By: Paul S. Marchand
Summary: Christmas is harder than usual this year. Aside from the pandemic, one still finds oneself bereft of just about all connection to other human beings at what should be the most sociable time the year. So, in default of family or friends, one finds oneself accepting the eremetic realities of a time in which one’s only constant companion is God.
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Cathedral City, December 25, 2021. Once again, as at every Christmas for uncounted years, I find myself in my office this Christmas, attending to the minutiae and housekeeping work that are the necessary concomitants to solo law practice. Outside, the skies are cloudy and overcast. Looking out the window of my office, I see, as seems to happen every Christmas, a homeless person, a beggar, navigating a shopping cart full of his (or her) worldly substance along the street.
I am reminded of either Joseph and Mary’s weary pilgrimage from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census ordered by the Roman Emperor Augustus, or their flight into Egypt, shortly after the birth of Jesus Himself, occasioned by King Herod’s order to slaughter the Holy Innocents. I am not made happy by what I see. But then, little makes me happy this Christmas. Much brings me a kind of sadness so deep that the tears will not come.
The beggar, making his or her way along the street in Rancho Mirage, mustering a kind of weary dignity in the face of those driving by in their Range Rovers, their BMWs, their Mercedeses, their Jaguars, their Cadillacs, and their other luxurious automobiles, or the forlorn pup, depicted chained up in a snowy, ramshackle doghouse thinking to itself “I hope it’s warm over the rainbow bridge,” depicted in a picture in of Facebook posting from last night.
Even the cawing of the crows puts me in mind of an haiku by Matsuo BashÅ:
Father and mother,
Long gone, suddenly return
In the pheasant’s cry.
On this Christmas Day, I cannot find even the slightest scrap of something to make me happy. So, I sit in my office, alone. Yet, for all of that aloneness, for all that sense of being bereft in this world, I, like St. Anthony of Egypt, or like St. Francis of Assisi, or like St. Seraphim Sarovskiy, find myself throwing myself on the never-failing mercies of God. I cling to God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. For only in God can I hope to find the comfort, the joy, the assurance, and the acceptance that the world cannot provide me.
My mother’s family have all perished. My father’s family, from whom I have received one solitary Christmas card this year, appear to have cut me off. But my faith teaches me, that in God I will find what my family cannot give me, or will not give me. Thus, on this Christmas Day, though I am still somewhat sad for not having anyone to be social with, I, like St. Anthony of Egypt, St. Francis of Assisi, or St. Seraphim Sarovskiy, turn to God, for God Godself will be with me, and in due course will dry all tears and soothe all fears.
As the Virgin Mary is reported to have put it:
My soul doth magnify the Lord.
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
For he hath regarded: the lowliness of his handmaiden: For behold, from henceforth: all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath magnified me: and holy is his Name.
And his mercy is on them that fear him: throughout all generations.
He hath shewed strength with his arm: he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the humble and meek.
He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away.
He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel:
As he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed for ever.
Oh God, in your Incarnate Word, you have been manifest among those who have nowhere to turn. You have made yourself manifest among the marginalized and the little. Our souls magnify you, we cry to you, and in your never-failing love for us you have given us a Savior, even Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever, Amen.
Merry Christmas.
