HoliMess

 

Staring at our nativity scene, I sighed frustratedly.

Of course they're clean. Of course they bask in the warm glow of candlelight. Of course their expressions are perfectly peaceful and pious, their postures unchanging in their adoration of Baby Jesus.

Because that's what holiness is, right? Spiritual perfection, an absence of mess, a picture-perfect life of virtue and blessing. Holiness is that triumph of God's glory in every aspect of your life and character which always seems just a little bit out of reach. Holiness is everything already put into ship-shape order by the grace of God, right?

I'm not so sure our nativity scene shows Bethlehem as it really was. 

For one, childbirth is messy. Amniotic fluid, vernix, blood, mucus plug, placenta. Oh my gosh, I'm cringing writing these words without ever having seen most of these substances. 

Mary didn't have her mum or a midwife - just a hapless husband with a carpentry trade and a vague message from an angel. And you know what? I don't reckon that being conceived without original sin exempts you from labour pain and screaming and sweating like the pigs with whom you're sharing a stable.

And it was cold. Or hot. Tbh, I don't reckon giving birth in any climate would be fun.

And who knows how much light they actually had to look upon the face of their baby? And there's no way it smelled like 'Cranberry Christmas' candles.

And maybe Joseph got awkward or annoyed at himself for not having read up on childbirth. And maybe there were tension, and fear, and a baby who wouldn't sleep, and the kinds of bacteria you really don't want to expose any infant to. 

And they had to receive visitors there - into their inadequate mess - and say "Yes, this is the King of the Jews, and we couldn't give him anything better than a stinking stable." They had to accept strangers into one of the most intimate moments of their life.

And then they had to face upheaval and persecution and another donkey journey (with a torn perineum? who knows?).

Somehow, that doesn't strike me as the face of a woman who's just had her undercarriage ripped apart.

I think it matters that these things were messy. And I think it's important for us to repaint our mental image of that first Christmas with the colours of limitation and uncertainty and filth.

Because until we do, our understanding of holiness will be based on a God who only wants to be born into the perfectly peaceful, pious, clean nativity scene - the God who abhors mess and impurity, and waits for us to be ready for Him.

I don't think Mary was ready, necessarily. I don't think that stable was what she had planned. I think that the holiness of God found her in a place of mess and fear, because that is where He finds us.

"Mercy's natural home is misery," said St Bernard of Clairvaux. When we pray the Rosary, the fruit of the mystery of the Nativity is poverty. Not grandeur and glory and perfect preparedness. Emptiness. A lack. Something being less than what we think it ought to be. 

In Searching for and Maintaining Peace, Fr Jacques Philippe reminds us that when we say, 'The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,' it isn't exterior circumstances we're referring to:

Sometimes God does allow us to "lack money, health, abilities or virtues, but He never leaves us in want of Himself, His assistance and His Mercy, or of anything that will allow us to grow unceasingly ever closer to Him, to love Him more intensely."

Mary and Joseph lacked money that night. She lacked health(care). He lacked ability and probably virtue. But they did not lack the presence of Christ, or the means to love Him every more intensely as the light in their darkness, and the beauty in their mess. 

So often God allows me to lack what I think is necessary for Incarnation to happen in my life in order for me to understand that He chooses my poverty. 

He chooses the mess and filth of my unfinished heart, stripped back from its facades and pretences and adornments. He chooses to be stripped of His own glory so that I can look upon Him; chooses to make Himself finite so that I can glimpse the Infinite. He is present when none of the preconditions seem to be. 

For me, this Christmas in particular has a feeling of emptiness in it - unemployment, anxiety about the future, serious parental illness, exhaustion, regret over mistakes, a sense of disillusionment about my own potential for growth in holiness and the Church's potential to recover from the setbacks of recent times. 

Sometimes when I come home to NZ, all I can see are my limitations: I'm not patient towards my parents. I'm not kind or pure or humble or generous. Throughout this year, I've freaked out about so many things, and have spent more than enough time with a tear-stained face. I've clung to human approval and security mechanisms and wanted to contrive some semblance of superiority to the rest of the world - but kept finding myself utterly lacking in every way. 

And I think sometimes I seek "holiness" - vehemently pursue holiness - because it seems to promise freedom from the mess:

If I can construct a plan of life with daily checkboxes for going to Mass, praying the Rosary, doing spiritual reading, carrying out works of charity - maybe then God will want to be born into my life. If I map out my areas of weakness and try to find practical solutions for growing in virtue - maybe then I'll have tidied up the stable enough to make it fit for Him. If I discern life decisions and future pathways based on where I can best grow in my life as a Christian and be of maximum service to God and His world - maybe then I can deserve grace.

But I forget that everything depends "not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows us His mercy." (Romans 9:16). He loved us first. He wants to be born into my poverty and mess. He yearns to fill my emptiness with Grace. And it is He who will make me holy - not my own efforts.

G.K. Chesterton once remarked that, "There are saints indeed in my religion: but a saint only means a man who knows he is a sinner."

St Therese of Lisieux says, "You wish to scale a mountain, but the good God wants you to descend; he is waiting for you at the bottom of the fertile valley of humility."

I think they're both on to something: HoliMess is the only way.

This Christmas, when we look to the manger and look for the place where Christ is born into our own hearts, let's pray for the fruit of poverty. Let's pray for an understanding of holiness that is grounded in humility, mercy, and an acute awareness of our emptiness.

Wherever the mess in your life is, that is where Christ wants to be born. Wherever you most painfully experience a lack of the preconditions for God's momentum, that is where He wants to move you. Wherever you aren't ready, aren't perfect, aren't yet the Home you would wish to be for the Messiah, that is where He meets you.

Do not be afraid.

Our God, heav'n cannot hold Him, nor Earth sustain

Heav'n and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign

In the bleak midwinter, a stable-place sufficed

the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ!

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb

If I were a wise man, I would do my part

Yet what I can I give Him - Give my heart.

Christina Rossetti 

AMDG