Guide us to thy Perfect Light

I know with certainly that Bethlehem didn’t look like Jean Cousin le Jeune’s evocative little 16th century woodcut I have gazed at for years. Yet there is something about this image of the sleepy town that speaks to me. Set in a landscape that is both ordinary and somewhat foreboding, a little village sits beneath a decaying citadel. Rough rocks, a barely sketched tree, and a menacing, serpentine cloud surround a haphazard cityscape made up of tilted towers and dark alleyways. It is, as the Gospel of Luke tells us, not a particularly hospitable place.

Yet, that’s where our story begins. In the dark, in a barn warmed by the breath of animals, a baby was born to poor parents. The scene is lit only by a star. Angels have sung, and perhaps the two men at the arched gate are late-arriving shepherds, looking to see what there is to see. Which wasn’t much. One more child. One more life. Which was everything. 

Our story begins there, in that inhospitable place, down the road from Jerusalem. Once in Royal David’s city…

No. It’s right here. Just now as I finished typing that last sentence, the front desk called. “A family needs to see you:” a youngish Romanian man, his prematurely aged mother, and two small boys. They are on the very brink of being evicted from an apartment on Morse Avenue. The kids were quiet, the woman wouldn’t raise her eyes above her kerchief, and the young man begged in broken English for help to keep them out of the cold. They are way behind on their rent. I pray that St. Vincent de Paul can help them tomorrow morning. I scrounge up some grocery money for them, promise we’ll try to get back to them tomorrow, and they disappear into the dark afternoon. We will call them in the morning and do our best.

I don’t know what will happen to them, but the juxtaposition of them, the story of Bethlehem in that ancient image, and the fact that I can’t see sun or stars through the infernal fog of these past few weeks is a lot to absorb. I am glad that our door was open, that our place is here under our tall brick tower crowned with the cross, and that we will try to do what we can to meet them. That isn’t everything, but it’s something; it’s a start, and maybe the beginning of another story. Their story. Our story. The Holy Family walking on Arden Way?

I believe that the star still shines in the dark behind and above the foreboding fog. I pray that all of us will be guided to its Perfect Light. 

Update as this message is headed to the printer the next afternoon. Christmas miracles still do happen. St. Vincent volunteers negotiated with the landlord, from treasured gifts we found the money that was needed for now, the young man was put in contact with possible employment placements. A little light shines in the dark.  

Blessings,