A Christmas Memory
Each year at Christmas, I remember fondly the year I spent Christmas in Italy with a priest friend who was dying of cancer. It was most likely the last Christmas dinner for Don Cosimino, as his parishioners so affectionately called him. His cancer had now spread and conquered.
That Christmas morning had already usurped what little energy he had.
In his homily, Don Cosimino had invited people to imagine briefly where they might be in the original Christmas scene... Were they like the shepherds out in the field buy minding their sheep and surprised by the announcement of the Angel? Where they like Joseph, perhaps anxious about how to arrange things? Were they like the Kings in the distance looking for the light of hope? Were they like Mary, recollected in prayer? Or were they like the many people probably in Jerusalem and Bethlehem that Christmas day rushing by totally oblivious to what was going on?
Mass now over. It was dinner time.
So three of us sat together around the table with Cosimino in the simple Italian parish house, trying our best to be “upbeat” and not think of it as our last Christmas in his company.
Just as we started into the pasta dish, a knock came on the door.
Who could be calling at this time on Christmas day?
Opening the door, I got a jolt. Before me stood a dishevelled beggar, bearing a bushy beard, a true vagabond. He was looking for Don Cosimino.
And from within Cosimino heard and called the beggar by name, inviting him in.
He sat at table and soon the red sauce creamed his bushy beard.
Could this be for real? On Christmas day?
But the conversation relaxed and flowed, with Don Cosimino mustering all his energy, as if aware it would be his last.
Banter, good humour, fun dropped like the peace we all yearn for at Christmas.
Then Cosimino delivered a one liner that went deeper than we could have imagined and closed the circle on the meaning of Christmas.
“You know you have a wife and children,” he said to the man. After a short silence he urged respectfully: “Think of them this Christmas...”
Tears followed.
The beggar rose from the table and shuffled towards Cosimino, taking his hand and kissing it affectionately.
“You’re the only one who tells me the truth. And with love. You’re my true friend. Grazie, Don Cosimino.”
More tears, gentle warmth, and more silence.
And the guest left.
Each year that Christmas scene comes back into my mind’s eye. For that day, Cosimino’s, with not much in his body to give, still gave room at his inn for this beggar. But it was not just physical room in the inn that he gave in that wonderful moment; there was room for truth, for looking within, for thoughts of reconciliation, for hope, for a new beginning.
Yes, the celebration of the birth of the infant Jesus is an opportunity to begin again, an opportunity to open our hearts wider to others, to embrace truth, to love.