"Do not be afraid" [Christmas Meditation]
"The Adoration of the Shepherd" by Caravaggio (1609) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
“Do not be afraid.” These are words we all long to hear. No more so than in these days following the devastating events that have captured the world stage.
The lives of so many have been torn asunder by the unpredictable and the unexpected. Whether it is by acts of violence, the invasion of disease or the upheaval of change and loss, so many of us have become inhabitants of the city of fear.
“Do not be afraid.” These were the first words the divine messengers offered to those shepherds in Luke’s Christmas story. But if this was whole of the Christmas message, it would hardly have been good news nor would it have echoed across the centuries.
For the messengers also offered an invitation to visit a place of astonishing hope—to witness the birth of a small child in a nearby city. “For to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior . .”
No one captures for me this visitation by the shepherds to the Bethlehem manger more powerfully than the incandescent Italian painter Caravaggio.
He was a man whose life was marked by bursts of violence, a fugitive from justice who died at age 38—and yet his broken life infused the greatest of his paintings with a spiritual radiance unequalled in the history of art. Near the end of his life, he painted The Adoration of the Shepherds for the Capuchin Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Messina.
This painting is remarkable for the stark commonness of the figures and the scene, reminding us that it is in the midst of quite ordinary settings and in the presence of quite ordinary people that the greatest of loves comes to birth.
This reminder is a sign of hope for us—that love can be born in the places and in the lives of the people we encounter every day.
The invitation of Christmas is to leave behind whatever city of fear in which we may find ourselves and to occupy another city—the city of love.
We inhabit this city of love every time we reach out in compassion and draw close to someone we might otherwise overlook or avoid—the homeless, the refugee, the person of another faith or of no faith at all.
We inhabit this city of love every time that we do the work of justice and protect the gift of creation, when we welcome the stranger into our midst, when we refuse to surrender to the strident voices that surround us and instead speak peace, salaam and shalom to our world.
May the love that came to birth at Christmas fill your heart and empower you for the living of these days.
