ANDREW M. GREELEY'S
Mailbox Parish
P.O. BOX 37-7820 . CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60637
"Volume 6 . Number 2" "Christmas 1995"
GOD AS MOTHER
Who said this:
"God is Father because he created, because he calls, because he commands, because he
governs. God is mother because God cherishes, because God nourishes, because God nurses,
because God embraces."
It wasn't Blackie Ryan. It was St. Augustine. Christmas is in some very important ways the feasts
of the Motherhood of God.
WHO IS THE BELOVED CHILD?
Father John Shea ends his wonderful Christmas book Starlight with a narrative poem
called the "Man Who Was a Lamp." The story is about the quest for "the cave of Christmas where
the child of light burns in the darkness." The cave is hidden in the center of the earth and you need
a guide to get there. You just can't amble in then return to the party for more eggnog. The guide is
John the Baptist, the man who was a lamp because he reflected the light of the world. On your way
to the cave you learn from John about the child and about the light and about the water. Then you
enter the cave: "Inside there is a sudden light, but it does not hurt your eyes. The darkness has
been pushed back by radiance. You feel like an underwater swimmer who has just broken the
surface of the Jordan and is breathing in the sky. John is gone. Notice from whom the light is
shining, beloved child."
IRISH AMERICAN MYSTICISM
The poem is authentic Irish American mysticism. How is it that each one of us is also the
beloved child? Jesus came into the world to be the light of the world, to reflect God's light back
on the world. But he did not do so by creating light where there was none. Rather his task was to
uncover for us our own light, to help us to realize that we too are the light of the world because, like
him (and yet not quite like him) God's radiance is within us. Our light is not totally discontinuous
with that of Jesus because the same God is his father and mother who is our father and mother,
the same light of God radiates from the depth of our being which radiated from the depth of his
being.
WE ARE THE LIGHT
At Christmas we discover not only the light of the star, the light of the crib scene, we
discover (perhaps again) our own light. The God who gave us life also made us light, participants
in Her own light, just as the radiance of a new mother is reflected in the face of her child (and, be it
noted, vice versa). The adoration of the child by its mother in the crib scene - and in the clip art on
this page - reveals to us that God loves us with an adoring love because She sees her own light
reflected in us. Jesus discloses the existence of that light, he does not cause it. We participate in
God's light because we are God's creatures, God's beloved children whom God adores even more
than a mother adores her newborn babe, even more than Mary adored Jesus.
This is heady stuff, but it is literally true, even more than literally true. As Father Robert Barron
remarks in his new book about St. Thomas, human love is inconstant, even human mother love.
But not so God's mother love. God is implacable in his maternal affection precisely because he
sees the light that is his radiating out from us. We must help others to see the light that is in
them.
HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS
The recent Holly Hunter/Jodie Foster film "Home for the Holidays" is a powerful satire on
how we Americans celebrate our national family festivals of Thanksgiving and Christmas. It should
force all of us to examine our consciences about what we make of these feasts. The family in the
movie is more dysfunctional than the typical American family. Nonetheless, there are dysfunctional
elements in every family. The family reunions at Thanksgiving and Christmas seem to bring out
even the mildest of family conflicts and hang-ups and turn them into the raw material for
frustration, bitterness, and unhappiness. Need one say that such eruptions destroy what the
festivals are supposed to be about. By the end of such a day no one feels like the "beloved child"
of Father Shea's poem. Thanksgiving and Christmas are not times of crisis and discord for every
family. However, those families who avoid blow-ups are fortunate. Either they have repressed all
family tensions or learned how to deal with them constructively. To judge by the facial expressions,
O'Hare International Airport (and its lesser imitations around the country) at Thanksgiving and
Christmas are the anterooms of Purgatory. Throngs of people, going "home for the holidays," are
innocent of smiles, laughter, bright eyes, and the joy that the holiday season is supposed to offer.
On the contrary, their body language, their mannerisms, and especially their attitude towards such
offspring who might be tagging along suggest that they would rather be doing almost anything else
besides coming home for the holidays. Like maybe working in a salt mine somewhere. Or walking
the Gobi desert.
In part, the pervasive glumness at O'Hare is the result of two mistakes we contemporary
Americans make: We send our young people away to college where they will meet during the
marrying time of the life cycle eligible spouses from such strange places (if you happen to be a
Chicagoan like I am) as Boston or New York or Los Angeles. Not a good idea. We should marry
people from our own parish or our own neighborhood. (Am I serious about that last paragraph?
WELL, maybe I'm half fun and full earnest as my mother used to say.) We permit the large
corporations to move employees around the country and the world like they are pawns on a chess
board or numbers in a table of random numbers generated by a computer. The result of this folly is
that in many cities those who run things are transient carpetbaggers - though that is another
matter. But, truth to tell, transcontinental jetting at Christmas only aggravates the problem. It
existed long before jets and even, I suspect, before railroads.
WHENCE THE HOLIDAY RAGE?
Some of the problems are the result of disoriented metabolism. We human primates engage in
drastic changes in our eating and sleeping schedules only at the risk of severe physical and
emotional distress. I cannot understand why the holidays are a time when food is served in the
middle of the afternoon instead of at noon or before seven o'clock at night. I confess to have made
this preference all too clear to my family, which ignores me completely. I also strong suspect that
much of the weight put on at Christmastime comes from the frantic consumption of appetizers as
we despair of dinner ever being served. One does not dare scream out at the top of one's voice,
"Are we ever going to eat!" Then we feel that, even though we are no longer hungry, we still must
eat everything the host and hostess put in front of us lest we give offense. I pass over in silence
our propensity to take a little bit too much of the "creature" while waiting for dinner. Nor do I
mention our inclination to guzzle eggnog, spiked with rum, like it was a milkshake. I don't mention
it, however, because it is one of my favorite Christmas devices for killing pre-prandial hunger. That
and apricot fruitcake. Such disorders of the eating and sleeping cycle are particularly hard on the
small fry who are keyed up to the point of instant turbulence by the excitement of the day and the
wonders of their presents. It is automatic that the children of one family will get on the nerves of
parents of other children who are busy making comparisons as soon as the various broods enter
the house and continue the comparisons as the children litter the room with festive wrapping paper
Hey, I'm not Scrooge. I'm merely a sociologist reporting on contemporary American Christmas
behavior Some members of the party have been working hard all day long to prepare the meal and
begin to resent that they are the only ones working (though usually by their own choice) while
others are engaged in foolish activities like watching football games.
A miasma of expectation and disappointment pervades the gathering, everyone searching for
memories of the (selectively misperceived) joys of holidays past.Everyone at the party has clear
and precise notions of how the various events should be ordered, but alas there is not likely to be
much agreement on that order. When the matter is settled, either by fiat or reluctant consensus,
the losers tend to sulk. It's when sulking begins that the party gets into deep trouble.Then self pity
takes over. Everyone feels sorry for himself/herself and, in the luxuriance of self pity, past
resentments against siblings, parents, children, and in-laws come bubbling to the surface, usually
so artfully disguised that the resenting person doesn't recognize where they're coming from or what
they mean. Then the fun begins. Usually the target is that person in the family who least deserves
the attacks and is the least capable of dealing with it. When we want to ruin the day of a member
of a family, we are pretty good at doing it. Merry Christmas to all, as Santa says, and to all a good
night.
SELF PITY IS THE ENEMY
How does one prevent such catastrophes? I suppose by being aware of the dynamics of what
goes on at such festivals and resolving to banish all self pity for the duration of the day.
Better, indeed, for the duration of life.There is simply no way to be the "beloved child" when we give
ourselves over to self-pity. The point of this tirade is that the conflict can be avoided, though
perhaps not in families like the one in the film, if we all make up our minds beforehand that
comparisons, sulking, and self pity are to be forsworn on Christmas Day in the name of the
Beloved Child, in the name of the Beloved Child in each one of us, and in the name of the Beloved
children who surround us at the family dinner table.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
HAPPY HANUKKAH
SEASONS GREETINGS
AND A BLESSED NEW YEAR!