Born

I have not always done my best under the circumstances.  And that is a terrible thing to know…

Pregnant Madonna (Piero della Francesca)

I have been reflecting on the birth of Christ.

When the story of Bethlehem is told the story that we understand in the West is that Saint Joseph and the Blessed Virgin travelled to an unknown place and in that place knew nobody and understood nothing. They had to be there and in that place there was no place for them to stay.

However, this is not really how things were. You see, Bethlehem was the ancestral home of Saint Joseph. This means that this is the village or town that he grew up in and where his family were originally from. As a family in the Middle East and in that time, Saint Joseph would have had many cousins and possibly some siblings. He would have had aunts and uncles and family friends. If a person travels today to the Middle East – in times of peace – they will often comment on the sense of community in the small towns in the region. Families who live together in those towns love each other and are very close to each other.

And I have been thinking about that as I have been thinking about the Blessed Virgin having nowhere to stay to deliver her Child. You see, we are told that there was no suitable space for them to stay. And what this really means is no private space to deliver a Child. When my mother’s parents married in their little village in Lebanon, they all lived and slept in a single room. There were three families in that room – my grandfather and grandmother, my grandfather’s parents and their single children, and two of my grandfather’s younger brothers and their wives and families. There was no privacy and no separate room. When the Blessed Virgin travelled to Bethlehem she would have been invited to sleep in that communal room with the rest of the family. But this is no place to deliver a Child. And according to Jewish law the Blessed Virgin would be considered unclean for a period of time following the birth of her Child and this required some space.

And this meant that the Blessed Virgin gave birth in a stable – in a room that was not in the house – because that was the space afforded to the young family. And this meant that Saint Joseph (and possibly others from his family) were distressed that they could not offer something more to the Blessed Virgin and her Child.

And I have been reflecting on this because the God of the world was born in a stable because there was no room anywhere else. This was not because the people around Him were bad people, it was because they were busy and just doing their best under the circumstances. And it occurs to me today that I have not always done my best under the circumstances. And that is a terrible thing to know…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.