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12/26/12Xmas Is Dawn Of Inner Freedom
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Publication: The Times Of India Bangalore;Date: Dec 25,
2012;Section: Editorial;Page: 14
THE SPEAKING TREE
Xmas Is Dawn Of Inner Freedom
Christopher Mendonca
Mary and Joseph, betrothed to each other in a loving
relationship find themselves suddenly headed for Splitsville.
Against thegrain of human logic they transcend their own
understanding of the events and walk together in faith. But it
brings them even morepain and rejection. A supposed turning point
becomes only more distressing as each chapter of their lives
unfold. On a cold, wintrynight in a stable, with only a few farm
animals for company, a child is born. They have been consigned to
the margins, turnedaway by those who have no place for this
seemingly odd couple.
The joy at the childs birth is overwhelming; they find their
sufferings transformed, even irrelevant. Rustic shepherds mingle
withthe wise and learned without difficulty. Their differences are
of no account as they wait to get a glimpse of the child. This
unalloyedjoy, however, does not preclude future inconvenience and
disappointment. They will soon have to flee to Egypt to ensure
theirown safety. When they return, Mary is told by Simeon that her
troubles have not ended; indeed they have only just begun.
The suffering experienced by Mary and Joseph was not somehow
obliterated by the birth of Jesus. If we think so, we run therisk
of compounding the error by celebrating the event as the birthday
of the Lord instead of experiencing it as the dawn of ourown inner
freedom. A birthday is a moment that can be remembered but never
repeated. For the early church, Christmas wasessentially the dawn
of a new experience of the presence of God among us. It was not an
object of celebration.
In Christian theological terms Jesus is the Sacrament of God,
the visible sign of invisible reality. It points to the
differencebetween event and presence and invites us to go beyond
illusion to realisation. To commemorate the first day of the
humanform of Jesus as an event is not the same as connecting to the
presence of his kingdom within us. Hence Christmas does notappear
as a feast in the Christian Calendar for quite a while.
We genuinely celebrate Christmas only when we experience the joy
which transforms our pain and suffering. It is not amnesiaeither.
Our problems are not obliterated by celebrating Christmas for
society is not remarkably different after a week
ofcelebrations.
There are some however, who. away from the merry-making at the
inn, connect to the reality unfolding before them. Mary,Joseph, the
shepherds, and the wise men all look beyond the event, not framing
it according to their own perceptions in starkcontrast to that
of
the inn-keeper who, in refusing Mary and Joseph his hospitality
,had closed himself to the experience of joy beyond the
freneticmerrymaking at the inn through the night.
Christmas allows us to transform our inner pain into joy. The
pain in accepting our own sinful past gives way to the joy of
repentance; the pain of being maligned, slighted and ill-treated
generates the joy of being able to forgive; the suffering
weexperience as we encounter the homeless gives birth to the pure
joy of giving. When this happens we know that while wecelebrate the
birth of Jesus, we have experienced the birth of the Saviour
within; a joy that no one can take away from usbecause it is born
not out of human stock or the urge of the flesh or the will of
human beings, but of God himself (John 1:13).
The author teaches meditation in the Christian tradition.
c j w m 1 9 4 3 @ g m a i l . c o m
