Shipwrecked at the Crib

The crib at Bethelem. A time for reflection and veneration. We seek ways and means to prepare ourselves for the glorious feast of Christmas. But what is the best way to prepare? Good deeds, giving alms, fasting and prayer. They lead us, but only so far. Brennan Manning believes we need to go further…we need to be absolutely convinced of our own vulnerability. When we are, we find that the child in the cradle represents something more than salvation, as important as that is. The child is the image of God accepting our own state, that of vulnerability.

He writes that God entered into our world not with the crushing impact of unbearable glory, but in the way of weakness, vulnerability and need. He feels present religious culture has prettified the Christmas story, reducing the crib to a tame theological symbol so that we can think of it with warm and fuzzy feelings of piety. He believes we need instead to feel shocked at what we find at the stable, shocked to see the Son of God in the state of our vulnerability. Such shock is possible only when we recognize that we ourselves are truly poor, vulnerable, broken, almost desperate. Manning calls it the feeling of being shipwrecked. One realizes how she is shipwrecked when one realizes that in reality, she has absolutely nothing.

José Ortega writes: This is the simple truth – that to live is to feel oneself lost. Whoever accepts this has already begun to find herself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, she will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glace, absolutely sincere because it is a question of her salvation, will cause her to bring order to the chaos of her life….She who does not really feel herself lost, is without remission; that is to say, she never finds herself, never comes up against her own reality.

Meister Eckhart says: In Christ equals in peace. To find Peace this Christmas we must first find ourselves. Then the stable will be more than mere good feelings for us for the light it offers or the salvation it brings. The stable will remind us where we stand, shipwrecked. And the Jesus who lies there will be the reality we need in our lives: God is all, and we are nothing.  Knowing that, realizing that fact, kneeling in shock before the truth of that statement…that is where you find yourself. And in that truth, with the babe in Bethlehem, you will find Peace.