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Whenever my parents really want to embarrass me they haul out the home video of Christmas Day, 1990. I was nine years old, “all teeth and glasses” as my mother says. After a morning of opening presents, Mom looked at Dad and said: “I think there is still one more outside, no?”

It was a sunny, mild day—which at that time of year in Maine is anything above twenty degrees. When we all walked out into the driveway my dad had momentarily disappeared, but then he wheeled out of the garage a brand-new mountain bike, my first ever. I was literally speechless. I just stood there stammering, pointing, and grinning from ear to ear.

It’s not that the bike was especially valuable or fancy, it’s that I was completely surprised. My pile of presents was already nothing to sneeze at, and I had hardly dreamt of the day I might graduate from my old bike (the kind with only one speed and brakes you had to jam the pedals backwards for, but which did work admirably for doing jumps and skidding out in the driveway). The key to it all, of course, was that my parents knew what I wanted, and got it for me before I’d even thought to put it on a Christmas wish list.

Our heavenly Father knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows that we will find satisfaction, joy, and salvation only with him. And when he sent his Son to take on our very nature, he surpassed our wildest dreams. This Advent and Christmas, may we be overwhelmingly—embarrassingly—conscious of the goodness of the Lord, who worked awesome deeds we could not hope for, such as had not been heard of from of old (Is 64:2-3). n

For decades, it has been a cherished Christmas custom here in America and elsewhere to watch a dramatization of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol. The Yuletide popularity of this tale seems quite counterintuitive, pervaded as it is with stark scenes of Christmases darkened by human misery and death. Yet its depictions of deep sorrow at a time of year “when want is most keenly felt”—and particularly its heartrending vision of the Crachit family mourning the death of their crippled child Tiny Tim—speak to a reality that all of us will experience sooner or later in our lives, what my late mother called “a hard Christmas.”

At first glance, Lorenzo Lotto’s 1523 depiction of the Nativity (see inside back cover) seems to present no surprises for its subject matter: the Blessed Virgin gazes down with serene wonder upon the Christ Child as he joyfully gazes upward toward her, his tiny hands reaching for her, with Saint Joseph to the left, rapt in silent adoration. But it is in the darkly shadowed upper left corner of the picture that Lotto tells us what this beautiful scene is truly about. On a wall can be seen a crucifix, with the eyes of the crucified Christ closed in death.

The shadow of the cross colors each chapter of the Christmas mystery. The joyful event of the Incarnation at first brings sorrow to Saint Joseph, not knowing how to reconcile his unshakeable trust in the purity of the Blessed Virgin with the mysterious news of her sacred pregnancy. And Mary, seeing his anguish, suffers with him, until an angel reveals to him the wonderful truth that the child in her womb has been miraculously conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and that this child is the long-awaited Messiah.

The first Christmas, from a human perspective, was not an “ideal Christmas.” Humanly speaking, there was much that “went wrong.” The Blessed Virgin and Saint Joseph could not have anticipated that they were going to spend the night of Christ’s birth in a town miles from home desperately looking for lodging and in the end having to settle for a stable. And yet from a divine perspective, it was the perfect Christmas. The wooden manger was the foreordained throne for the Infant God Incarnate who was to die on the wood of the cross for us.

It is just forty days after Christmas that Mary and Joseph learn from Simeon that the Christ Child is to be both a light to the Gentiles and a sign to be contradicted, and that this mysterious “contradiction” would one day drive a sword deep into the heart of Mary.

Both of Simeon’s prophecies were soon to manifest themselves. Unbeknownst to the Holy Couple, Gentiles from afar had been informed of Christ’s birth by a star. The arrival of these Magi in Jerusalem announcing the reason for their journey was a cause for alarm not only to Herod but to Satan himself. And from this alarm arose Herod’s murderous plot to slay the divine Infant by ordering the extermination of every male child two years old or younger in and around Bethlehem.

It is in the dead of night that this horrible news comes to the Holy Family, announced in a dream to Joseph. They are faced with the cross of fleeing to a foreign land, Egypt, to save the Christ Child from certain death at Herod’s hands.

While quite a few of the great Christmas carols express the glory of the birth of Christ, many of the most beautiful are tinged with a gentle touch of sadness, a melancholic longing, reminding us that this mystery meets us where we really are in this life, facing the hardships of countless trials, sickness, and death.

Some Christmas carols take this a step further by bringing before our eyes the nexus between the crèche and the cross. In his carol “Sleep, Holy Babe,” the English Catholic convert Edward Caswall († 1878) presents a vision of what lies ahead for the resting Christ Child: “Too quickly will thy slumbers break,/ and thou to lengthened pains awake,/ that death alone shall close” (verse 4).

The English melody “Greensleeves” has had a rather long history of associations with both Christmas and the cross despite its origin as a secular piece of music. That history could be said to have begun with its somber use during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603), as a piece that was played in a slow, dirge-like manner at executions for treason. This would mean that for the English Catholic priests put to death for their faith under Elizabeth, “Greensleeves” was the last piece of music they heard in leaving this world.

Just a few decades later, in 1642, “Greensleeves” is given in a book of Christmas carols as the melody for a carol that speaks of what Christ suffered for us: “His hands and feet were wounded deep,/ and his blessed side, with a spear./ His head they crowned then with thorn,/ and at him they did laugh and scorn...” (“The Old Year Now away Is Fled,” verse 2). Two centuries later, William Chatterton Dix († 1865) was to compose new words for “Greensleeves,” the carol “What Child is this?,” with its second verse declaring: “Nails, spear, shall pierce him through,/ the cross be born, for me, for you....”

In Austria, Poland, and Switzerland, it is a Christmas Eve tradition to confront the bitter sorrow of death by visiting the graves of departed loved ones. In the loving eternal plan of God for us, Advent and Christmas come when they are needed most, near the end of the year, when the cold, the darkness, and reminders of the inescapable passage of time can weigh heavily upon the human heart. As the Gospel for the third Mass of Christmas reminds us, the light of Christ shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (Jn 1:5).

Advent is a time of waiting, longing, and begging. It is a time to pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.”

We look forward to celebrating the first coming of Jesus at Christmas. We look forward with hope to the second coming of Jesus in his glory. We seek out Jesus here and now in the Mass, when he comes to us in the Eucharist. We seek out Jesus in the people and events of our lives, when he comes to us in ordinary ways. Today, as we examine our conscience and confess our sins, we ask Jesus to come to us in his mercy. For Jesus offers us a true experience of salvation here and now through the forgiveness of our sins.

God our Father, out of loving obedience to you, and out of love for all that you created through him, your Only Begotten Son became human and dwelt among us. He was born as a baby, just like us. He went through the joys and sufferings of living, just like us. He suffered and died and rose again, just for us. Give us hearts of repentance, so that we may weep for the one who was pierced for our sins, and rejoice as our sins and impurities are washed away. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

On that day, the LORD will shield the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the weakling among them shall be like David on that day, and the house of David godlike, like an angel of the LORD before them. On that day I will seek the destruction of all nations that come against Jerusalem.

I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and petition; and they shall look on him whom they have thrust through, and they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only son, and they shall grieve over him as one grieves over a firstborn.

On that day there shall be open to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, a fountain to purify from sin and uncleanness. (Zec 12:8-10; 13:1)

The weakling among them shall be like David. Who is weaker than an infant without shelter? This baby, in these meager surroundings, is like David? Yes, he is like David and like us in all things but sin.

Because this new house of David, this unity, is the Church, and the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, the continuation of Christ’s presence here and now. His method is to become present in the least likely of places: in a stable, on a cross, and through the faces of sinners—but sinners who have been transformed by his saving love. Sinners who have discovered that this king is truly with us and dwells among us as we are.