. Joseph that night. How did they rationalize it to themselves? How did they sleep that night? They might have ignored St. Josephs pleas that they open their doors to them because it was getting late at night and they were afraid. It is not impossible that every inn in the town was full because of the choas and unexpected flooding of the city caused by the census. Maybe there really was no bed in the house to spare for the poor thirteen or fourteen year old girl about to give birth. But really, really no room? I have slept for several months on somebody's couch, that was a LOT better than being out in the middle of the night. I have slept on a narrow wooden pew in a chapel, and that was a lot better than being out in the dark, alone. When I was growing up I once had to share one room with all eight of my siblings. There were three bunkbeds, all in a row, and one crib for the baby. Sometimes my mother joined us because she was scared of my Dad. My dad had converted one room in the house and the garage to store arcade video games that his warehouse could not fit. So there we were, my mother in one narrow bunk, the baby in the crib, three skinny kids in one bunk, two more on another bottom bunk, two more on the top bunk. As squished as we all were and as hard as it was to sleep with one bed-mate always hogging the blankets or peeing in the sheets, my mother used to say, "Count your blessings, Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus in Bethlehem were not even given THIS!" As callous as it was of her to say, it was true. Nobody in Bethlehem gave even that much space in their inn to Mary and Josephy and Baby Jesus.

Sometimes, at Advent and Christmas, I think the cute little fontanini nativity sets or Chruch cribs can be a little misleading to kids. The manger bad looks cozy, Our Lady's highly romanticized outfit is usually trimmed with gold thread and looks silken, not a blonde hair out of place. St. Joseph usually looks far too old for anybody to believe that he has built tables and chairs with his big, strong carpenter's hands and dragged a stubborn mule up over mountains and hills and across deserts to get from Nazareth to Bethlehem and soon will again, all the way to Egypt. Baby Jesus is smiling and stretching out his arms in his cute chubby naked infant glory.

It is all true, do not get me wrong. It represents his kingship, even in his poverty. All I am trying to say is, before the Glorias and Angels and Star of Bethlehen and shepherds and magi and gold, frankinscence and myrhh; Joseph and Mary and Baby Jesus suffered rejection and pain from the world. "He came into the world and the world did not know him" It still does not know him.

Our Lady did not look like a silk-bedecked version of a blonde fifties pin-up girl or a modest version of somebody on a magazine cover. She looked like a fourteen year old girl, because she was one. She looked Jewish. Because she was a jew. She probably did not have tweezed eyebrows, and glistening, silky hair after her long trip, or a flawless complexion. When was the last time you saw a fourteen year old girl with no acne? She probably did not have perfectly symmetrical features either. She was nine months pregnant, that means that after she gave birth she probably did not have the tiny waitline that she is typically depicted with. Do not misunderstand me, I do believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary was the most beautiful women in the world. I do not believe that the world recognized the most beautiful woman ever created. If she had looked like Marilyn Monroe, the world would have noticed her and given her a corner in their house on the floor to have her baby on. She did not.
The most beautiful woman ever created by God was a fourteen year old Jewess girl, with Galilean features, nine-months pregnant, with messy, wind swept, unwashed dark hair under a coarse veil, wearing loose heavy garments for the cold and for maternity, with unbrushed teeth, untweezed eyebrows, a sweating brow, a galilean accent and tired, but beautiful, oh so beautiful dark eyes. The most innocent, loving, couragous eyes any woman has ever had on this earth. But nobody except St. Jospeh looked into her eyes when she arrived at Bethlehem. They just saw an ordinary girl. Just another pregnant wife and mother. Another one of those pesky travellors passing through town for the census. So they turned her and baby Jesus away. He was just another unborn baby. (To be continued)