Monday, December 22, 2014
423 - Christmas, Continued
Spirituality Column #423
December 23, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville
December 23, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville
Christmas, Continued
By Bob Walters
“Trust life. We do not live it alone. God
lives with us.” – Father Alfred Delp SJ, Christmas Eve, 1944, on the wall of
his Nazi prison cell near Berlin.
Father
Delp’s hands were shackled when he scratched that message into the Plotzensee
prison wall just weeks before he was hanged.
Vaguely, peripherally implicated in the July 20, 1944 plot to
assassinate Adolf Hitler, the Catholic priest was offered freedom rather than
execution if only he would denounce his Jesuit ordination.
Delp said
no. Like all those jailed in the July 20
plot, in prison his hands remained shackled and in death his body was cremated,
ashes broadcast in the wind. Delp’s
earthly life ended, World War II ended, and Hitler’s Third Reich ended. But Delp’s testimony to God’s perpetual
presence lives on. Whether amid the
horror of war, the travail of daily life, the burden of sin or the insecurities
of our often doubting, imminently interruptible faith, we do not live alone.
God lives with us, always.
We know this because of the
incarnation of Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah: God become man. That’s what Delp knew. That’s the life Delp trusted as he faced
evil, injustice, and death. He was not
alone. That’s what we celebrate at Christmas.
Why share this not-so-merry Delp
story during this wonderfully joyous Christmas week? As a caution.
We too often separate what we know as the secular, sentimental,
overflowing joy of Christmas – with its traditions, happy songs, fellowship,
gifts and cheer – from the cosmically serious, magnificent, mystical meaning
behind the temporal merriment: the eternal arrival of Christ to fix the consequential
enormity of mankind’s fallen nature.
Jesus saves because Jesus lives.
“Hurray
for Baby Jesus. Now, can we please just
open some presents?!?”
Certainly, it’s less intrusive not
to contemplate the heavy theological significance of Christmas. A few quiet moments while listening to “Silent Night” masquerade as appropriate
reverence. But even then we’re likely
thinking about our personal Christmas history and experience, not the infinite
weight of the Creator God Almighty entering human existence to enable our
salvation from sin and fallenness.
We muse
that “every day should be Christmas” to extend, continue and perpetuate the
season’s kindness and giving. While
laudable, “kindness and giving” miss the larger, truer point of the incarnation
of Christ Jesus: we actually can have Christmas all the time because God is
with us all the time. We should chase,
embrace and face the Lordship of Jesus unceasingly. Christmas is sentimental, sure, because it’s
entirely about our not being alone.
And in
Christ, we never are. God is with us.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) encourages you to receive God’s peace and companionship as you enjoy a
thoughtful and Merry Christmas.
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