(This article is a Christmas reflection shared by the author to her family and friends last December.)
by Mila Hernando-Hill
Merry Christmas, Maligayang Pasko, Feliz Navidad, Mele Kalikimaka, Joyeaux Noel, Happy Holidays …
Another Advent Season is upon us, as we gather with family and friends to celebrate the joyous occasion of Christmas. Christmas always evokes fond memories of my childhood: Pasko sa Pilipinas typically commences on December 16th and lasts through the Feast of the Three Kings in the New Year. It was the reason my large extended family went to simbang gabi (midnight Mass), why neighbors competed with one another to festoon their homes with multi-colored parols (paper lanterns) that became more intricate and elaborate as the years went by, why we exchanged gifts and sang Christmas carols including Kung Pasko ay Sumapit (When Christmas Approaches), Pasko sa Kabukiran (Christmas in the Countryside), and Pasko ng mga Bata (Children’s Christmas). We especially looked forward to the festive family Christmas dinner which often consisted of litsong baboy o biik (roasted pig/piglet), inihaw na rellenong bangus (fresh milkfish that is deboned, stuffed with spices, wrapped in banana leaves and grilled over live coals), tinolang manok (soup made with chicken and fresh vegetables), seasonal fruits, candied delicacies, and bibingka, puto bumbong or cuchinta (varieties of rice cakes).
The event of Jesus Christ’s birth has been told and re-told in myriad languages and in many lands wherever His holy name is uttered; as there is a wide variety of belief and practice surrounding the celebration of Christmas in different cultures. During Advent where I grew up, one could almost always sense a lifting of the barangay (community) spirit even as individuals went about the most mundane of their daily tasks. Maybe it was because the air was a tad cooler, and the floods which invariably accompanied the tropical monsoons had subsided. This was true whether one lived in the frailest of mga dampa, or in the homes and grand mansions of the comfortable and well-off as well as the wealthy and powerful. A dampa is a tiny hut made of bamboo and nipa leaves, the roof of which tended to leak when it rained, and whose walls threatened to shake or collapse altogether whenever typhoon or hurricane winds picked up.
The story of Christmas is the story of a Babe whose arrival more than two millennia ago introduced a rather astounding concept that (as I interpret it) ran counter to the prevailing view at that time that God is God and man is man, and ne’er the twain shall meet. And yet, tradition tells us that Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God was born of a woman named Mary, through whom He also became the Son of Man. Thus, in his Person and his alone are united both the human and the divine. It has taken me a good long time attempting to grasp that! It is not so much that my rational mind has wrestled with my faith in the way that the exercise might have befuddled some philosophers and agnostics alike. The people I listened to called it a grand mystery – the Mystery of the Incarnation. I have never had occasion to see a conflict between the two natures existing in one Person. But exactly how does one begin to comprehend the dimensions of a chasm between the two natures that is as wide as the Grand Canyon, as deep as the ocean and as wonderfully inscrutable as the heavens on a starry night?
Perhaps, the exercise could be made easier by imagining what God might look like. I have listened to people who tell me that God is immanent in nature – in the earth, the wind, the sun and the rain; that the awesome power of an invisible God is made visible in thunder, lightning, tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes – said to be all manifestations of God’s omnipotence and wrath. Other people say that God’s beauty and magnanimity is to be found in the first faltering steps of a baby, phenomena like the aurora borealis or aurora australis, the opening of blossoms to the first kiss of sunrise, or the falling of rain on a drought-stricken land. I have seen old science fiction movies depicting God as a computer performing feats of such astounding prowess and technical firepower that moviegoers (including me) came away with a combined feeling of trepidation and awe: “Gosh, if God is a computer, I hope that she, in all the glory of her divine, if artificial, intelligence does not regard us (mere homo sapiens) as competitors or adversaries, but perchance will decide to keep us as pets.”
Perhaps the most compelling image of God I have seen is the one of God the Father who, with formidable energy and will in His eyes, beckons Adam from nothing into being the way a masterful magician performs. The famous image is from a painting by Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 – 1564) entitled The Creation of Man and is found in Rome’s Sistine Chapel. This work of art has led me to think that the act of creation and all creativity has to have a divine inspiration, even if the creator does not believe in God. One might then surmise that the beauty found in all living beings is a reflection of God’s love for His creatures and all creation. There is evidence of infinite beauty in the universe. If one accepts that proposition, the inevitable corollary becomes: Who or what, then, is responsible for evil, for all that ugliness, suffering and misery that we see or perceive everyday – might it be, in a very real sense, anthropomorphic or man-made in its origins? Is it?
The poems I have selected to share with you may or may not answer any of the above questions or issues, but I think they help us to explore how, over two centuries, we humans who call ourselves Christians have grappled with attempting to understand the central truth of Christmas which is the Son of God becoming the Son of Man. In its essence, it is a narrative of becoming which commences before, and culminates in the birth of a Babe. We are blessed with an intimate familiarity of Christmas being about the truth, beauty and timeless charm depicted in the Nativity scene. There, at the center of it all, is a beautiful Babe sleeping soundly under the watchful eyes of his lovely mother Mary and his beaming foster father Joseph. Shepherds keeping watch over their sheep and sleeping in the nearby hills are awakened by a host of angels singing “Glory to God in the highest …”. The celestial music fills them with wonder and awe, and beckons them to leave their flocks to see for themselves what the Son of God looks like, and to pay Him homage. Soon after, kings from far-off lands bearing gifts journey to Bethlehem to do the same. Christmas is certainly that; but also about so much more.
I suggest that, in order to grasp with the mind’s eye what we already know in our hearts, we cast our eyes beyond the Nativity scene and delve more deeply into what it means to be human. In doing that, none of us need go far, for this might mean looking inward first, then outward at the people in our immediate vicinity, and then proceeding to the rest of that vast landscape we inhabit and call the human condition. We start by casting a searching look at one woman who was so exceptional that she was chosen for the most important role of all – that of mother of the Son. In her, we see a woman, wholly human, who nonetheless is elevated to a status greatly exceeding that of being merely mortal. She is elevated above all humanity because our Lord Jesus’ becoming human was achieved through her. She is universally praised by all who have come to know and love her; especially by the countless people throughout Christendom’s history on whose behalf she has pleaded incessantly with God. That she was God’s choice has been the subject of much poetry and prose, including the ones cited below.
First, we see an encounter between a girl and an angel.
Annunciation by Reynolds Price
The Angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin promised to a man named Joseph of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. Coming in on her he said: “Rejoice beloved! The Lord is with you.” Luke 1: 26 – 28
The angel tries to imagine need.
Till now he has not stood near a girl –
Odd generals, magistrates, prophets in skins –
And since his mission is to cry “Beloved!”
And warning of the coming down on her
Of absolute need, he pauses to study
Her opaque hands – both open toward him
And strains to know what need could draw
The Heart of Light to settle on this
Dun child, clay brown, when curved space
Burns with willing vessels compounded of air.
He feels he is failing; is balked by skin,
Hair, eyes dense as coal.
“Beloved” clogs his throat. He blinks.
Nothing needs this. He has misunderstood.
The girl though has passed through shock to honor
And begins to smile. She plans to speak.
Her dry lips part. “Me.” She nods.
The low room fills that instant with dark
Which is also wind – a room not two
Of her short steps wide, plugged with dark
(Outside it is three, March afternoon).
In the cube, black as a cold star’s core,
One small point shines – her lean face
Licked by a joy no seraph has shown,
An ardor of need held back for this
And bound to kill.
But slowly she dims,
The room recovers, she opens a fist.
The angel can speak. “Rejoice, beloved!”
The girl laughs one high note, polite –
Cold news —then kneels by her cot to thank him.
Source: Reynolds Price. The Collected Poems. New York: Scribner Poetry/Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1997. (pp. 39 – 40)
The American poet Reynolds Price brings an unusual terseness and simplicity to his version of the Annunciation. The result is a poem of stunning realism and beauty. God, the Heart of Light has an absolute need. (Does God, being God, have any need at all?) Angels, also creatures of God, have no experience or knowledge of need, so Gabriel tries to imagine it. He strains and struggles to imagine what possible need could have led God to choose this dun child, clay-brown to become His Beloved … when curved space burns with willing vessels compounded of air. (My rather lame translation: God, being God, could have had His pick of any creature endowed with all the superlatives – you name them, etc. …) We see an angelic emissary who at first is incredulous of God’s choice, so he blinks; the task of delivering the simple message suddenly becomes herculean; initially, the word Beloved cannot escape his lips — nothing needs this, he concludes. (Does one detect an unlikely arrogance and skepticism in Price’s Gabriel? I was taught to believe that angels have an intelligence superior to that of humans. The two attributes are associated more with humans than with angels. And yet, Satan was an angel before his fall.) Perhaps, it is simply shock on the emissary’s part. Gabriel, sometimes referred to as the strength of God, is the first to perceive God’s plan of bridging the human and the divine.
Price then describes the moment in time when, from eternity, God made His choice: In the small darkened room she occupies … one small point shines and Mary’s lean face is licked by a joy no seraph has shown, an ardor of need held back for this …. The shock subsides slowly, and Gabriel is finally able to proclaim: “Rejoice, Beloved!”
Next, we focus on why Mary was the choice.
from Lines on the Birth of Marie by François Villon (1431 – 1463?)
Translated from the French by J. U. Nicolson
Spirit of Birth Immaculate,
Sent once more earthward from the skies,
The Lily’s scion consummate,
Beloved of God in Paradise,
MARY – that name shall re-arise,
The fount of mercy, source of grace
And joyous comfort of all eyes,
Once more as peace to Adam’s race.
Ah peace! The glory of the rich
And of the poor the living wage,
Only despised of rogue in ditch.
O babe, so needful to our age,
Born of an honest parentage
Nor tainted with original sin!
What I say more, God hold it sage
And find no blasphemy therein!
…….
The worship and the fear of God
From Caesar’s noble loins are come
Till all men everywhere are shod
With hope of Christ’s imperium;
For God makes love draw, as a drum,
The jarring tribes, fraternally,
And from envy and odium
Break fetters and set all men free.
…….
Out of the Psalms I take this phrase:
Delectasi me, Domine
In factura sua.* I praise: *Google’s translation from Latin into English:
“O noble child, the stars betray, You have given me, O Lord, in the fashion of
A noble destiny alway,
Manna of Heaven, gift of God,
Of all good works the guardian aye
And for our ills the staff and rod!”
Source: The Complete Works of François Villon (with an Introduction by Lewis Galantiѐre). New York: Covici Friede Publishers, 1931. (pp. 111 – 113)
The French poet François Villon (a creature of the 15th century) refers to Mary as the Spirit of Birth Immaculate, a reference to her total freedom from sin. Christian theologians have told us that all people bear the mark of sin, but she is the one exception. She is untainted even by original sin. Original sin is the sin of disobedience committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; and
this sin is transmitted to all human beings by virtue of our having descended from the first parents. Mary’s Immaculate Conception signifies that from the moment she was conceived in her mother St. Anne’s womb until her Assumption into heaven, Satan failed to touch her. Original sin has been cited as the reason for all humanity being an unredeemed race; the status or condition implying the need for a Redeemer. Could this be God’s absolute need that Reynolds Price referred to? Only God’s paragon of beauty and purity, His magnum opus as it were, could be worthy to become the mother of Jesus.
On December 8, 1854 Pope Pius IX issued the following declaration from St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome:
“We declare, we pronounce and we define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by Almighty God in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.”
The declaration apparently sent shockwaves rippling through some quarters. On Dec. 9, 2013 the Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites website posted the following paragraphs:
“The new dogma shocked the essentially egalitarian mentally of the French Revolution …. To see a mere creature elevated so far above all others, enjoying an inestimable privilege from the very first instance of her conception is something that could not fail to hurt … the children of a revolution which proclaimed absolute equality among men as a basis of all order, justice and goodness. — — It was painful for both Catholics and non-Catholics infected with this [revolutionary] spirit to accept the fact that God established in creation and highlighted such outstanding inequality.
Liberals dislike the nature of that privilege as such. Indeed, anyone who admits the existence of Original Sin, with all the spiritual disorders and miseries of the body that it entails, must accept that man needs an authority that he must obey. The definition of the Immaculate Conception was an implicit reaffirmation of Church teaching on this matter.”
The reference to Mary’s Immaculate Conception as an outstanding inequality may have roiled the believers of absolute human egalitarianism, but the rest of us who understand the troubles and travails of being human, who know that sin is an inevitable part of the human condition, can appreciate Mary’s unique exceptionalism. Perhaps this is why countless sinners have asked her, and continue to ask her, to intercede for them. They believe that the Almighty, Infinite Mercy would not say “No” to her.
But apart from the issue of original sin, there is the question of evil and its anthropomorphic origins. That evil exists is not in dispute – one merely has to look at news headlines which almost daily chronicle the killing and maiming of children and other innocents in places, inter alia, that are embroiled in wars not of the victims’ making. Some wars seem to be never-ending; and when one war ceases, another seems to rear its ugly head elsewhere. My query has to do with whether the definition of evil is fixed and unchanging, or whether it is a moving target that alters with time and the color of one’s political, social, religious, economic or cultural affiliations.
We continue to explore who Mary is from the perspective of François Villon.
from Ballade For a Prayer to Our Lady
Translated from the French by J. U. Nicolson
Lady of Heaven, Regent of Earth’s land,
Empress of all the infernal deep domain,
Receive me, thy poor Christian soul, to stand
With the elect, and so thy grace attain;
This notwithstanding I’ve done naught to gain
Such boon of thee, O Lady of Delight,
Save thou art greater than my sins outright
And save that else no soul may gain the sky
Where Heaven is – I do not mock thy might!
In this faith I will live and I will die.
Say to the Son that I am in His hand,
That only of Him may I be freed of stain:
Oh, pardon me as Mary of Egypt and
As once Theophilus did not ask in vain,
Though he had come to power by foul chicane
And made with Satan solemn pledge and plight.
Save me from evil grown of such despite,
O Virgin Mother at whose breast could lie
The Sacrament that in the Mass is bright!
In this faith I will live and I will die.
…….
ENVOI
Virgin, Thou broughtest into the finite,
Infinite Mercy, endless and recondite:
Lo, the Almighty, who makes all sin white,
Left heaven to hear and heed our human cry,
Offering His clean young life for death to smite.
Now He is Lord, to whom all prayers take flight.
In this faith I will live and I will die.
Source: The Complete Works of François Villon (with an Introduction by Lewis Galantiѐre). New York: Covici Friede Publishers, 1931. (pp. 55 – 56).
The speaker in this poem appeals to Mary to intercede for him with her Son, Jesus. Jesus is the Sacrament that in the Mass is bright, the Infinite Mercy who makes all sin white, and the Lord, to whom all prayers take flight. The speaker acknowledges that he has done nothing to gain Mary’s favor; nevertheless, he begs for her Son’s mercy because … only of Him may I be freed of stain.
Interestingly enough, the poet Villon led a life that might have required him to repeatedly invoke Our Lady’s intercession in obtaining God’s mercy. According to Lewis Galantiѐre, Villon’s name first appears in the public records when he was 24 years old. “He was undersized, thin, ill-nourished … , was known for his brilliant mockery and matchless verbal gaiety and gadded about with a haphazard group of young men recruited from great houses and ignoble dives, sons of nobles… officials and peasants. … They poached; filched fish, fruit and fowl in marketplaces… sang impudent songs beneath merchants’ windows, and sang often of the merchants’ horns.”
In addition, Villon was “… one of those unprepossessing men whose ardour for women is the more intense, and whose need of their regard and admiration is the more imperious, precisely because women find them unattractive.” He is said to have consorted with trulls and trollops. Later in life, Villon graduated “from playing in the cloisters with tattered brats and rioting with addle-pated students,” and “ … passed by degrees into the company of men who led active criminal lives.” His crimes included murder: After an altercation with a priest, he stabbed and killed him. For this, he was banished from Paris, but his sentence was soon remitted.
According to other literary commentators and editors (James Applegate, et.al., Adventures in World Literature, 1970), François Villon was “… a university graduate, poet and criminal who spent most of his adult life fleeing convictions and arrests. Villon wrote … poetry for himself and his friends while they waited to be hanged for implication in several robberies. The sentence was commuted to banishment, and thereafter Villon disappeared from history.”
In Villon, we are given the human portrait of a rake, a rogue, a robber, a roué, a repeat criminal offender and murderer who was also a gifted poet and ardent devotee of Mary. I have sometimes wondered how individuals like Villon can lead lives of such utter contradiction. If the finite, dark and sinful side of being human can always presume on Jesus, the Redeemer’s Infinite Mercy, how does Justice figure in the overall scheme of things? And, by the way, where does justice reside? I have heard some people say that Justice and Mercy are two sides of the same coin. Are they? Nevertheless, I am bothered by extremes of good and evil residing in one human being like Villon. Does the dynamic of being human, therefore, make all of us, in one sense or another, creatures of contradiction?
Soledad by Angela C. Manalang-Gloria (1907 – 1995)
It was a sacrilege, the neighbors cried,
The way she shattered every mullioned pane
To let a firebrand in. They tried in vain
To understand how one so carved from pride
And glassed in dream could have so flung aside
Her graven days, or why she dared profane
The bread and wine of life for one insane
Moment with him. The scandal never died.
But no one guessed that loveliness would claim
Her soul’s cathedral burned by his desires,
Or that he left her aureoled in flame …
And seeing nothing but her blackened spires,
The town condemned this girl who loved too well
And found her heaven in the depths of hell.
Source: Abad, Gemino H. & Alfred A. Yuson (eds.). One Hundred Love Poems: Philippine Love Poetry Since 1905. Diliman, Quezon City: The University of the Philippines Press, 2004. (p.2)
The Filipino poet Angela Manalang-Gloria has touched on the quite common theme of human sexual love and the forbidden. Sex has to be a very common occurrence, or there wouldn’t be 7.4 billion (at last count) of us homo sapiens who populate our planet today. What I find striking is not that sex happens; but that in one context (within the confines of marriage, also called holy matrimony) it is almost a sacramental imperative, in another context (outside of marriage) it is tantamount to a one-way ticket to hell. Is this more evidence that we are creatures of contradiction?
The speaker in the poem narrates the story of a woman named Soledad who committed the sin of sacrilege by profaning the bread and wine of life (receiving the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist which Catholics believe to be the true body and blood of Christ). She did this after spending one insane moment with a firebrand of a man. All the townspeople in her community condemned Soledad; and the scandal never died. In many traditional, conservative cultures, sex outside of marriage continues to be regarded as sinful and scandalous, even if (as in Soledad’s case) she loved perhaps not wisely but too well.
I am bothered by the persistence of a scandal that is so commonplace and yet refuses to die. Isn’t all love, to the extent that it is authentic, of God — meaning, that love (both the emotion and the will) is the one thing more than any other which we humans can “feel”, “do” and “give” that elevates us and makes us more like Jesus, the very personification of Divine Love? What I do find scandalous is that the townspeople, self-righteous and unforgiving, were quick to condemn Soledad; yet failed to utter a whisper of disdain or disapproval against her firebrand of a man. Was this because he had the alluring power of a firebrand, or was it simply because he was a man? Perhaps the townspeople gave him a wink and a nod; perhaps more than a few hypocrites even accorded him a secret and admiring envy. We are in the 21st C., which means that the Enlightenment is supposed to be firmly anchored in our past. But women continue to be held to near- impossible standards in machismo cultures where sexual conquests are routine and even expected behaviors of men. I also have an inkling that today, these behaviors are prevalent in many more communities and societies than we care to admit.
Soledad is one version of Maria Clara, the fictional heroine in a novel entitled Noli Me Tangere which was written by Philippine national hero Dr. Jose P. Rizal (1861-1896). Rizal penned some of his writings in prison while awaiting execution by the Spanish colonial authorities, his only crime being that he wrote poetry, essays and novels, and worked tirelessly in a peaceful fashion for Philippine independence from Spain. He was publicly executed in front of a firing squad. Maria Clara is the 19th C. archetypal woman of purity and beauty who was formed in the Philippine popular imagination by writers like Rizal. Rizal’s university studies (he studied medicine) brought him to Spain and other European countries where he became exposed to the ideas (among others) of the Enlightenment, the Renaissance and the French revolution.
Soledad is a creature of the 19th C. who happened to live in the 20th. I met a few women like Soledad during my undergraduate days at the University of the Philippines. She was born to one of the few wealthy families who dominated Philippine political and economic life. At an early age, she was sent away to a convent school to be taught the three R’s by nuns; she was also required to learn the social graces and to comport herself with propriety, decorum and self-possession at all times, but with sufficient humility and obedience to authority so as not to attract attention from “the wrong people.” She was probably adored by her entire family who put her on a pedestal (something bordering on idolatry) and painted halos around every photo taken of her; simultaneously, they watched her every move with eagle eyes. Which is why the townspeople could not understand how one so carved from pride and glassed in dream could have so flung aside her graven days…. But I think that this is the reason why she did what she did: her family at home and the nuns at school were suffocating her. The only life she knew was lived in both cloisters, and despite lessons in science, human biology, hormones and the like, she failed to understand what was happening to her as she evolved from girl to woman. I think her failure should be attributed, in part, to failures of the educational system. Ignorance is never bliss and remains a recipe for tragedy.
Christ Walks in This Infernal District Too by Malcolm Lowry (1909 – 1957)
Beneath the Malbolge lies Hastings Street,
The province of the pimp upon his beat,
Where each in his little world of drugs or crime
Moves helplessly or, hopeful, begs a dime
wherewith to purchase half a pint of piss –
Although he will be cheated, even in this.
I hope, although I doubt it, God knows
This place where chancres blossom like the rose,
For on each face is such a hard despair
That nothing like a grief could enter there.
And on this scene from all excuse exempt
The mountains gaze in absolute contempt,
Yet this is also Canada, my friend,
Yours to absolve of ruin, or make an end.
Source: Atwood, Margaret (Chosen and with an Introduction by). The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English. Toronto/London/New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. (p. 138)
I have the impression that in most if not all metropolitan areas of the world, certainly in large and mid-sized cities, there are places where women like Soledad and many others would never go. These places are populated by pimps and prostitutes, drug dealers, dead-beats and the drug-addicted, robbers and other criminals of ill-repute, guttersnipes and other children of the extremely poor. The Canadian poet Malcolm Lowry makes the point that even in seemingly God-forsaken places like the infernal district which he writes about, where cancers blossom like roses, where even grief can no longer enter because people’s faces are permanently etched with such hard despair, our Lord Jesus the Redeemer is present. Because of the indescribable suffering He endured on the journey to Calvary and the Crucifixion, I do not doubt that at all.
The image that I have about the following poem comes from another Renaissance luminary — the artist-scientist Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) entitled Embryo in the Womb (ca. 1510).
Prayer Before Birth by Louis MacNeice
I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat
or the club-footed ghoul come near me.
I am not yet born; console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.
I am not yet born; provide me
with water to dandle me, grass to grow for me,
trees to talk to me, sky to sing to me,
birds and a white light in the back of my mind to guide me.
I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit,
my words when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my hands,
my death when they live me.
I am not yet born; rehearse me
in the parts I must play and the cues I must take
when old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me,
mountains frown at me, lovers laugh at me,
the white waves call me to folly and the desert calls me to doom,
and the beggar refuses my gift,
and my children curse me.
I am not yet born; O hear me,
let not the man who is beast or
who thinks he is God come near me.
I am not yet born; O fill me
with strength against those who would freeze my humanity,
would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine,
a thing with one face, a thing,
and against all those who would dissipate my entirety,
would blow me like thistledown hither and thither
or hither and thither like water held in the hands would spill me.
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.
Source: Peck, Richard (Ed. and with an introduction by). Sounds and Silences: Poetry for Now. New York: Dell Publishing, Inc., 1970. (pp. 34 -35)
The speaker in Irish poet Louis MacNeice’s poem is, amazingly, an unborn babe. This babe is highly unusual on several levels: First, he or she is a unique human being, unlike any other who has come before or is yet to come. Second, this babe is still in the womb, but already has the knowledge of the worldly wise, having journeyed hither and thither to the far reaches of the community he is expected to join. Third, he has carefully studied the lay of the land; and seems to have developed an acute if overwhelmingly pessimistic certainty of what is to happen should he arrive on the world stage. Consider, for a moment, what awaits him and assess the likelihood of who and what will touch or govern his life:
- Two-legged bloodsucking bats, rats, stoats and ghouls
- Tall walls designed to confine or exclude him
- A multiplicity of illegal and legal drugs that will dope and eventually kill him
- Wars that immerse him in torture and blood-baths; if these don’t kill him first,
they could drive him to suicide
- Brown grass, dead trees, filthy air, polluted drinking water
- Folks who do little but wag their fingers and lecture,
bureaucrats who browbeat and hector
- Beastly men and women capable of freezing another’s humanity
- Bosses who would transform him into a machine or lethal automaton
- Pretenders to the throne of God who rape, pillage and kill
The list could go on. The unborn babe is understandably frightened by what he sees; he rails against all who would dissipate his entirety. His language expresses the fear, dread and anguish that are the common currency of an existentialist philosopher’s thinking. He knows that experience teaches, for he speaks with the authority and urgency of one who has engaged in all kinds of combats — political, social, economic and military. He also exhibits the demeanor and battle-scarred exhaustion of wizened old folk. Most unusual of all, the speaker issues a demand at the end of the poem. The demand is so startling, so unexpected and lacerating that the Reader (metaphorically) dissolves in tears as she collapses to her knees.
The poet MacNeice has crafted an oration of stirring eloquence, not the typical narrative of millions born around the world each year who are awaited with hope and joy; even if mixed with anxiety, fear and the most difficult or problematic of circumstances. The images he paints are not only crystal clear, they are razor-sharp; they are designed to get to the heart of the matter called life. The orator carries a profound conviction that the birth of a child (any child) speaks to the inherent dignity of being human – a dignity that is deserving of respect and a modicum of ceremony or ritual because the finger of God is present in the act of creation.
Simultaneously, even while confined to the womb, his acculturation to the ways of the world proceeds with the same breathless rapidity that the cells in his body divide and multiply to form his being. The poem is also a prayer: the babe addresses you and me and all the others who populate our planet. He perceives that the pervasive culture of violence does not exempt even innocent human embryos in the womb, and thus concludes that he can make a choice. He beseeches all of us to enter deliberatively into that interior universe we call conscience, to search for and discover what links us to the varied grim external realities for which we all (in my thinking) must bear a shared responsibility. He then issues that devastatingly direct and anguished demand: Change the world! “Otherwise kill me.” In the spirit of Christmas, let us pause for a moment to think about what our response should be. Do we change the world, or do we kill him?
Louis MacNeice’s oration reminds me of another written a few centuries ago.
from Oration on the Dignity of Man by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463 – 1494)
Translated from the Italian by A. Robert Caponigri
God said to Man: “ We have given you, Oh Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor any endowment proper to your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may with premeditation select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgment and decision. The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which We have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature. I have placed you at the center of the world, so that from that vantage point you may with greater ease glance round about you on all that the world contains. (underlining mine)
We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.”
Source: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Oration on the Dignity of Man (With an Introduction by Russell Kirk). Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1956. (pp.7 – 8)
Pico’s oration was dubbed “the manifesto of humanism” which gave the primary definition of the Renaissance as: “the rebirth of Man in the likeness of God.” In his introduction to the oration, Russell Kirk wrote: “All the dignity of human nature was a gift of God. Yet with all this power, Man through free will is able to neglect this gift and sink to the level of the brutes. The humanist does not seek to dethrone God. A degree of humility chastened the pride of even the most arrogant humanist of the Renaissance. But the seeds of hubris – overweening self-confidence were sown. … Dignity is a quality with which one is invested; it must be conferred. For human dignity to exist, there must be a Master who can raise Man above the brute creation. If that Master is denied, then dignity for Man is unattainable.” I am awed by the power we have been given as a gift from God – the power of choice – the freedom to choose between good and evil. It is this power that can make us creatures of contradiction.
It is time now to focus on Jesus, the Prince of Peace. In times of restlessness, turmoil, weariness, and fatigue which all of us face now and then, I turn to Him who said: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you.” More often than not, I have found our Lord lurking between the words of these lines which were written by another Irish poet:
The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
Source: M. L. Rosenthal (Edited and Introduction by). Selected Poems and Two Plays of William Butler Yeats. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc., 1962. (pp. 12 – 13)
Finally, we return to the Nativity scene and focus once more on the Babe who came to us one fateful night more than two thousand years ago. What His coming meant is described to us by Mexican poet
Fernán González de Eslava. For one brief, shining moment, the Son of God became the Son of Man, and our world was changed forever.
To the Nativity by Fernán González de Eslava (ca. 1534 – 1601)
Translated from the Spanish by Samuel Beckett
Evil flees the earth, now comfort is come:
God is on earth, now earth is heaven.
Now the world is even as the eternal Good,
Since in the Crib all heaven is;
All that lacked to the glory of earth is given:
God is on earth, now earth is heaven.
Now Man He descends that ye may rise;
Now God and Man one name unites.
‘Twixt heaven and earth now the strife is striven:
God is on earth, now earth is heaven.
Source: Mexican Poetry: An Anthology (Compiled by Octavio Paz, Translated by Samuel Beckett). New York: Grove Press, 1985. (p. 50)
I wish you all the love, joy and peace that only the Baby Jesus can bring.
Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon!
