Christmas in the Light of Psalm 22

We know from all four gospels that the twenty second Psalm was deeply intertwined with the fate of Jesus, so deeply intertwined that, according to Matthew and Mark, Jesus himself took it upon his lips as he died to express his trust in God, even as he was nailed to the Cross.

Yes, Jesus was not claiming that he had actually been separated from God on the Cross, but, rather, that God's help was not evident to him, that he was going through dryness, or, rather, the greatest of all aridity, the greatest of all feelings of abandonment ever known to man. But all this he did in trust to God. If Psalm 22 expressed the plight of Jesus in moving terms, it also expressed his belief in his ultimate vindication by God with the greatest confidence.

You who fear the LORD, praise him!
all you sons of Jacob, glorify him,
and stand in awe of him, all you sons of Israel!
For he has not despised or abhorred
the affliction of the afflicted;
and he has not hid his face from him,
but has heard, when he cried to him.

If all of this seems to have only a slight connection with Christmas, it may be because we haven't thought it through yet with sufficient clarity. What or who was on Jesus' mind on the Cross as he meditated on the twenty second Psalm? On the one hand, we might take our cue from the very end of that Psalm.

All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the LORD;
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before him. (Ps. 22:27)

Certainly, Jesus meant by his death to draw all nations to worship the God of Israel. "I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." (Jn 12:32) We see this solicitude for the right ordering of the world in the repentance of the Good Thief. Actually, the Good Thief was not a thief, but a revolutionary (Gk. lestes), meaning that he was in the business of bringing about the freedom of Israel from the Roman oppressors by force. In receiving the repentance of the Good Thief, Jesus was showing that conversion of the Gentile nations to the God of Israel would now take the form of following his way of loving service, of self-giving, and not the way of violent revolution against Rome.

But if Jesus, meditating on and acting in accordance with Ps. 22, looked forward to the Gentile nations coming to the worship of the God of Israel, he must also have looked backward to the events of Christmas.

Yet thou art he who took me from the womb;
thou didst keep me safe upon my mother's breasts.
Upon thee was I cast from my birth,
and since my mother bore me thou hast been my God. (Ps. 22:9-10)

Yes, in the mysterious providence of God, the Mother of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, played a special role. In meditating upon Ps. 22, Jesus must have seen his holy mother as the special locus of God's activity. It was her womb from which God took him. It was on her breasts that God kept Jesus safe. It was by the nourishment provided from her breasts that God made him grow. From his very birth, he must have thought, he was dedicated to God, a reference not only to his own willful obedience to the Father, but to that of his Mother, who brought him to the Temple to be circumcised on the eighth day, fully identifying him with God's covenant people, Israel.

Jesus, although greater than a prophet, was a prophet, and prophets in Israel used symbolic actions to express the message that God had given them for Israel. If, indeed, Jesus was meditating on God's past faithfulness to him through his Mother, and if Jesus was meditating on and enacting the new future, in which Jew and Gentile alike would share in God's kingdom, it only makes sense to see Jesus as intentionally connecting his other great action from the Cross with these two themes. God, who had been faithful to him in the past through his Mother, would be faithful to him again through his Mother, by bringing, through her, many sons to glory (c.f. Heb 2:10). Thus, acting in the mode of a prophet, he acted in the following way:

When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son!"
Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!" And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. (Jn. 19:26-27)

The Psalmist, reflecting on God's action through his mother, recalled God's faithfulness and trusted in God's ultimate vindication. Jesus, reflecting on God's action through his Mother, recalled God's faithfulness and trusted in God's ultimate vindication; trusted in it so much that he prophetically enacted it by setting up a new spiritual relationship between Mary and John, who in this case, symbolizes all the disciples of Jesus (c.f. Raymond E. Brown, The Anchor Bible vol. 29, Pp. XCIV-XCV). And so, from the Cross, Jesus gave us his Mother to be the mother of all his beloved disciples; he gave us his Mother as our Mother. The events of Christmas, in which God's faithfulness to Mary and to Jesus are intertwined, lead us to the events of Easter and Pentecost (cf. Acts 1:14), in which God's faithfulness to Jesus and to Mary are once again intertwined. God, who acted once through Mary to bring Jesus into the world, will act again through Mary to bring Jesus into the lives of his disciples, and thus into the world.

Prepare to Meet Your Author, or the Virtue of Hope

“We speak about how things ought to be or what is not going well and ‘we do not start from the affirmation that Christ has won the victory.’ To say that Christ has won, that Christ has risen, signifies that the meaning of my life and of the world is present, already present, and time is the profound and mysterious working of its manifestation.”

Luigi Giussani

One of the major difficulties of starting out life on one’s own is finding a direction. Seemingly endless effort has been put into helping young adults find the “what” and “how” of their life’s path, but it is often the process of actually striving for these goals that presents the true challenge. The journey of a thousand miles may start with a single step, but it is frequently the middle steps that are the most difficult. Soon enough, a fundamental question poses itself: “Why and how should I continue? What kind of story am I living in? Will this story have a happy ending?”

In a good story, we know that the heroes will win out in the end even if the middle has them in dire straits. Their suffering and striving, even their death, will be worthwhile because the story will have been brought to an appropriate and happy conclusion, a conclusion that expresses the mind of its author. Christian faith tells us that life is a story whose Author is a good and almighty God. The central theme of this story is the love of this God for his whole creation expressed in Jesus Christ. It is this love that forms the foundation for the virtue of hope.

Hope is one of the most essential virtues for the young adult. It is ultimately hope that provides the answer to the questions of why and how to go on in life and the strength to take the steps on the journey. Scripture compares hope to an anchor that keeps man moored in communion with God (Heb 6:19-20). It was hope that allowed Pope John Paul II to endure his illness with grace, it was hope that caused Bl. Mother Teresa to seek out the dying of Calcutta, and it was hope that impelled Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassatti, the privileged son of one of Italy’s richest families, to pour himself out in daily service of the sick and poor. This same hope can give each and every Christian the strength to persevere in love amidst life’s trials and uncertainties.

Hope is ultimately grounded in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As St. Peter said, “By [God’s] great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” (1 Pet 1:3) But why do Christ’s death and resurrection give us hope? It is not merely that Christ came back from the dead, but that his death and resurrection conquered death once and for all. Others have come back from death by medicine or miracle, but all these died once again. ”Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.” (Rom 6:9) The foundation of Christian hope is that the Christian, having “been united with Christ in a death like his,” will also be “united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Rom 6:5) With God’s help, the story will come to an appropriate and happy conclusion.

Thus, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ answer the question: “What kind of story are we living in?” In Christ’s death and resurrection, we meet the Author of Life. The Author of Life addresses us, saying “I have seen the affliction of my people… and have heard their cry… I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them.” (Ex 3:7-8) By showing them that Love is the Author of the universe’s story, Christ’s death and resurrection give Christians the hope to take all the steps on the journey toward eternal life. Each small act formed by this hope builds the virtue of hope, allowing the Christian to become, like John Paul II, Mother Teresa, and Pier Giorgio, a beacon of hope to the world.