Reflection given on 16th December, the second evening of the Christmas Celebration at Westminster Cathedral
How moving to hear Cardinal Hume describe the mystery of the Incarnation! I always think of him when I enter this building and see his tomb. I find myself remembering the day he first showed me his Cathedral. I’d been ordained just a few weeks; and he invited me and another young priest to lunch; then he said, ‘Let me show you my Cathedral!’ Donning his monk’s habit, he began our tour: to my surprise, not inside but outside the main door. Why? Because he wanted us to meet the poor. It was clear they didn’t expect any money from him. What they clearly did expect was the one thing they knew he would give them; and that was his blessing.
He led us then in and right up to the other end of the Cathedral, to kneel before the Blessed Sacrament. He was teaching these two young priests what their priorities should be: the poor and prayer. To pray with him in that place felt a real privilege. It was only years later that I learnt how much he struggled with prayer. Yet, he was convinced that even trying to pray is prayer itself. When you can’t pray, he’d say, just look. His words tonight are an invitation to do that just: simply to look on the Christchild and make room in your heart for him. Don’t let all your interests, ambitions and preoccupations crowd Him out, he says; just let Him into your life.
He’s telling us something similar to his friend Pope St Paul VI. Go to the crib, we hear Pope Paul urging: speak intimately with the newborn child; and trust him. Realise he thinks of you and loves you: entrust yourself to him. And Pope Francis urges us with equal force to linger long before the mystery revealed in the crib. ‘The nativity scene,’ Pope Francis suggests, ‘is a living Gospel rising up from the pages of sacred Scripture.’ Pope Francis likes often to recall the making of the very first crib by his namesake, St Francis of Assisi, 800 years ago.
It happened in a place called Greccio, close to Assisi. You can still visit it to this day, the small medieval friary where Francis was living with a small band of brothers. At its heart is the rock around which they built the Nativity scene with which we’re all so familiar. But that night the crib-figures were real live people, gathered from round about. The friars urged the people to bring with them live sheep, an ox and an ass.
Then, on the rock they laid an empty manger full of hay. Over it they placed an altar; and at midnight the priest celebrated Mass. They were said each to have experienced the most extraordinary joy, though there was one who said he experienced something greater still: a vision of the Christchild radiant and glorious and lying in the manger. So powerful was the experience that they resolved to do it annually; and the tradition spread and was borne down the ages to find its place today at the heart of every Christian church the world over.
The following year, St Francis had another idea. As the friars prepared Christmas lunch, he decided he would go for a walk. ‘I’ll go and find more wood,’ he told his brothers. He made sure he stayed out so long they were bound to have started the meal without him. Early afternoon, he returned, having made sure to blacken his face and hands with charcoal. With his cowl hiding his face, he knocked on the friary door. There was no answer.
But he could hear the laughter coming from inside. He knocked more loudly. A friar came reluctantly to the door. ‘Will you spare a few morsels for a poor pilgrim?’ Francis begged. The friar led him reluctantly indoors to the refectory; and signalled to him to sit on the floor. He gave Francis a very small version of the feast they were all enjoying.
As the last friar laid down his spoon, Francis called out, ‘Is this how you welcome your brother?’ They look at one another, shocked and confused. ‘Is this how you welcome a poor man on the feast of Our Saviour’s birth?’ Saying this, he pulled back his cowl. They gasped; then leapt to their feet to kneel and beg forgiveness before he raised each one to embrace him. I like to think that, as they hugged one other amidst the tears and laughter, he looked each one in the eye with a look that said, ‘Learn from this, will you? Learn from this.’
He knew they were each on a journey, a journey to grasp the full meaning of the Gospel. Each of us is on that same journey; to begin living the Gospel fully. Advent is the journey par excellence; the time of progress. The gathering light of the Advent wreath, the news that the Magi are travelling, the shortening of each day all speak of a world on the move, not just into festivity but into Him; and that, beyond all the Christmases of our lives, there awaits for each of us a rebirth into Him. All we can do, each Advent that remains to us, is return faithfully to the crib and look upon Him as he greets us from the manger of Bethlehem; and ask him to help us because we’re a work in progress. We must trust he knows our potential for growth and will help us realise it.
This truth was brought home powerfully to me by an American friend whom I brought one day to this Cathedral. She was a spiritual woman; and wanted to see this building more than anything else in London. As we were about to enter, I thought I should just warn her that the mosaics and marble still reached up only to the first level. We entered through the great West door.
Immediately, her eyes were drawn upwards into the domes above our heads. She smiled broadly and said, ‘You know, I think I prefer it like this.’ ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘It’s like us: unfinished!’ I took her then to see the tomb of Cardinal Hume, sensing they were kindred spirits!
Bishop Nicholas Hudson
Photo: Mazur/cbcew.org.uk