Fourth Week of Advent: Mary & Joseph & Child

 Fourth Week of Advent: Mary & Joseph & Child

 

Joseph … with Mary his betrothed,

   …journeyed to Bethlehem. (Luke 2:4-5)

I’m struck again by the simplicity of our crèche: just mother, child, and Joseph looking on—the nuclear family alone in a strange town, alone in some strange barn because there was no other place to stay that night. I thought of our own children set free to form families of their own—making their way through life. It is God’s gift to form a family of our own: “Therefore man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife” (Gn 2:24). But today, out of their freedom and at some risk, they journey back to their childhood home.

It’s Christmas that gathers the scattered; and, welcomes us into a bigger family. Yet, we wouldn’t know what it means to be gathered had each family not known what it meant to be scattered. Each nuclear family scattered to form a life of their own. Each desiring to journey towards a Christmas gathering.