We have no acceptable manger, Lord, for it is currently on fire, come back in 2021. During Advent each year, the Church reminds her faithful to prepare our hearts as if we were preparing a manger for the Christ child. To do this we go to confession, we participate in the Church’s liturgies, and we are stirred to prayer by the many traditions, celebrations, and graces that the season usually brings. By the time that Christmas comes around, the Church and her members have done their requisite preparation and our spiritual mangers are ready to welcome the baby Jesus.
This year, however, is different. 2020 has been filled with unpredictable event after unpredictable event and what has seemed to be sorrow after sorrow. After this difficult year, then, it seems like Jesus may find dilapidated mangers in our hearts and perhaps even some set on fire with a year’s worth of sorrows, burdens, and doubts. It is tempting, then, to ask Jesus to come back next year when presumably we will be dealing with less and can prepare our hearts like we normally do. I want to suggest, however, that though a normal Advent with well-prepared mangers is preferable, our current situation, that of mangers seemingly unprepared and set ablaze, can also be offered as a profound gift to our Lord.
The newborn that we welcome today is not just any newborn, he is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and he is a “consuming fire” (Heb 12:29). The Father sent his Son Jesus Christ to renew and consume the world in the fires of divine love. Christ’s entire mission, his Incarnation, life, Passion, Death, and Resurrection, aims to enter into the depths of misery, distress, and evil caused by original sin.
Just as Christ’s mission two-thousand years ago aims to transform the depths of creation, so too does he desire to accomplish the same in the depths of our hearts. Today Jesus knocks at the door of your heart no matter what condition your manger may be in. He comes as the dawn from on high, desiring to transform your heart’s most intense and burning fires of sorrow, burden, and misery, into flames of pure light, love, and peace. This child has come for no other reason except to be your Savior.
Today, at the end of this year to remember, we are no exception to the providence and love of the Father. We, too, can look into the eyes of the Savior today and see the love Jesus has for us, a love like “a divine fire more intense than the burning of volcanoes, the passion of enamored hearts, and the fervor of heavenly seraphim” (Luis Maria Martinez, Only Jesus). Today, we can join the choirs of angels and saints as they sing Gloria in excelsis Deo to the child Jesus who has come for a time just as this. This Christmas morning let us welcome this child, who comes as the consuming and passionate fire of divine love, to bless and transform these sorrowful and miserable fires that consume the mangers of our hearts.
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Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. (used with permission)
