“All who heard it wondered”
22 December 1998 15:18
Some time ago I forwarded to the list an item from Fr. Werenfried van Straaten, the founder of the ‘Aid to the Church in Need’ charity (http://www.kirche-in-not.org).
This is his Christmas message to supporters of the charity.
“All who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them “. So says
St Luke in his Christmas Gospel about those who heard of the Child in the
manger. They were not many. The young mother, Mary, exhausted but
happy, “treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart”. St
Joseph, modestly in the background, must have thanked God this night. And among the shepherds there must have been many a child who surveyed with wide-eyed wonder the angels singing in a starry sky over Bethlehem, and later the sweet beauty of the Divine Child in the manger.
To this day many children are still able to contemplate with wonder the lights of this feast, the interior and exterior lights, the light that suffuses the heart and the radiance of the faces. But how many children’s eyes have grown weary! Weary of flight, weary of hunger, weary of the burden of losing their nearest and dearest – or weary of the burden of luxury, of materialism which constricts the heart. Will they ever he able to wonder again? Will their heavy eyelids be able to open wide again when they hear the familiar and yet ever-mysterious shepherds’ story of the angels’ message: “Today a Saviour is born to you “? Or will they ask.· “Where is the Saviour? Has He come for us as well?”
We must be the shepherds who not only proclaim tidings of joy to the hungry and suffering, but who also offer our gifts – a piece of goat’s-milk cheese, some milk, some sheep’s wool – and perhaps something more – to prepare the way for Him Who makes the world whole again. That is how to welcome Him. And then He can say: “Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to Me.”
The wonderment of the children. This world needs the pure heart of the little and the humble, in order to learn how to look with wonder again and so to take the first step towards the manger, towards this miracle, this truth – so unfathomable to the intellect – of the Incarnation of God. To embrace the Saviour and bring Him to the children of His Church, to those whose capacity of wonder risks being crushed by need and suffering – and also to those whose vision of the manger has been dimmed by the luxury of life. For the former our gifts, for the latter our prayers.
May we thus become heralds of His Love and be able to say with St John. “To all who did accept Him He gave the power to become children of God”. To be children of God – this, from my hospital bed after a light stroke on October 14, is likewise my Christmas and New Year wish for you all.
