WE OFTEN THINK THAT WHEN DECEMBER 25 IS PAST, Christmas is over. But no, this rich, extended feast is just beginning. The whole of Christmas—all twelve days of it—is about the Incarnation. This central mystery of Christian faith is brought home to us by the infant in the manger, the Child wrapped in swaddling-clothes. The cradle scene stays with us—or at least, it is supposed to remain set up—throughout the twelve days. Gazing on the scene of the Nativity is one way to grasp the Incarnation vividly, completely.
Another way is to relate this mystery to some personal experience. For me, the Incarnation becomes vivid when I recall my own experience of childbearing. I was so eager to be a mother, so much waiting for good news; I was awed and pleased when I first learned I was pregnant: it felt like a visitation from an angel.
Over nine months of waiting I was sometimes exalted, sometimes blue and downcast at the burdens of pregnancy: the weight gain, the clumsiness, the discomforts of many kinds. But I always brushed these annoyances aside. Through a miracle, an entirely new person was coming to be, flesh of my flesh. The event was an infusion of grace. At Christmas—and other days—I remember this privileged time.
And if my own experience was so amazing, it is nothing beside Mary’s exalted experience of grace, in which God took flesh and became one of us, first as a child in the womb, then as a newborn in the manger. This, again, is the central mystery of Christmas. It is good that the Church gives us twelve whole days to contemplate this wonder!
The mystery deepens when we reflect on the many appointed feasts during the Christmas cycle. Why have certain feasts been placed in the twelve days between Christmas and the Epiphany? Each day of this Christmas cycle is rich with meaning; each unfolds a story. Often these feasts show us the tension between good and evil, life and death.
On this day, we are looking at that remarkable Christian, the deacon Stephen: the victim of persecution, he was the first to lay down his life for his belief in Jesus Christ.
December 25 is past, but in Stephen’s feast our sense of the Incarnation deepens. Stephen said not a word about the infant in the manger. Instead, Stephen’s faith was about the full sweep of who Jesus is. Christmas is about wonder, about the mystery of God entering our world; but it is also about how the Incarnation transforms our world, so that even suffering and death can be endured with hope. When Stephen was stoned for his faith and died lifting his eyes to heaven, he showed us the depth and breadth of the Incarnation. That is what we celebrate—not Stephen’s death but his full trust in God, much like the trust Jesus had shown in the Garden of Gethsemane. So, it makes sense that we celebrate a martyrdom so soon after Christmas Day. God willing, Stephen’s faithful witness will continue to show us how to look evil in the face, and how to look through the veil and see our own resurrection with God, as it were, on the other side.
~Adapted from Emilie Griffin, “Christmas Day,” in GOD WITH US: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas, edited by Greg Pennoyer & Gregory Wolfe
