
What if, instead of doing something, we were to be something special? Be womb. Be dwelling for God. Be recollected, and be surprised.
—Loretta Ross-Gotta, Letters from the Holy Ground
Author and CAC staff member Mark Longhurst writes:
Christmas is usually more than I prepare for and requires more space than I, as part of the overly-filled middle class, often have to give. That’s why the ancient hymn sings out, of Mary, “Hail, space for the uncontained God.” [1] God needs space to expand and contract, just as does the universe, and yet there’s so little space to breathe in our days. [2]
Spiritual director Loretta Ross-Gotta reflects on a deeper meaning of Mary’s virginity—being “recollected” through single-hearted love:
To be virgin means to be one, whole in oneself, not perforated by the concerns of the conventional norms and authority, or the powers and principalities. To be virgin, then, is in a sense to be recollected…. Because Mary is recollected, she is able to take hold of God….
We think we have to make Christmas come, which is to say we think we have to bring about the redemption of the universe on our own. When all God needs is a willing womb, a place of safety, nourishment, and love. “Oh, but nothing will get done,” you say. “If I don’t do it, Christmas won’t happen.” And we crowd out Christ with our fretful fears.
God asks us to give away everything of ourselves. The gift of greatest efficacy and power that we can offer God and creation is not our skills, gifts, abilities, and possessions…. Those are all gifts well worth sharing…. In the end, when all other human gifts have met their inevitable limitation, it is the recollected one, the bold virgin with a heart in love with God who makes a sanctuary of her life who delivers Christ who then delivers us. [3]
Longhurst invites us to expand our ideas about the meaning of Christmas:
Christmas is about a baby, but it’s also about the soul. Mary mirrors the soul’s yes to God. Christmas is about the soul, but it’s also about peace. Christmas is about peace, but not the comfortable peace of the privileged, or the sappy peace of holiday cards and church pageants, but peace as wholeness and healing of the seeds of violence. It’s also about justice, and not justice cloaked as the authoritarian abuse of power, or justice as righteous license to tear down every group but your own, but justice as compassion enacted in protection for the poor and vulnerable, which we still must believe is possible….
Mary says, “Yes,” and in saying “Yes” becomes the mother not only of Christ, but of all who say, “Yes” to birthing God…. The same vital presence pulsing within Mary is the same vital presence arising in our hearts, is the same vital presence we desperately need to dream and enact a new future together. On such silent and holy nights, God the Mother initiates us as mothers, too. [4]
References:
[1] The Akathist Hymn and Little Compline, Arrangement (London: Williams and Norgate, 1919), 41.
[2] Mark Longhurst, The Holy Ordinary: A Way to God (Rhinebeck, NY: Monkfish Book Publishing, 2024), 97.
[3] Loretta Ross-Gotta, Letters from the Holy Ground: Seeing God Where You Are (Franklin, WI: Sheed and Ward, 2000), 138–139.
[4] Longhurst, Holy Ordinary, 97, 98, 99.
Image credit and inspiration: Nathan Dumlao, Untitled (detail), 2020, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. We are born into this world a holy incarnation.
Story from Our Community:
A few years ago, I needed an emergency breast biopsy following a mammogram with suspicious results. I had just read the Daily Meditation on God as a mother hen. The women in the room during my biopsy were God incarnate, holding my heart steady with their gaze and comforting me as they led me through each awkward and painful step. I wept quietly, knowing how God spoke to me directly through that mother hen analogy brought to life moments later by my compassionate nurses.
—Andrea G.