The Gift of an MSB Card
At Christmas why not imagine how Mary, the Shepherds and the town of Bethlehem are inviting us to open three Christmas cards they are sending us, each with a word beginning with an initial reminding us of them. Let’s call them the “MSB” cards! “M” for Mary, with the word “Mercy” written on it; “S” for Shepherds, with the words “Start again” on it, and “B” for Bethlehem, with a card entitled “Believe more.”
The first card then, “M” has the word “Mercy” written on it. Mary, the Mother of Jesus wants to remind us the whole Christmas story is a great yearly reminder of mercy. Throughout the year, we are busy, embroiled in complicated situations in our family, our workplace, our society. A certain dissatisfaction can build up within us. Alongside the daily routine of ups and downs, we can also sense at times a kind of inner spiritual bankruptcy. We suffer from fractured relationships. So it is great that just at the very time when even our cosmos seems to say that darkness is overcoming us – we’ve just celebrated the longest night of the year – then along comes the gentle scene of Christmas with mercy written all over it. And we hear words of hope such as: “on those who live in a land of deep shadow, a great light has shone”. Mercy is on offer from the child Jesus. So “do not be afraid; I bring you news of great joy…a joy to be shared with everyone”.
The second Christmas card “S” comes from the Shepherds and it has the word “Start again” written on it. The Shepherds were the first to hear about the Christmas story and they rushed to the scene. Somehow they knew this was big news. In that small manger, the world’s history was experiencing a new start because the initiative was coming from God who can make all things new.
As we hear the Christmas story and come before the crib, it’s good to allow our heart be moved: we too can start again in our own personal life story! We can start again. We can get out of any self-imprisonment we have built. Our heart, our lives, our family, our society can be Bethlehem welcoming the child Jesus. There’s space, there’s hope, there’s another chance. St. Augustine put it so well: Jesus is born for us so that we can be reborn.
When we say we can be reborn and “start again”, what is it we can start again to do what? To live the life God created us to live, the one that brings deep down happiness, the one we see explained at Christmas: to be the first to love, not waiting for others to love us (this is what God did: while we were still sinners, he came for us; now we must do the same towards one another); to love everyone, not blinkering ourselves with prejudices (how many reasons God could have found not to come into our world! But he came; now it’s our turn to go out towards others, all others); to love our neighbour as ourselves, taking our measure from Jesus who knows how to enter into the other person’s world, to feel their feelings, understand their suffering, identify with their rejoicing.
Yes, Christmas is great. Of course, children make Christmas. But for each of us adults too, Christmas is a very personal gift that touches us deeply. And here we have the third card “B” that we are invited to open. It comes from the town of Bethlehem. In their town something happened that went beyond anything they might have expected. So their card, with the initial “B” contains the words: “Believe more”.
I remember being struck the first time I heard the story of Paul Claudel, a French writer. He was not particularly into faith but on Christmas Day in 1886, a gloomy winter rainy day in Paris, he went to Mass in the cathedral of Notre Dame. He was not particularly moved by the ceremony but later he came back. There was some singing going on. For the rest of his life he recalled that he “stood near the second pillar at the entrance to the chancel, to the right, on the side of the sacristy.” A fourteenth-century statue of the Virgin Mary and Child was standing there. “Then occurred the event which dominates my entire life,” he wrote. “In an instant, my heart was touched and I believed. I believed with such a strength of adherence, with such an uplifting of my entire being, with such powerful conviction, with such a certainty leaving no room for any kind of doubt, that since then all the books, all the arguments, all the incidents and accidents of a busy life have been unable to shake my faith, nor indeed to affect it in any way.”
What he didn’t realise was that on very same day, two hundred kilometres away in the small town of Lisieux, the future St Therese of Lisieux, then a young girl, that same Christmas Day was undergoing a profoundly new step in her faith journey. She spoke of receiving the grace “of emerging from childhood, or in a word the grace of my full conversion.” She began moving in her faith journey from a simply childish notion to a new deeper faith.
For each of us Christmas can be a time to start again in our faith journey. Pope Francis has put it well: “Christmas reminds us that a faith that does not trouble us is a troubled faith. A faith that does not make us grow is a faith that needs to grow. A faith that does not raise questions is a faith that has to be questioned. A faith that does not stir us is a faith that needs to be stirred. A faith that does not shake us is a faith that needs to be shaken. Indeed, a faith which is only intellectual or lukewarm is only a notion of faith. It can become real once it touches our heart, our soul, our spirit and our whole being. Once it allows God to be born and reborn in the manger of our heart. Once we let the star of Bethlehem guide us to the place where the Son of God lies, not among Kings and riches, but among the poor and humble.”
I think that Our Lady, Mary, who is so central to these days of Christmas, would want us to accept these “MSB” cards, presented to us at Christmas time: recognise the mercy on offer to us in the peaceful Christmas scene, grab the opportunity and decide to start again to live the good news of love that brings joy and believe more. From the crib scene Mary whispers to each of us: A saviour has been born to you: he is Christ the Lord, let him be reborn in the manger of your heart.