Reliving the magic of Christmas

To my students I often related the experience of a Christmas night on a fishing boat off the Palk Strait in the gulf of Mannar in the heart of the Indian Ocean. That was after World War II in the days of my ministry with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in Sri Lanka. I had set out with a colleague Fr. Simeon Gomez, OMI to Iranaitivu, an islet off the coast of Ceylon. We were not asylum seekers or refugees. We were going to celebrate Christmas with about 50 fisher folk, the poorest of the poor, who lived in the Indian Ocean 10 miles from the coast of Jaffna.

Iranaitivu meaning 'twin-island' was almost submerged by a cyclone. The mud huts and the church bore the brunt of the uncertain monsoon. The outrigger canoe in which Fr Simeon and I sailed, had three experienced weather-beaten fishermen rowing the boat. In one hand I held a heavy rolex 16mm camera as I was filming the journey for a BBC talk, which I was to give later in a broadcast in London. And I was scared to death, because I did not know how to swim!

The six-hour trip in a rather angry sea did give me concern, although my colleague Fr. Simeon with his long Spanish beard was not worried, being a very good swimmer! 

In Iranaitivu I found in the half destroyed village church, a beautiful crib made from the flotsam and jetsam of the sea. The statues of Mary, Joseph, the Christ Child, the shepherds, three kings and animals, although crude in their carving, were so appealing. Every year when Christmas comes, my thoughts go back to Jaffna and the island in the sea. We said mass in an old church, heard carols sung in Tamil, and saw the little congregation come to kneel and pray at a small crib. But that didn't take away the essential truth of what Christmas is all about.

Here in Australia in the Catholic and state schools where I taught and told the Christmas story, I was bound to see what the Christmas message means. As a teacher of Special Religious Education at Concord High and in the State School (in former years), I was not surprised at the way children react to the Mysteries of the Faith.

We do not know the exact date of the birth of Christ, although ancient traditions put it a little after the winter solstice. We are even warned that the presence of the ox and the ass is not historical, but assumed because of the manger. 

Students in Year 11 and Year 12 can cope with the fact that the three kings did not come to the crib but to a house some time after Christ's birth. Neither does the evangelist tell us how many kings came. Of course we are told they brought three gifts.

I always made it a point to show children that all the images of the crib represent people of all times and all races. More than that, the birth of Christ was a truly historical event Yes, Scripture attests and gives us the concrete details of that event.

In the classroom in almost two decades in Australia, I found that drama helped children to act the Christmas story. The puppets I used to tell the Christmas story, brought out a magic - a spiritual magic, that could probably be competition for Harry Potter.

The moral is that each great event in the history of salvation is more than a past event to be commemorated. Abbott Marmion spelt this out very clearly that there is a special grace that comes every time we celebrate Christmas. It was not a monopoly for the Christians of a bygone era. It is a 'here and now' gift, when with faith and love we relive the mystery of Christmas when actual graces flood the soul.

In that dark night on Iranaitivu, way out in the Indian ocean I realised this truth. I saw the weather-beaten men and women kneel at the crib. Theirs was a simple faith. I still dream of the thatched huts and fisherfolk and the young women who came to the crib, wearing tattered sarongs and carrying babes.

Today in Iranaitivu, the scene has changed. No longer will I see the turtles coming from the ocean to lay their eggs on the beach. Further, the civil war in Sri Lanka has taken a severe toll on the lives of the fisherfolk. I taught in the high school of St Patrick's in Jaffna, where now the ravages of civil war have spawned massive migration and boatloads of asylum seekers. In recent months I have seen the trauma of asylum seekers in dilapidated boats exploited by people smugglers. No wonder children become a pawn in the game, just as Herod, the massacre of the innocents and the story of the Magi are a part of the untold Christmas tale.

The tragedy is that the child becomes the unit, not only of peace but also of despair. But thank God, the 'Child' is also the token of hope in troubled world which has forgotten Christ.

There is an interesting Christmas story that deserves to be re-told. The Christmas card had the title "If Christ had not come". It showed a clergyman falling asleep in his study on Christmas morning. He dreamt of the world into which Jesus had never come. In his dream he found himself looking through his home. There were no Christmas stockings, no Christmas tree, no Christmas bells. There was no Christ to comfort, gladden and save.

He walked into the street and there was no church with its spire pointing to heaven. He came back and sat down in his library, but every book about the Saviour had disappeared. Then came a sick call with a ring at the door-bell. A messenger, a child asked him to visit her poor dying mother.

He hastened and reached the home and opened his Bible. But it ended at Malachi. There was no gospel and no promise of hope and salvation. Two days later, he stood beside the woman's coffin and conducted the funeral service, but there was no message of consolation, no word of a glorious resurrection, no open heaven, but only "dust to dust and ashes to ashes" and one long eternal farewell. He realised at length that "He had not come", and burst into tears in his sorrowful dream.

Suddenly he woke with a start and a great shout of joy burst from his lips, as he heard a choir singing in his church close by,

"O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, 

O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem; 

Come and behold Him, born the King of Angels, 

O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord."

Aquinas told us that "PEACE is the tranquillity of order". The world needs the peace of Christ today. I was on a working experience at the Catholic radio station KRO under a Benedictine priest Fr. Brockbern, OSB. There was the bombed Gothic Cathedral in Cologne. In 1953 I said mass there on a cold winter morning at the altar of the crib where the relics of the first crib lay. The Magi brought their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh which are now housed in the Cologne Cathedral. In the Christmas of 1938 I saw the Jews fleeing from Germany and passing Ceylon, selling Leica cameras for a few dollars. 

It was a long way from the first displaced Child, who was also God. He is the focal point of our compassion to those genuine asylum seekers, I repeat genuine. The distribution of land in the world is extremely unequal and Christmas highlights the need for social justice. I shall never forget a pre-Christmas discussion in Year 12 at Concord High, where there were a wonderful batch of students who tackled the issues of the Christmas story. They set me the poser: of refugees and displaced persons: "Sir, China, India and Japan form 40% of the human race, but are confined to 10% of the earth's surface. But how come that Canada, Australia and New Zealand have less than 1% of the world population, and control the same 10%?"

I was overwhelmed by the lessons I learnt from young minds and hearts, their compassion, their readiness to see the intensity of the human tragedy, and the need for the peace that only the Christ Child can give.

I am not amazed at the impact that magic and the Harry Potter phenomenon are having on young minds. I am a secret Harry Potter fan myself and devoured not a few of the books. 

Yet nothing can equal the impact of the Christmas tale of the Child born to save and redeem a world, a world dominated by terrorism, where displaced persons flee other Herods, and boat people and children, wonder why "there is no room in the Inn?" At least there is room in our hearts for a happy and holy Christmas and a New Year of Peace.

"To the end of the way of the wandering star, 

To the things that cannot be and that are,

To the place where God was homeless,

And all men are at home" 

- G.K Chesterton