A Christmas Thought

Christmas Thought…

Today,when we sing the universal Christmas hymn “Silent Night Holy Night”, at the depth of our hearts, we realize the  turmoil of human pain. Elsewhere in this nation, for parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, teachers and friends, nights are not silent. Sounds of gunshots terrify the families in Newtown, Connecticut. Sights of blood pool horrify the little toddlers. As the President lamented in his press release at White House, immediately after the tragedy at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, “ our hearts are broken today”, we feel in our minds and hearts the brokenness and trauma of  “ being the innocence of childhood is torn away and , the dreams and hopes of those little ones being massacred.” We see, sometimes, the forces that tried to stop the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ into this world, find place and prominence in the contemporary scenario. The Herodian aberrations of human power, might, weapon and arrogance manifests violently and despotically at our neighborhoods. Certainly the nights that followed the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem was not silent as we sing. We hear the cry of the innocent families victimized by the butchery of  King Herod. Here again, we mourn the savagery of a Herodian fox mind. Some of us may rationalize the motifs of the killer as a victim of child abuse, drug abuse, single parenting or dysfunctional family. My ears are deaf for such evaluations, at least for little while because my heart moves with the tiny little ones whose lives have been fatally played and untimely ended.  We have heard the cry of Christmas at our neighborhood. More than the celebrations and festivities ,light display and ornaments, cakes and wine, Santa and felis nevida,   it is these cries of Christmas makes the message of God’s love in Incarnation relevant to our life situations. It is high time that we take break from the chorales of “Silent Nights” or “holiness of Silent Nights” and begin to act on the value of Silent Nights and sacramantality of the Holiness of Silent Nights. At Christmas, God is born in to our neighborhood to be broken; breaking His life at Christmas and Calvary to heal the wounds of sin and to be broken with the broken and mourning. Before me conclude, let me cite from Howard Thurman, a civil right activist Theologian and mentor of Rev.Martin Luther King Jr., he writes about Christmas;

“When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.”

Rev.Joseph Samuel