The Christmas Miracle
The deep red poinsettias glowed against the dark wood steps. Hundreds of white lights sparkled on the evergreen trees. The candelabra were lit and the baby Jesus lay in his manger bed, but he was hidden by the coffin. It was quiet and peaceful, everyone waiting for the funeral to begin. Then it was time, and family and friends joined their voices filling the space with, “Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn King.”
Sitting four pews back was a line of young men, barely 20, coming together to mourn a friend. They were solemn in their dress pants and jackets, unused to sitting in church that early in the morning on what should be a care-free Christmas vacation day. They came to pay their respects, to comfort the family, to cry with one another. Death is hard, especially the first time.
There is no right way to grieve, the homilist said. You may be sad, angry, numb, questioning, remorseful, guilt-ridden, joyful. You may be surprised by your emotions and the swiftness of their onset. But everything you feel is valid, every raw emotion part of grief. There is no right or wrong way to mourn such a loss. And then a reminder of the Scripture passage we had just heard from Romans 8:31-32: “If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?”
I could see it from where I sat: the coffin covered in the garment of baptism, the paschal candle glowing with Christ’s light at its head; the infant Jesus, God-made-Man, resting alongside the mourned friend, and the crucified and risen Christ triumphant over the heads of us all. The words of St. Paul in Romans 8:38-39: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
I pray for these young men, that especially in this tragedy they see and know the Christmas Miracle.
