As I Was Saying... "How did ye get over the Christmas?"
"Ah, quiet enough this year! "
That piece of dialogue expresses a common enough experience. A few factors contribute: after all the frenzied preparations, Christmas itself arrives as an anti-climax. People are so tired that they simply want to sleep in front of the fire! Of course a few glasses of wine or a few beers can be great anesthetic.
"Ah, quiet enough this year! ", or " Ah, quite enough this year!"
Small wonder indeed!We are not used to relaxing, to doing nothing. Our world has become incredibly work-orientated; when we are forced into inactivity through the world closing down, we are at a loss. We don't know what to do with this spare time on our hands. So we are relieved when it's all over. It seems to me that the only ones who haven't got this problem are those with young children in the house. They are kept joyfully on their toes for the few days.
Well, Christmas was anything but quiet in the Augustinian here. It was a wonderful experience, actually. The 'Old Reliables' worked well, as usual: the various 'Amnesties', and the Masses at Midnight and 11.00. Our choir does add a 'celestial' dimension that is not available in too many churches. We did have a few innovations this year, liturgical and otherwise. The Rite of Reconciliation within the Vigil Mass on Saturday evening worked a treat. We were dealing, in the main, with a young clientele who would not have been exposed to such an experience before. The object of the exercise was to mediate the loving forgiveness of God, to 'lift the yoke of sinfulness' from the shoulders of his people, not to remind them of the weight of that yoke. Judging by the feedback, many of them did experience a positive liberation. Thanks be to God for that.
I referred here last week to the success this year of our 'Giving Tree' and the Mass of Giving. People were given an opportunity to express their generosity in a public forum of types. They did it in style, with discretion, and good grace. The Jesse Tree was a very sophisticated venture this year, meticulously planned and well executed. Thanks very much, Brenda.
But our 'piece de resistance' this year was the early arrival (rival?) of Santa after the 11.00 Mass on the Sunday previous to Christmas. Despite his intoxicated condition, he could call each child by name. It was wonderful to witness the reaction on the little faces. He will do it again!
Finally, thanks to all who beautified the Church for the Festival. You transformed it into a really warm festive place that any sinner would be glad to come home to! Thanks again for all your support.
-Dick Lyng.
The Feast of the Holy Family
I suspect that, in many cases, the last thing we want to hear about the first Sunday morning after Christmas is the sheer bliss of family life. Having spent the last few days closeted with our own family, we have a very good idea of how far removed it is from the Nazarene ideal that is so often placed before us. You will all be familiar with the family photograph album. You may even have pored over it during recent days. You will be familiar with the formal family photograph, a picture taken not to mark any particular occasion, but merely to record that this particular family looked like this at this particular time. Everything is very staid, formal and correct. The hair is combed and the clothes are spotless. Everyone is standing still in their correct, allotted positions. When you look at this image, this photograph and try to match it with the reality, you will say to yourself: How very different image and reality are. You know the hours of preparation that went into the staging of that image. That formal frozen frame could never capture the energy and the turmoil that gave that lot their identity and their life. In fact you know that the formal photograph is a complete set-up, an artificial masking of reality.
But our image of the Holy Family can be distorted in this same manner. Medieval artists set out to do for the Holy Family what today's photographers do for our families. Now as long as we know the conventions in operation it doesn't matter. Our critical faculties will supply the necessary correctives. But, unfortunately, we have been trained to suspend our critical faculties when dealing with our received images of the Holy Family. Consequently that energetic and interesting family has been reduced to a bloodless cliche. Mary and Joseph have been portrayed as fawning parents living in awe of their wonder-working son. We are left with the impression that it was Jesus who formed the personalities of Joseph and Mary rather than the other way around. Here the child was truly regarded as father of the man! Both the Holy Family and ourselves are damaged by this approach: Firstly, it underestimates the very active role that Mary and Joseph played in the formation of the character of Jesus; secondly, through elevating it out of reality altogether, it destroys the Holy Family as a role model for our own families.
Indeed from today's extract we see that the Holy Family confronted the harsh reality of life and death in the very early days of the infant's life. This is no snap shot for a picture postcard. This is the stuff of survival. St. Luke's gospel is more explicit still on the inner tensions of the Nazarene family. He gets lost for three days and has his parents sick with worry. When they eventually find him he has a smart answer for his mother: "Did you not know I must be about my father's business." We see there at work the tensions and strains so familiar to the rest of us. Every twelve-year-old that ever existed has an answer for his mother. There is a religious and social impression abroad of the family as a happy, tension-free religious and social unit. This image is often portrayed in TV game shows of the American variety. If we fall for this sort of stuff, we will soon be forced into the conclusion that there is something wrong with our own crowd. Our families are the places where we are all allowed make our mistakes in security. The family is the anvil upon which our personalities are formed. lf there is no hammerblows, we will all turn out to be undifferentiated, uninteresting lumps. Where there is no tension, there will be no growth. It is reassuring to learn from the gospels that the family at Nazareth was no different.
Fluent
I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.
Decorum
In the winter night
By the lake edge
A stern breeze makes
The young novices
Of reed bend
Low and bow
To the mystery
Of a shadow-mountain,
Gathered the moment
The cloud freed the moon.
-John O'DonoghueThe Blink of an Eye
I see the Morning Star
through my childhood skylight
and close my eyes and dream for fifty years,
reliving every set-back, every high-light
I open my eyes and there's the Evening Star.
And suddenly it's twilight.
-Michael HartnettHome