Advent Reflection, December 16: “Loved by the Son of God”

Scripture Readings:
Isaiah 35: 1-6, 10
Psalm 146
James 5: 7-10
Matthew 11: 2-11

As I was thinking about the Scripture readings for this Sunday, the memory of my stepfather came to mind. My stepfather, Paul, died in 1985, just a year after I was ordained a priest. He was declining physically during the last couple of years of his life and spent a fair amount of time watching television. When I would visit home, I would often watch TV with him, especially football and basketball games, which Paul loved. He also enjoyed Christmas specials. His favorite Christmas story of all was the little operetta written in 1951 by Carlo Menotti entitled “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” I can still picture him in his chair watching “Amahl” with great attention and feeling.

Carlo Menotti was an Italian born playwright who moved to Philadelphia. He composed “Amahl and the Night Visitors” specifically for television. In this charming little story, he depicts the tragic lot of Amahl, a shepherd boy who lives with his impoverished mother at the time of Jesus’ birth. Amahl is crippled and uses a crutch to walk. He and his mother are so poor that they have been forced to sell all of their sheep and are at the point of begging. But on this one mystical night they are visited by the three kings, who need a place for rest and warmth as they follow the star on their way to take their gifts to the child who will be king.

The story is laced with many humorous details and the mischievous antics of the boy and the kings. These kings seem more zany and clumsy than regal. Amahl looks at the third king, Kaspar, and he laughs out loud because Kaspar’s long robe does not fit, his gold crown is crooked, and his shoes do not match – one is gold while the other is purple.

The climax of the story comes after Amahl’s mother is caught trying to take a few of the gold coins out of the chest that the kings have brought as a gift for the Christ child. She is hoping to get just enough to feed her son. I can still picture my stepfather sitting on the edge of his chair at this moment in the story. Amahl springs into action to protect his mother, who realizes what she has done and becomes very repentant. After her apology, she and Amahl begin to ponder what kind of gift they might be able to offer this child. Amahl reflects that perhaps this child will be born crippled, too. So he lifts his crutch in order to give it to one of the three kings, so that it might be brought to the Christ child. And in that very moment, Amahl discovers that his bad leg, which had felt completely dead, begins to feel warm and strong. He takes a step, and then another step, and then he begins to jump up and down and to dance around the room. The three kings and his mother cry out in unison, “He walks! He walks!” When Amahl’s mother begins to worry that her son might hurt himself with all of this leaping about, the kings reassure her: “Good woman, you must not be afraid; for he is loved by the Son of God.”

In that marvelous operetta, which always caused my stepfather to sneak his handkerchief out of his back pocket, Carlo Menotti succeeded in capturing much of what we believe as we prepare for our celebration of the birth of Christ. In its humorous and its more profound moments, this story communicates something of what it means that God has come to visit the world in Christ. The God revealed in Jesus is the God of life, the God who passionately desires life for his people. In the climactic scene in which Amahl lifts his crutch, Menotti portrays the power of a gift. He shows that the very act of giving ourselves to another can bring healing to us, can transform us. And in the kings’ words to the mother, Menotti grasped a profound truth that each of us is called to ponder in this season: “You must not be afraid, for he -- for each one of us -- is loved by the Son of God.”

The Scripture readings for this Sunday awaken our deepest hopes for what is possible. They unearth our most sublime yearning for healing and life. The beautiful poem from the book of Isaiah paints a vivid portrait of God’s coming to visit his people. It is then that the ransomed are set free and sorrow and mourning flee. This is what God is like; this is what God does. In the gospel, John sends some of his disciples to ask Jesus the all-important question: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” Jesus, are you the awaited one? Are you the one in whom we find salvation? Jesus does not reply by offering a theological argument. He simply points to what he does: the blind see, cripples walk, lepers are cured, the dead are raised, the poor receive good news. These are Jesus’ “credentials.” This is his “calling card.”

In the world in which you and I live and struggle each day, a world marked by many shadows, hope for salvation still lies deep within us. This hope is the most powerful driving force within us. It is ultimately what moves us to act, even when we make mistakes and choose the wrong things. In his recent encyclical, Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI calls this “the great hope.” Benedict writes that our “great, true hope, which holds firm in spite of all disappointments can only be God – God who has loved us and who continues to love us ‘to the end,’ until all ‘is accomplished’” (n. 27). This is our abiding hope for the reign of God.

We know only too well that the reality of the reign of God is terribly incomplete and unfulfilled. The disabled, the hungry and homeless, the ill, addicted and depressed, the imprisoned are all around us. We live with daily reports of war and terrorism, conflicts in which some of our own relatives and friends are directly engaged. Our country grapples with the specter of torture and the implications of that for our own integrity as a nation. And each of us is aware of his or her own personal disabilities, whether they are obvious to others or remain hidden.

As Christians, however, we are still called to live as people who are suffused with the virtue of hope.  This is something much deeper than a superficial optimism that is blind to reality. Christian hope is a God-given power within us that is based on God’s having visited the world in Christ. It is grounded in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is this Jesus who teaches us in word and action that God is not an aloof and distant deity who remains eternally blissful in himself. Nor is God the one who sends evil, in whatever form it afflicts people. The mystery of evil and the suffering that results from evil is very real in our world and often in our lives. Our faith does not offer us a neat-and-clean “solution” to this mystery. But the gospel discloses to us the God of life, the God who is faithfully, tenaciously on the move to overcome the power of evil and suffering in the world. And God enlists us in this life-giving work. This is the God for whom we long in this season of Advent. We desire the fullness of God’s reign in our lives and our world.

In Menotti’s operetta, Amahl discovers that it is in the very act of giving that he experiences God’s healing touch. In this Advent season, we renew our trust in the power of God to transform our world and our lives, to heal and give new life. May we follow Jesus more faithfully in giving of ourselves to others and so experience anew the life that he offers us.

Robin Ryan, CP