Before we leave Christmas behind may I share with you this picture, which I introduced to our new Men's group just before Christmas.
I was reading about this statue in a book 'Nativities and Passions, by a contemplative writer Martin Smith, and found this picture on the net. Smith was on retreat at Burford Priory just outside Oxford. Every day he prayed in the chapel before this statue of the Madonna and Child. After returning home, a few days later he took out the photo of the statue: and looking again at the child Jesus facing out towards the viewer, his arms spread out with the back of his wrists against his mother’s shoulders..... for the first time he sees what the artist was attempting to show. The naked child Jesus has taken the form that he will take when they nail him naked to the cross. And so he writes:
"If there is any image of the mother and child to stay with, this must be the one. We can linger with this image because it tells the truth, and only the truth can set us free.
It is an open secret that the innermost experience of many at Christmas is soreness of heart, soreness at the bitter sufferings of the world. A quick fix of Yuletide cheer and a day’s hilarity, and then there is the morning after the night before. The mystery fixed in this statue of Mary and her child is not the quick fix. Mary asks us to take a long look at her baby, his arms stretched out on the cross of her body. Look, she tells us, this is God coming into the world to keep us company in the worse that can befall us. This is love in crucified companionship coming to bear the world’s pain in pierced hands."
The statue forces us to connect Christmas with the mature Christ, to connect Crib and Cross, to realise that they are both made of the same wood. And it is only when we do this that the remarkable story of shepherds and stars, wise men and donkeys can become a story with the power to save, a story with the power to address real human need.... this is a story about the world’s healing.... about God’s desire to reach out and bring home the lost....about HOPE for a world that has little of it.
I was reading about this statue in a book 'Nativities and Passions, by a contemplative writer Martin Smith, and found this picture on the net. Smith was on retreat at Burford Priory just outside Oxford. Every day he prayed in the chapel before this statue of the Madonna and Child. After returning home, a few days later he took out the photo of the statue: and looking again at the child Jesus facing out towards the viewer, his arms spread out with the back of his wrists against his mother’s shoulders..... for the first time he sees what the artist was attempting to show. The naked child Jesus has taken the form that he will take when they nail him naked to the cross. And so he writes:
"If there is any image of the mother and child to stay with, this must be the one. We can linger with this image because it tells the truth, and only the truth can set us free.
It is an open secret that the innermost experience of many at Christmas is soreness of heart, soreness at the bitter sufferings of the world. A quick fix of Yuletide cheer and a day’s hilarity, and then there is the morning after the night before. The mystery fixed in this statue of Mary and her child is not the quick fix. Mary asks us to take a long look at her baby, his arms stretched out on the cross of her body. Look, she tells us, this is God coming into the world to keep us company in the worse that can befall us. This is love in crucified companionship coming to bear the world’s pain in pierced hands."
The statue forces us to connect Christmas with the mature Christ, to connect Crib and Cross, to realise that they are both made of the same wood. And it is only when we do this that the remarkable story of shepherds and stars, wise men and donkeys can become a story with the power to save, a story with the power to address real human need.... this is a story about the world’s healing.... about God’s desire to reach out and bring home the lost....about HOPE for a world that has little of it.
As Christians, this treasure, this Good News is ours to share. Let's do so in 2008.
Happy New Year to you all!
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