“A sword will pierce your own soul too.”
That was what the priest said. My child, my baby, would bring joy and sorrow, comfort and anxiety, love and fear. The same could be said of most children, but I knew he meant more than the everyday ups and downs of parenting. I already knew this was no ordinary child. From the angel announcing that God had chosen me to bear him, to the shepherds who arrived on the night of his birth with stories of a choir of heavenly messengers, there was so much to hold in my heart. And later when Herod the king was searching for him to kill him and we had to flee in the night, the precious child clutched in my arms, I began to understand.
My child did such amazing things. But those who put their own desires before the good of others saw him as a threat to their comfortable way of life. Their hypocrisy and twisting of the law was exposed, their callousness towards the poor and vulnerable was rebuked. Herod wasn’t the last to try to kill him. As I watched him die, I remembered the words the priest had spoken when we took him to be blessed as a baby. It truly felt as though a sword was piercing me to the heart.
And yet that wasn’t the end. Even through the darkness that clouded my thoughts, I think I was beginning to understand that, even before the astounding, joyful news that he was alive again. Without that final defeat of death, his mission would not have been complete.
Fear and love. Anxiety and comfort. Sorrow and joy. He brought me all that and more, and brought the world hope in the darkness. I will never forget.
Mary is represented by the fourth advent candle. I've written before about some of my ambivalence towards depictions of Mary in carols and Christmas stories. Obedient and maternal, she is often used as shorthand for a 'meek and mild' sort of Christianity which the cynical (i.e. me) might say was promoted by those with money and power to stop women in particular, and the working classes more generally, from causing trouble.
What I find far more interesting about Mary is her thoughtfulness. After describing the visit of the shepherds Luke says that she "treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." Again after the encounter in the temple (see Anna's story from a few weeks ago) "The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him." A little later in Luke 2 we again are told that Mary "treasured all these things in her heart." I often wonder how much of Jesus' true mission she really understood, especially when he- her son- was dying. Did she remember Simeon's warning that "A sword will pierce your own soul too”?
