Jesus (10 page)

This makes sense. Even in the light of direct revelation from God, Mary and Joseph could be forgiven for feeling confused. What soon-to-be mother and soon-to-be father do not feel confusion? And if normal parents feel addled, how much more confused must have been Mary and Joseph, parents of the most unusual child in history? I imagine them trudging to Bethlehem, loving and supportive of one another, trusting and hopeful in God, but worried. Did they keep their feelings to themselves, or did they share them? Perhaps they said to one another, trying to understand things: “Tell me, Mary, more about your experience with the angel.” Or “Tell me again about your dream, Joseph.”

So they were probably wondering, confused, and possibly frightened. Frightened of not finding lodgings in time, of the physical complications in an era when women often died in childbirth, and of their ability to care for the child whom they knew would be different.

Those emotions may have continued after the child's birth. One of the most common emotions that new parents have often shared with me is fear. How will I know what to do? How will I provide for my child? What happens if he or she gets sick? When my first nephew was born I remember being seized with a welter of emotions. Joy first of all. But also—and this surprised me—fear. Would he remain healthy? Would an accident befall him? Would he live?

Last year, while visiting my mother in her retirement community, I was asked to take my seven-year-old nephew to the indoor pool. Matthew loves to swim; on the way to the pool, he raced past an elderly woman, almost knocking her over, and shouted, “I'm going to the
pool!
” But every time he leapt joyfully into the water I worried: Would he get hurt? And when he shouted, “Uncle Jim, watch this!” and flipped backward from the pool's slippery edge, I thought:
Don't hit your head!
Fear. And this was only an hour in a pool.

The next week, I asked a father of three children if he ever felt the same. “Yes,” said my friend. “I love being a father, but I'm afraid almost all the time.”

Had Mary and Joseph known precisely what their son's future would hold, they might have been even more afraid. I've always wondered if Mary or Joseph had much intimation of Jesus's future. After all, they knew that this child was destined for something special, even if they did not fully understand. Did they fear the entrance of this holy boy into a sinful world? Were they consumed with worry about their son's future?
¹⁵
Did they cast their minds back over what had happened to prophets in the past? If so, this did not prevent them from carrying out what God had asked them to do.

Fear is often identified as a stumbling block in the spiritual life—in Jesus's time as well as ours. “Do not be afraid!” Jesus says, more than once. In fact, “Do not be afraid” may be what Jesus most often tells us not to do. The angels say the same to the shepherds in the field. But
confusion
seems less worthy of attention, although we feel it just as frequently. “Don't worry about being confused!” would be an equally consoling message from God. We can take as our models Mary and Joseph, who had the right to be the two most confused people in history, who were confronted with something utterly baffling, but did what God was asking of them anyway.

Mary and Joseph do three simple but essential things: they listen, they trust, they love.

I
RONICALLY, THE BIRTH OF
Jesus was meant to
lessen
confusion for the rest of the world.

“God meets us where we are.” That's what my first spiritual director told me frequently. In other words, God comes to us in ways that we can understand and appreciate, even if only partially or incompletely. For someone who delights in relationships, experiences of God might come through a conversation with a close friend. For a parent, through the smile on the face of an infant. For an active person, in working among the poor in a homeless shelter. For an introspective person, by meditating on Scripture. God meets us where we are.

God could have come to the world in any way that God desired. We may be so conditioned to the story of the birth of Jesus in humble circumstances that we forget that this was a choice. God could have come to us as a powerful ruler, born into a family of wealth and privilege. To push the theological envelope further, God could have come as a disembodied voice speaking from the heavens.

But God wanted to meet us where we are. So God came, first of all, as a human being, as something—someone—other men and women could approach. God is not only a flaming bush, a pillar of fire, or even a mysterious cloud, as God is described in various places in the Old Testament. God is one of us.

Second, God came in the least threatening of human states: a baby. God entered our world screaming and crying, dependent on someone to change him, feed him, nurse him, and care for his bodily needs. God came helplessly into the world to help us.

Finally, Jesus came from an unremarkable background. The Son of God was nothing special by outward appearance or by human standards. One might be awed by a great ruler or a learned scholar, but not by a simple craftsman. When Jesus began preaching, people in his hometown said, “Is not this the carpenter?”
¹⁶
In other words, “Who,
him
?”

God comes to the world as a human being, at the risk of confusing Mary and Joseph, so that the rest of us will not be confused. Confused about God? Look at Jesus. See what he does. Listen to his words.

How can we respond to the entrance of God into our lives? In much the same way that Mary and Joseph did, and as parents do today: by protecting and nurturing something unique. Faith needs to be nurtured. This does not mean that we need to shelter our faith from the world, by closing ourselves off from the concerns of modern life. Rather, as Mary and Joseph did for Jesus, we are invited to respond to the gift with reverent care. We are called to nourish our faith (with prayer, worship, reading, service, and spiritual conversations) in the same way Mary and Joseph were called to nourish the Infant Christ.

O
N THE WAY BACK
from the Church of the Nativity, Aziz announced that he would drive George and me to the Milk Grotto, a small cave-cum-chapel where Mary is supposed to have nursed Jesus during the Holy Family's escape into Egypt.

It's odd stumbling upon a popular pilgrimage site that you've never heard of. You feel that you should know much more about it than you do, which in this case for me was nothing. At first I suspected that the chapel was merely a medieval invention, but a brochure in the church, officially Magharet Sitti Mariam, the Grotto of the Virgin Mary, noted that the pilgrims have been coming here since the fourth century. Over the cave itself is a modest church with an ornate façade, also fashioned from white stone, which was constructed by the Franciscans in the nineteenth century.

Pious legend has it that a drop of Mary's milk fell to the ground, turning the cave the milky white color that persists today. It remains a popular destination for women hoping to give birth; hopeful women scrape some limestone powder off the wall and even, said one pamphlet, mix the powder with water and drink it.

The grotto was empty and cool. After the crowds at the Church of the Nativity, I was grateful for the quiet. George sat down on a small stone bench and closed his eyes; I sat down on another bench, rested, and prayed. Silence was elusive in the famous Church of the Nativity; ironically, in this church that I had never heard of, boasting a legend that I found extremely unlikely, I felt nearer to God. I thought not only of Mary and Joseph's confusion but also their fatigue. I wanted to stay there all day.

But there was still one more stop on our agenda, or at least one person's agenda. “You must visit my friend!” said our cabdriver. Aziz had talked all day about a friend who ran a curio shop. He threaded his car through Bethlehem's narrow streets and squeezed into a tiny parking space. He vaulted out of the driver's seat, walked down the street, pounded on a metal door, and waited a few moments until a balding man in a long white robe came out and shook his hand. “You are
welcome!
” Aziz said to us.

Having spent two years in Kenya helping to run a refugee-made handicrafts shop, I could see that Aziz's friend was offering us some high-quality wares. And given the poverty of many Palestinian families, I figured that this would be a good place to purchase some of the most popular of Holy Land souvenirs: olive-wood carvings. For all we knew, Aziz received a small kickback for any visitors he brought to the isolated shop. But we didn't care. Why not patronize a struggling merchant and a hardworking cabdriver?

As I was deciding on what to select, George motioned me over to a shelf of merchandise. He held up an unusual Nativity scene. Placed between the Holy Family and the Wise Men was a barrier, a thin block of wood. The owner explained, “That is the wall that blocks off the Palestinian territories. Jesus was a Palestinian, just like us.”

After George and I loaded up on olive-wood sculptures, Aziz drove us to the Bethlehem checkpoint, run by the Israeli border police. The checkpoint consists of a series of high stone walls, metal barricades, and turnstiles, each one patrolled by a guard. The guards thoroughly searched both men and women, and even small children, vigorously patting them down before permitting them to leave. Palestinians working in Jerusalem must pass through this checkpoint every day. A relative calm prevailed the day of our visit, but I knew that many days were not calm, for while most Israelis argue that the barrier is a necessary security precaution, the Palestinians see it as a humiliation, a despoliation.

We crossed the parking lot, where the bus to Jerusalem awaited. “It's easier to get into San Quentin than out of Bethlehem,” said George, the Catholic chaplain at the prison.

During the ride back to Jerusalem on the Number 21 bus, I thought about exits and entrances. The image of the Door of Humility stuck with me, as did the legend on a small sign near the entrance to the Church of the Nativity:

We are hoping that: If you enter here as a tourist,

you would exit as a pilgrim.

If you enter here as a pilgrim,

you would exit as a holier one.

As I mentioned, you have to kneel to pass through the Door of Humility. That action is a striking image of the life of belief. For humility is the gateway to faith. Without it, we rely simply on our own efforts, without recognizing our dependence on God. Without it, we rely simply on our own reason, without opening ourselves up to the possibility of the miraculous. Without it, we cannot fully enter into the world that God has in store for us.

Paradoxically, our model in this is God, who humbled himself by becoming one of us, who entered our world by passing through the body of a young woman who was probably writhing on the floor of a stable, a cave, or a little room. In a way, Mary was a Door of Humility as well.

Humility is the key to almost everything in the spiritual life. And I hope that one day I might be a holier, in other words, humbler, pilgrim.

George and I made it home just in time for Mass.

T
HE
B
IRTH
OF
J
ESUS

Luke 2:1–20

(See also Matthew 1:18–25)

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

C
HAPTER
4

Nazareth

“Jesus increased in wisdom and in years.”

O
N THE DAY WE
visited Nazareth, Sunday Mass was about to begin in the Basilica of the Annunciation. George and I found some empty spots in the hard wooden pews just as the procession started, and we tried to comprehend an unfamiliar language. But although I speak only a few words of Arabic, it proved easy to follow the familiar parts of the Mass. The sounds and cadences, I realized, were also closer to Jesus's original language—Aramaic—than English. I closed my eyes and wondered what Jesus's actual voice sounded like.

Afterward, we visited the Church of St. Joseph, a modest structure built in 1914 atop the remains of a medieval church. That earlier church was itself located on top of what tradition claims to be the carpentry workshop of Joseph. Tradition may claim it, but most scholars do not. In
The Holy Land
Murphy-O'Connor bluntly calls it a “pious tradition that has no foundation.”
¹
So much for that. On the other hand, Murphy-O'Connor notes that remnants of a first-century village have been excavated at the site, and evidence of silos, olive presses, and areas for storage are visible.