Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 11 - The Georgia Bulletin, December 20, 1990
The gift
By Brother Cyprian L. Rowe, FMS
Catholic News Service
“Once upon a time” may seem hard
ly a phrase to begin a New York story,
given realities of 1990 that could make
some wonder if there is anything of the
fairy tale about the Big Apple.
But there is a New York Christmas
story in my life that takes on all of the
trappings of magic.
There were three of us — Johnny,
Elizabeth and me. It was Christmas. We
walked toward Riverside Drive, filled
with the energizing joy of the season.
Along the entire block, light from the
decorations spilled across the sidewalks
into the streets; lights on opposite sides
of the wide avenue sent greetings back
and forth in an array of reds and greens
and blues.
When we got to our building, I real
ized that I had lost my wallet with
about $11 in it. Now in those days of
16-cent movies and 10-cent subway
fares, $4-dollar jeans and $3-dollar
sneakers, $11 was a whole lot of money
for someone my age.
Along 135th Street up to Broadway,
we retraced our steps. Nothing. We
went up to my apartment. As soon as
I told my mother what had happened,
the phone rang. A man in a heavy ac
cent asked for me. He had found the
wallet. He lived nearby.
We rushed over to the building and
found the apartment. He came to the
door, handed me the wallet and wished
the three of us a Merry Christmas in a
heavy Spanish accent.
When it seemed that I was reaching
inside the wallet to give him something,
he held up a refusing hand and said
Merry Christmas again.
Those days were days of great
change. While my family had not been
the first African-Americans on the
block, we were the first African-
Americans there who were not janitors.
We moved onto a street that was a
melange of early 20th-century im
migrants’ children and grandchildren;
Irish and Italian and Greek and a smat
tering of Spanish, and a few, very few
Puerto Ricans. (In those days,
Spaniards were insistent on not being
confused with Puerto Ricans, language
notwithstanding.)
Lower Washington Heights, it was
called — north and west of Harlem, on
the Hudson River, with grand buildings
close to Riverside Drive and cookie-
cutter tenements up the block.
It was in some of these tenements
that the new migrants were moving.
And they were Puerto Rican. And they
were poor. The man who had found my
wallet was one of these newly arrived.
Eleven dollars was a lot of money for
him, too. When he opened the door to
his apartment, there were no sounds of
music and there were no decorations on
the door to speak of. Maybe some small
token of the season. But he had return
ed my wallet. A gift of the poor to the
less poor on a holiday of love.
Probably what he gave me was a good
deal more than lost money. He gave me
a grace of life, a knowing at some level
that in the midst of human squalor
there is beauty, like newborns in
mangers.
He gave me the gift of Christmas:
that the joy is always in the giving back
of life given. This has to be its own
reward.
I could not reward him and have
never forgotten him. The real gift, I sup
pose, lives in the land of “once upon a
time.” It becomes the stuff of life.
(Brother Rowe is a public health ad
visor for the Office of Treatment Im
provement in Rockville, Md.)
CNS illustrations by Mark Williams
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
■ Christmas isn’t only what it appears to be on the surface.
•The celebration of Christmas has a lot to do with gift
giving, obviously. But you have to ask, “What is the gift
giving all about?”
Gift-giving can mask or unmask the spirit of generosity
and caring at the heart of Christmas. On the surface, gift
giving may appear to be a celebration of things and new
possessions. It can turn into that.
But it can symbolize much more.
•Or, on the surface, Christmas appears to be a celebra-
. tion of hearth and home. Shared with relatives and friends,
Christmas becomes an intimate festival.
But again, Christmas is more. If Christmas turns one’s
gaze toward the securities of home, it should also return
the gaze to the homeless and the insecure.
First impressions of Christmas aren’t meant to be the last.
A child’s wondrous impressions of this holiday hint at its
greatness. But, thank God, there is always more meaning
in Christmas to grasp. Otherwise, in time it might get old.
Instead, you can “grow into” the spirit of Christmas over
the years, celebrating it again and again as though it were
always new. „ .. ._... _... ... ,
David Gibson, Editor, Faith Alive!
God's big plans for the lowly
By Father John Castelot
Catholic News Service
Both Matthew and Luke used their
stories of Jesus’ birth to announce the
main themes of their Gospels. Like the
overture to an opera, these narratives
state succinctly the themes they will
develop.
Luke’s concern for the poor, the
marginalized of society, gives his
narrative a special beauty, a warmth
and an impressive strength.
Not just a pretty little Christmas
story, it makes a compelling statement
about the place of the poor in God’s plan
of salvation.
All the characters are quite ordinary
people, not the movers and the shakers
who make headlines, even on the local
level.
Zechariah and Elizabeth, who enter
first, are suffering from an especially
agonizing form of poverty: childless
ness. Yet they maintain their dignity
and their strong faith, the basis of hope.
Mary and Joseph are humble Galilean
villagers from a town so insignificant it
is not even mentioned among the
hundreds of places listed in the Old
Testament. As far as people in the
sophisticated circles of Jerusalem and
Judea were concerned, they were
nobodies, laughable — or dispised —
“hillbillies.”
In the Visitation scene, a lovely
tableau of simple domestic joy, Luke
gives us Mary’s “Magnificat.” It is a
psalm typical of the literature of “the
poor of Yahweh,” that class of people
whose only wealth is the Lord himself,
who keeps their poverty, their power
lessness, from dehumanizing them.
This psalm is a powerful social
manifesto, a cry of hope.
“The Mighty One has done great
things for me.... He has shown might
with his arm, dispersed the arrogant of
mind and heart.... The hungry he has
filled with good things; the rich he has
sent away empty” (Luke 1:49, 51-53).
When Jesus is bom and cradled in an
animal’s feed trough, the good news is
proclaimed first, not to exotic
stargazers who can offer expensive
“gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh”
(Matthew 2:11), but to shepherds
“living in the fields and keeping the
night watch.”
Shepherds were a despised underclass
then, considered “unclean” and untrust
worthy to boot, with an unsavory repu
tation, deserved or not, for thievery.
Nor does Luke forget the elderly,
always at the mercy of those in their
prime. In the Presentation scene it is
another aged couple, Simeon and Anna,
who occupy center stage.
This couple was able, for this occa
sion, to make only the offering of the
poor: “a pair of turtledoves or two
young pigeons.”
If the Spirit anointed Jesus “to bring
glad tidings to the poor,” that same
Spirit inspired Luke to anticipate those
glad tidings in his birth narrative, with
a heavenly messenger telling the
unwashed shepherds:
“Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring
you good news of great joy that will be
for all the people” (Luke 2:10).
(Father Castelot is a Scripture
Scholar, author and lecturer.)
FURTHER NOURISHMENT
■ How did the early Christians
understand Advent, Christmas and
the Epiphany? Liturgist J.D.
Crichton’s The Coming of the Lord,
A Guide to the Sunday Readings for
Advent and the Christmas Season,
responds to that question in a series
of brief chapters that Scripture study
groups, teachers, homilists and
liturgy committees can use. Writes
Crichton, “Christian life is not static
but dynamic, and through our cele
brations of Advent and Christmas, we
are given new impetus.” (Twenty-
Third Publications, 185 Willow St.,
Mystic, Conn. 06355. 1990. Paper
back. $5.95.)
Faith Alive! Is published by Catholic News Service, 3211 Fourth St. NJ3., Washington, D.C. 20017-1100. All contents copyright © 1990 by Catholic News Service.