Courtney McGrailFr Martin Henry
The opening chapter of St Luke’s Gospel mentions the Visitation of Mary to her cousin Elisabeth, and the birth of Jesus is recorded in the following chapter. Both events are commemorated in the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary. Why, one may wonder, are they referred to as ‘mysteries’ rather than, say, facts or truths?
In referring to specific aspects of Jesus’ life as ‘mysteries’, the Church, rather than seeking to ‘mystify’ people, may simply have wished to divert attention from the blindingly obvious, so as to draw attention to a hidden meaning present in the life of Jesus.
Important
When the Church talks about a mystery, it is not talking about puzzles or conundrums that have to be solved. Rather, the Church is alerting us to the presence and action of God in our world, and reminding us, if we needed reminding, that what is most important in our religion is not what we do about our salvation or about God, but what God does for us.
The significance of the ‘Mystery of the Nativity’ lies in the claim that the child Jesus is no ordinary child but the Son of God, the Saviour of the world. The ‘Mystery of the Visitation’ lies in the fact that it highlights the continuity between the work of God in our world before the coming of Christ and the work of God in Christ himself. And it also underlines the fact that the coming of Christ only made and only makes sense in the context of the history of the chosen people, of the Jewish people.
The history of the long-suffering Jewish people was one of trying to perceive God’s ways and respond to God’s presence amid the realities and trials of this world. It was a history of always hoping for salvation, especially in times of great difficulty and danger, but more often than not of seeing those hopes destroyed and mangled time after time. The Jewish people were for most of their history a small, politically and militarily unimportant community, and not surprisingly they often felt betrayed and abandoned by God when they were subjected to periods of great suffering and distress. But they always also had individuals in their midst who didn’t lose hope in the goodness of God and his plans for the world, even in the darkest days of their history. Elisabeth and Mary were two such people, and through them, Christianity believes, God brought his plans not only for the Jewish people but also for all of humanity to fulfilment.
Powerless are key
The story of the Visitation and the Nativity reminds us that God brings his plans to fulfilment not by the use of what is normally regarded as the way to get things done in this world: namely, by force and power and political cunning and manipulation. Rather, in the Visitation and the Nativity two relatively powerless women are the key players. Their response to God did more than change the course of history, it allowed the world to receive and recognise its Saviour.
Yet why, it can easily be objected, does the world not look more ‘saved’ so long after the birth of the Saviour? The only answer to this tormenting question would seem to be the ancient Christian claim that the ultimate ‘point’ of Salvation cannot be located within this world of flesh and suffering, for all that this world is the beneficiary of Salvation. The New Testament itself is by no means blind to the reality of violence and evil in this world, a violence that was even visited on the Saviour himself, when he came on this earth. But the New Testament also claims that God’s kingdom is indestructible in the long term, even if it is not immune from violence in the short term.
It is this claim that the first Christians passed on to subsequent generations. And it is still the same faith that continues to justify the unique place that Christmas – the season of goodwill – still holds in our culture and in our imagination.
Goodwill
For why, it might also reasonably be asked, should we try to exercise goodwill in a world that we truly believed was ruled and controlled irredeemably and inexorably by ill will and malice? It wouldn’t make much sense to act out of a belief in the reality of goodwill, if we thought the ultimate reality governing our existence was in fact ill will. It is, in other words, the belief that, no matter how terrible or awful human history may be or may become, it can never overpower or extinguish the light of Christ—it is this belief that gives the Christmas season of goodwill its most credible and its deepest justification.
In the season of Christmas we are invited to concentrate on the reality and closeness of God and to look forward, beyond the violence and frequent hopelessness of this world, to the triumph of God’s goodness and mercy and glory.
Fr Martin Henry, former lecturer in theology at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, is a priest of the diocese of Down and Connor