A few years ago, I saw a cartoon which depicted a man answering a questionnaire about Christmas. The first question asks: “Were you disappointed in Christmas this year?” He checks off the box marked “yes.” “Would Christmas be less of a disappointment if there were no exchange of gifts?” His answer: yes. “Would it be less of a disappointment if there were no contact with the family?” His answer: yes. “Was this Christmas more disappointing than last? 5%? 10%? 15%?” His answer: “More.” The last question is a fill-in-the-blank: “What, in your opinion, is the best way to celebrate Christmas?” His answer: Hide!”
At the time, I laughed at the cartoon. Still, like all good cartoons, this one contains a serious truth. Since, for a lot of us, things never seem to turn out the way we hope or imagine they will, the Christmas holidays can be a difficult and disappointing time. But, while the cartoon captures a real problem, it offers quite the wrong solution.
Seizing the light
The feasts of Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord afford us the opportunity to grasp the true meaning of the Christmas celebrations which, humanly speaking, we may have found disappointing. This is especially important in this momentous time of Jubilee when we celebrate the two-thousandth anniversary of Christ’s coming. At Christmas, we celebrate the birth of the Savior of the world; at Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord, we enter more deeply into the mystery of the Incarnation. Epiphany teaches us to look beyond the obscurity and darkness generated by our vague disappointments to seize the saving light which is Christ himself. The Baptism of the Lord teaches us that our Savior came to take upon himself and to conquer the sin that is the ultimate source of our darkness, and, with it, of all our disappointments and sadness.
The embrace of Epiphany
“On those who dwelt in darkness, a light has shone” (Is 9:2). Epiphany teaches us to embrace the light, not hide from it. We must not hide from the light, for the light is Christ. Like the Wise Men, we must run to embrace the Light, to stand in his glow and experience his warmth. Not for nothing has the Catholic tradition continually portrayed the struggle of the Christian life in terms of darkness and light. “Darkness” signifies everything we must renounce, while “light” signifies everything we must embrace if we are to live in Christ. As Saint Paul says, we must give up the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light (Rom 13:12).
Just here lies the challenge that Epiphany poses for us: will we let the light of Christ shine in us, or will we prefer the darkness? Will we conspire with the darkness to rationalize our own unwillingness to face the light and indeed to live in the light? Will we prefer, in the end, to hide?
The need for baptism
Just here, too, lies the significance of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River: we cannot dispel the darkness by our own power. While the baptism of John summoned people to repentance, to the acknowledgement of their sins, his baptism could not take their sins away. In the same way, while it is necessary for us to turn away from sin, we cannot save ourselves from sin nor from the darkness that surrounds us because of our sins. Only Christ can do this.
At the Jordan, Jesus demonstrated that this was precisely what he had come to do, and on Calvary it is this that he accomplished once and for all. In seeking to receive the baptism of repentance from the hands of John the Baptist, Christ made perfectly clear that he was allowing himself to be reputed as a sinner in order to take on the whole burden of the sin of the world. John the Baptist saw this with the eyes of faith when he exclaimed: “Behold the Lamb of God” (Jn 1:29). Only the perfectly innocent Lamb of God, who takes on the sins of thosewho are truly guilty, can take their sins away. This is how an ancient Christian hymn puts it: “Unto the pure and cleansing stream, / then came the heavenly Lamb supreme. / No sin did he bring there that day, / but cleansing us took ours away.”
The truth of the mysteries which we celebrate in the Christmas season is like a great light that continually draws us more deeply into the all-embracing mystery of the Father who sent his only Son to save us from our sins and bring us into the communion of Trinitarian love through the Holy Spirit. In the presence of this great light, the last thing we’d want to do is hide.
©Magnificat January 2000
