Christmas Morn.
Oscar, who is not yet two, is already asleep. He was awake by 5:30, and danced his way through the ribbons and tissue paper and torn wrapping all morning. Until enough was enough and down he went for an early nap.
My beautiful daughter woke up this morning feeling gloriously well, which for me was Christmas gift enough. She’d been ill on Christmas Eve and sprinted for the bathroom to throw up as Mass began. Her quick recovery may be minuscule in the pantheon of Christmas miracles, but I’ll take it.
The even greater gift she gave me this morning was a note, accompanied by a small watercolor. “I can’t wait to see what 2017 brings for you,” she wrote. This to a father who’s been losing sleep nightly worrying about what manner of horrific 2017 we might be handing young people like her. There are so many people of bad intent in high places right now. Men, mostly, who’ve learned that fear and division are the easy path to power and are working mightily to turn the world away from peace and goodness. But then here is hope, born in the optimistic words of a girl to her father.
Also among the gifts this Christmas was a small figurine of Mary, Undoer of Knots, wrapped up and put under the tree by my Jesuit Brother-In-Law. It’s unusual, so different from the Mary of the Christmas carols watching over her child as he lays sleeping in the manger. This image of Mary working to undo the knots of discord and anguish and despair we tie our lives into is a favorite of Pope Francis, I was told. Pope Francis is himself spreading a sort of populism in the world. But his is not the harsh populism that has so upended the year just ending. It’s about healing, not hurting. With all that’s going on in the world right now it offers a reassuring counterbalance.
So just now I’ll be satisfied with the optimism of my daughter and the bright humanity symbolized by a humble Pope and his devotion to Mary, Undoer of Knots. These are reminders enough that there are still forces of good in the world standing against the smug tide of bitterness that has overwhelmed the headlines and cable news of late. We are not yet in a post-truth age. Powerful truths abide and today we celebrate one of them.
It is eleven o’clock on Christmas morning and Oscar, who is not yet two, is already asleep. There is such peace in a small child asleep. In this, there is profound hope.
