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the spirit of christmas: past, present and yet to come

By
The Most Rev. Edward K. Braxton

If you ask the parents of children of a certain age about “A Christmas Carol,” they will tell you it is Walt Disney’s popular “holiday movie” starring Jim Carrey on an Imax screen with stunning 3D animation and eye-popping special effects that might be a little scary for some younger children. As one father put it, “It’s going to make a ton of money.”

One hundred and sixty six years ago, on December 19, 1843, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) published his now celebrated novella, “A Christmas Carol: In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas.” The basic outline of the story is well known. Ebenezer Scrooge, a wealthy, greedy, miserly banker and land lord, who considers Christmas a waste of time (“Ba! Humbug!”), is indifferent to the needs of the poor and needy around him, especially Bob Cratchet, his overworked, underpaid book keeper and his family which includes his crippled son, Tiny Tim. On Christmas Eve, Ebenezer is visited by the ghost of his business partner, Jacob Marley, who has been dead for seven years. Marley, weighed down by enormous, noisy chains, tells Ebenezer that his soul is condemned to roam the world for all eternity in chains because of his greed and indifference to the needs of those around him.

He has come to warn Scrooge that his fate will be the same unless he changes his miserly, unloving ways. He tells him that he will be visited by three spirits on the hour: the Spirit of Christmas Past, the Spirit of Christmas Present and the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come.

Ebenezer dismisses the apparition as “a disorder of the stomach…or an undigested bit of beef.” But the three Spirits arrive as promised. The Spirit of Christmas Past shows him in the innocence of youth when he had been a more caring and compassionate person. The Spirit of Christmas Present shows him the suffering endured by the poor, including Tiny Tim, who will die because his father’s wages are too low to afford a doctor. Finally, The Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come, confronts Scrooge with dire visions of the future if he does not learn and act upon what he has witnessed. Most disturbing to Scrooge are visions of graves for himself and for Tiny Tim. No one mourns for Scrooge, because he has loved no one. As the Spirits leave him, Scrooge realizes the profound good he could accomplish in the world if he would share his wealth and show compassion for others He is a radically changed man on Christmas morning!

This brief tale is clearly a story imbued with the Christian themes of conversion, redemption, salvation, and even eternal life. However, it is accomplished with no mention whatsoever of Jesus Christ, Mary, Joseph, Scripture, the Church, or the Holy Spirit. With one exception, God is only mentioned in passing. (The one exception, of course, is the closing sentence, Tiny Tim’s “God bless us everyone!”) Indeed, the story is about Christmas “apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin.” Dickens was a nominal member of the Church of England. However, after 1840 he developed a great interest in the less doctrinaire Unitarian Church. In many ways his goal was to “redeem” Christmas from its Puritan starkness and establish it as a communal, family feast — “a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time…when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely.” Because of his firsthand knowledge of poverty and cruel child labor in England, this story, like many of his works, is a plea for social reform.

Though “A Christmas Carol” contains no reference to the theological meaning of Christmas (the Word of God made flesh in Mary’s womb and dwelling among us through the Mystery of the Incarnation), the story makes use of a basic Christian (Catholic) liturgical structure: Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come. Ebenezer comes to his senses and is changed, redeemed, made new because he experiences “sacred time” which allows him to grasp the full meaning of his Present in the light of the “already” of his Past and the “not yet” of the possibilities of his Future time Yet to Come. This is precisely what we are called to do through the liturgical cycle of the Church’s year of Grace, every Sunday when we gather for Mass, and, preeminently, every Christmas and Easter. In the Eucharist, the full meaning of our seemingly ordinary lives in the Present is illuminated by the power of what God has accomplished in and through Christ in the Past and what He will accomplish in and through Christ and in and through us in the Future.

The Advent- Christmas Liturgy is not focused exclusively on the birth of Christ in Bethlehem in the past. The Liturgy urges us to bring that past birth into our personal present where the risen Christ, not the baby Jesus, because Jesus is no longer a baby, is born anew in the cold stables of our hearts, families, neighborhoods, parishes, workplaces, government, and in the whole world. It is only by living in that transformed present that we can hope to dwell with the risen Lord in the “life of the world yet to come.” “When He humbled himself to come among us as a man, He fulfilled the plan You formed long ago and opened for us the way to salvation. Now we watch for the day, hoping that the salvation promised us will be ours when Christ our Lord will come again in His glory.” (Advent Preface I)

This dramatic liturgical overlaying of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come is underscored in the Advent Scripture readings and Liturgical Calendar. The Word of God and the liturgical celebrations proclaimed and celebrated TODAY continually take us back to YESTERDAY, and pull us forward to TOMORROW. On December 8, 2009, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, when we were only weeks away from commemorating the birth of Christ, we were called further back into the past to Mary’s sinless conception in her mother’s womb in anticipation of her “yes” to God. On Gaudete Sunday, December 13, 2009, the reading from Luke (3, 10-18) called us forward to the time of the adult Jesus when His kinsman, John is baptizing and the crowd asks, “What ought we to do?” (Share your clothing and your food with those in need. Treat everyone justly.) On December 26, 2009, the day after the Nativity, we are pulled from the manger and called ever further into the future to the time after Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit to honor St. Stephen, the martyred deacon who became the first witness to Christ (cf. Acts 6, 7). This teaches us that if we are true disciples we must follow Jesus from the wood of the manger to the wood of the cross. After the Epiphany — the showing forth of the glory of Christ as Savior of all people (January 3, 2010), Christmastide is brought to a close with the Baptism of the Lord, January 10, 2010, when the public ministry of the adult Christ is inaugurated by the Father, “You are My beloved Son. On you My favor rests.” (Luke 3, 22) That ministry will culminate in the blinding light of Easter when Providence reveals the full Mystery, “Christ has died! Christ is risen! Christ will come again!”

As we welcome the New Year 2010, Anno Domini, marking the 2,010th year since the birth of Christ in the past, let us pray for His birth in our present, and prepare for His birth in glory at the end of time when it will truly be Christmas, Christmas that lasts forever!