From fear to joy:
a message at the heart of Christmas
When my wife was a child, she was asked by the person who ran the Sunday School to take the lead on making the nativity scene for her church.
Delighted at being chosen for this important task, she set about making the perfect nativity scene. Mary, Joseph and Jesus, the angels and shepherds, wise men and sheep, were glued together from gold card, felt, cotton wool and all kinds of other special materials. She was very proud of the result and couldn’t wait for everyone to see her creation on Christmas day.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t anticipated was how delicious her homemade glue (made of flour and water) was to the hungry church mice. As everyone filed into church on Christmas morning, they saw that her efforts to create a perfect Christmas scene had been feasted on overnight and she was dreadfully disappointed.
That’s an understandable reaction and feeling, but it probably corresponds with a tendency many of us adults have to focus on the wonderful aspects of the Christmas story, and overlook some of the raw human realities involved.
At the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, we hear how the angel Gabriel came to Mary, a peasant girl, probably in her early teens, and greeted her with words that caused her to be greatly troubled. Mary is told by Gabriel that she is favoured, that God is with her. And she is frightened.
Reading the Christmas story in Luke, I can’t help thinking about how challenging it can be for some of us to be told that we are favoured. It can seem quite extraordinary, almost impossible to believe that something in us is recognised and deeply valued.
For some (for too many), it can be painful to be told we are loved. More than a few people run away from love because they have been made to doubt they are loveable, or even likeable.
Love can feel like a very bright light, illuminating our hurts and fears and all we might feel guilty about, causing us to feel exposed. Our first reaction may be to try and hide our weakness and our fear. But most of us with some life experience know that if we try to hide our fear, we create a web of self-protective anxiety that only serves to trap us more tightly. We can become caught within the (often negative) stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. We can very quickly lose sight of who we are, who we really are. We can lose sight of how God sees us.
Numerous passage in scripture present us with what can feel like a very counter-intuitive message: acknowledge your fear, open to it, walk towards what you are afraid of.
Let yourself see your fear. Let God see your fear (God knows anyway). Bring your fear into the light of God’s love.
Mary is told by Gabriel that she is favoured, that God is with her. And she is frightened. Then the angel says to her, “Do not be afraid. Do not be overwhelmed that God has recognised and chosen you.”
The deep, intuitive wisdom that fear may be our greatest barrier to accepting and opening to love, is no doubt why the most commonly repeated teaching in both the Old and New Testaments – do not be afraid, do not fear – is here at the beginning of the Christmas story.
The angel has brought a life-changing, world-changing message: truth is coming, love is coming. Not coming to our idea of who we are, but coming to who we really are; coming to us in our fear, in our weakness and pain, in the fullness of our humanity as the truth of our humanity, to set us free from our illusions (John 8:31-32), to cast out fear (1 John 4:18).
“Basing ourselves on what Jesus shows us of God,” writes the Carmelite Ruth Burrows, “we must realise that what we have to do is allow ourselves to be loved, to be there for Love to love us.”
These are tremendously encouraging words. But how do we deal practically with our tendency to want to be anywhere else but where we are, as we are?
Well, this is where trust comes in. It requires great trust (and the loving support of others, like this practice community), to return our attention to where our bodies are, to where our life actually is, and remain here in stillness and quietness. It takes faith and trust to allow ourselves to see and then let go of the layers upon layers of fear and worry.
It takes faith and trust to set out on a way of prayer that is not about going anywhere else, or making requests for anything, but simply being here, open before God, allowing Love to love us.
God knows there is plenty going on in the world to be fearful and anxious about. The unbelievable horror of the conflicts in Israel-Palestine and Ukraine, as well as elsewhere. The degree of inequality and inequity in our own country. There is so much that can contribute to making us more anxious, suspicious and afraid of each other, which may cause us to doubt the presence of God himself. One might be forgiven for thinking this a particularly bad climate in which to approach Christmas.
And yet, if we remember the challenging circumstances of the Christmas story, perhaps not. Now, as then, in the midst of challenge, the Light shines in the darkness and says, “Do not fear. Trust. Wake up. And let your wakefulness be a light for others.”
Christ is coming. Christ is always coming. We might not know when, or where, or how, or through whom.
This means that Love, the Life of our life and all life, is always in the process of arriving. In every person we meet, in every experience, in every challenge, the transfiguring, life-giving light of Love is waiting to disclose itself.
With this in mind, we might approach each other with a sense of deep reverence.
Reading the words of St. Teresa of Calcutta and those who knew her, you quickly get a sense of how she went about her work, coming to each person in a spirit of reverence arising from an expectation that each person’s face would be the “disguise” of Christ. She expected to find the face of Love looking back at her. And in this expectation, she was set free to be a place of love for that person.
The way of meditation is to say our prayer word, to follow our breath, with simple open expectancy. We cannot know what the next minute, the next hour, or day or year of our life might bring.
What we can always know, is that we are here, right now. We can be awake, right now. If we can learn to meet the present with open-hearted wakefulness, then somehow, beyond our understanding, love is set free in us. If we carry the expectation of meeting Christ, it’s not unlikely that we will find Christ’s face shining in the human face before us.
When fear shows up and begins to hold us in its grip, as it did for Mary, as it can do for all of us, we can step away from the clamour in our mind and turn to Christ in the heart of our being.
Saying our prayer word, following our breath, we can gather all that needs care and healing and let go of it in the love of God.
Mary is told by Gabriel that she is favoured, that God is with her. And she is frightened. Then the angel says to her, “Do not be afraid. Do not be overwhelmed that God has recognised and chosen you. Behold! You will conceive and give birth to the Word of God. You will give birth to Love itself.”
The message of God to Mary, is also the message of God to each of us: you are favoured, God is with you, do not be afraid. Conceive and give birth to the Word of God. Give birth to Love in the world.
In the words of one of Meister Eckhart’s most famous pupils, Johannes Tauler:
“May God help us to prepare a dwelling place for this noble birth, so that we may all attain to spiritual motherhood.”
If you feel inspired to meditate, you’re very welcome to join one of our free online practice sessions or read one of our guides.
[1] Ruth Burrows, The Essence of Prayer, Burns & Oats 2006, p.3.