Every once in a while I forget that I’m a columnist for this paper, and I suddenly realize with a shock that my column is overdue. That is what happened this morning.

“Oh stinker-pots!” I exclaimed to Scott in the kitchen, “My column was due last night. I’ve got nothing. What should I write about?”

“Why not write a column of hope?” he cheerfully replied.

“A column of hope?” I snorted, “You write it. I have to clean the bathroom.” He poured me a coffee, but wouldn’t write the column.

You see, a column of hope is hard to write. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have any hope to share, it just means that I’m all out of the standard social media picker-uppers: “Be kind, be calm, be safe, and here’s a number to call to report your neighbours to the government.”

People are sincerely looking for hope, but doing it with an over-saturated Yuletide feasting that began long before Advent. Blow-up grinches are filling yards, off-key karaoke renditions of Have a Holly Jolly Christmas are booming overhead in the mall. Even non-believers know that Christmas is the source of hope, but somehow they can’t quite figure out why, and so they replace Christ with pop-culture sugar, and are left dissatisfied and ill in the stomach. I believe it is actually an anti-hope that people are being offered.

There’s also the issue that many people don’t think there’s even a reason to offer hope. “Why would anyone need you to share hope?” they ask with a quizzical smile, “Just put on your masks, and eventually science will get us where we need to be.” They don’t fear humanism like I do (and all Christians should), or the unquestioned and unapologetic censoring that has been going on for anyone who questions anything, or the fact that I just read that, for some reason, the Canadian military has been called in to “help” with vaccine distribution. That sounds fun. They say it’s rational for family gatherings and worship to be forbidden, while fast food chains and casinos stay open. 

That’s where my snorted reply comes in: “You write it.”

But for some reason, even as I snorted it, I had a vision of a child born in the darkness of a world wrapped in the growing tension of fearing their own government on the one hand, and hoping for a saviour on the other. I saw a little mother, shivering in the cold, open air as she nursed her hungry babe without her own mother nearby to help, and a bewildered but heroic man wrapping them in his cloak.

There isn’t much sugar in this vision, but there is true beauty and light mixed in with the stable smells, the apprehension, and absolute detachment from the world. This is where God shares His divinity with the humus.

This babe was born in a world under the fist of military control, rioting, and a king who would literally murder thousands of infants to ensure his absolute power. The Romans who ruled over them were humanist pagans who held nothing in common with the God-fearing Jews they coerced and bullied. I can’t believe that Mary and Joseph were ignorant of, or ambivalent to, this. They must have wondered at the promises made by prophets: “I will deliver you from your bondage.”

But on that unlikely night they held Hope in their arms, felt His skin, and got to look Him in the deep, eternal universe of His eyes, even as they shivered with the cold and uncertainty. Imagine looking into the Christ Child’s eyes!

Can you fathom what questions Mary and Joseph must have had going through their minds? Can you imagine what they felt when the soldiers obeyed their orders to murder babies, and they had to pack up everything necessary to flee their own homeland? As they ran in the night, did their neighbours shake their heads and tell them they were over-reacting, or perhaps they just pointed the way to the soldiers at their door?

In all of this confusion and chaos, in their arms they held God. And that is the only word of hope that I can offer: keep God close in your arms, keep him warm against your chest, and carry Him with you as you detach and escape the false hope of the world.

I hope that by the time this is published that we are “allowed” (or have found a way) to receive him in the Eucharist, as that is how he gave himself to be received. And when you do, hold him dear, because it is his Body and Blood, himself, that will give a satisfying and lasting peace. It is only he that will offer, and give, every last drop of his majesty and blood to keep you in his arms, and pressed warm to his chest.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote that we are saved by hope, that prayer is the school of hope, and that our suffering should help us to grow in hope, as we unite with Christ. “One who has hope lives differently,” he wrote. “If Jesus has become your hope, communicate this to others with your joy and your spiritual, apostolic and social engagement. Let Christ dwell within you, and having placed all your faith and trust in Him, spread this hope around you.”

I would say that we might do well to light a little candle beside the Christ Child, enthroned in our modest mangers, turn off the lights in our homes, and remember that the light of Hope was gravely lit on a night filled with uncertainty and fear. Then, spread this hope around you.


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