Christmas Is for Healing

Loving you, of course
I am not at all interested in how much money
you are spending on Christmas gifts this year
but rather, in how much blood, sweat, and tears you are sheddingto make Christ a vital part of your life
for you and I will never be able to erase the fact that he came:
to touch lives - to break bread
to heal hurt - to forgive sins
to wash feet - to calm seas
to walk on water - to give us the Spirit
and to care immensely.

Yes, to care enough
to be born in our Bethlehem
to live in our land, and weep over our cities
and die and rise again.


So now it's Christmas
and I am not sure what part of you is crippled
or where you need to feel God's saving power
but with everything in me
I believe that Christmas is for healingAnd he came to heal. 
So if you can trust Jesus enough to
walk out on the waters of getting involved,
of washing feet and annointing people,
of breaking bread and working miracles,
I am almost sure his saving presence
will touch those blind and crippled parts of your life
and Christmas will come to you.


More than anything else
I want to give you Christmas this year
It's a gift, an offer
You can take it if you like
but I can't really give it to you
like a wrapped up package.
It is deeper than that,
It is warmer, brighter, holier.
It is more personal.
Christmas is more challenging
that a wrapped up package.
It is an offer
It is a mystery
It is birth
It is hope.
It is Christmas and
God can never be born enough. . .

~ Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB ~


I had to dig Macrina Wiederkehr's Seasons of Your Heart from my mound of books yesterday morning. I needed some comfort and I knew I would find it in her poem, Christmas is for Healing. I know the grief is still there, but during times of deep pain, I find it extremely helpful to turn to works of art that deeply capture my own grief. After crying, I turn to art to help soothe my pain. (This is partly what I mean when I say that one thing I like a lot about myself is my capacity for self-soothing.) The art launches me into the task of meaning-making.

I thought I was finally ready to dwell into the more celebratory spirit of Christmas that I couldn't seem to fully bring myself to do in light of the wrath left by typhoon Pablo. Yesterday morning, though, I awoke to the thought of the coming Gaudete Sunday and started wrapping a set of Christmas gifts. After wrapping the gifts, I turned to Facebook and became aware of another devastating news, the Conneticut shooting. What a painful sight. Anyone's heart, but especially a parent's, cannot but bleed - for the parents of the 20 school children who were killed and for the surviving school children who witnessed such a harrowing event.

With all these deaths and losses from the Habagat, Hurricane Sandy, Pablo, and Connecticut shooting, I couldn't help wondering, could this be 2012 in the Mayan calendar?

It was still way too early for anything so I went back to bed and spent some time in contemplation. Christmas amidst all these? Yes, Christmas despite all these. . . or perhaps more accurately, Christmas BECAUSE of all these overwhelming experiences. I was reminded that, more than anything else, we need Christmas now. No, not the consumerist Christmas that the 21st century has known but Christmas of the olden times, Christmas as it was on that night in a cave in Bethlehem.

The Spirit gently woke me from my distress to remind me of the true spirit of Christmas: Emmanuel - God is with us. I see God, not as the distant all-powerful God who tells us, don't worry everything will be fine, but as a loving father/mother or friend, embacing all of us in her/his loving arms. I see a loving God telling us all that it's absolutely fine to stay in our pain for a while, to be angry and perhaps even curse. I see a God who assures us that he/she will stay with us, cradling us in our grief, no matter how long it takes for us to be ready to finally go on with life and living again. I see a God who stands by each of us to heal us and usher in a better and brighter tomorrow - in God's perfect time.

I hope that the time will come soon when we can affirm from the depths of our hearts that, no matter what, life is still beautiful, a wonderful journey worth taking.