But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.
If you were here two days ago, we asked together this question of how do we know all these details concerning Jesus’s childhood, after all the disciples weren’t there yet, probably weren’t even born when it all started, even for John the Baptist. Well see, the more details we have about Jesus’s childhood are found in Luke’s Gospel and always from Mary’s point of view (in Matthew’s Gospel, we hear much more about Joseph). Now we know that Luke also wrote the Book of Acts where he tells the story of the beginning of the church after Jesus’s death and resurrection, and Mary is mentioned several times among the Apostles. So it is very likely that Mary herself shared her memories with Luke: This story of Christmas, we read it from Luke’s scroll, but it is in fact Mary speaking to us. And if we want an additional proof of that, I think this sentence is our clue: Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. We will find this exact sentence again later, when Luke tells us a story of Jesus when he was 12 years old: His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And I can only imagine that, that Mary spent her life questioning, pondering, marveling and perhaps also worrying about all the things she heard and saw about Jesus. Not just as a young mother, but even as she sat down with Luke when she was an older women. The tradition tells us that she spent 63 years on earth.
At any rate, I thought it was almost tempting not to preach on a night like this because Christmas is indeed an invitation to silence, to ponder, to treasure, to adore, and if speak we must then we should sing praises as the shepherds did. You see, Jesus comes to us as an infant, and this is literally what it means in Latin: in-fant means the one who cannot speak. It is kind of wonderful and also a bit troubling if you want my opinion that the one John calls in his Gospel the Word of God himself, comes to us as the one who is unable to speak. And yet, isn’t it the way God is present in our world, hidden, in silence, so quiet we wonder if God is even here, and yes of course we have the Bible but if we force the Bible to tell us something, to answer all our questions then we don’t really hear anything, God speaks through words yes but God first speaks from beyond words, with God’s spirit, and if we want to hear God we we have to be able to keep silent and to really listen, and not just listen with our ears, but mostly, as Mary did, we have to listen with our hearts.
I read a book a few years ago called “You’re not listening” and the author was very bold in proclaiming that almost all our problems in life come from the fact that we aren’t really listening. She was mainly talking about interpersonal relationships but I think it applies with God as well. She said: We are a generation where everybody has something to say, but nobody is listening. And it stayed with me because it’s such an accurate way of describing our society that is so much saturated with information, social medias of course but even books, movies, songs and shows. We are saturated with words, and we all want to speak our truth, but maybe more than ever we have lost our ability to hear, to notice, to pay attention, to listen. And in this situation, it is no wonder that it’s getting harder and harder to find God, God speaks in silence and we can’t hear anything.
There are many reasons why it’s hard to listen. We know a lot of these reasons already. Yes, everybody has something to say and we live in a noisy and busy and distracted world. People often wonder why their Christmas were happier when they were children, and we assume it’s because we had less worries, but deeper than that it is that, when we have less worries ,we are more able to be attentive, and so of course children find it easier to feel God’s presence than we do. They’re more available. We have difficulty to listen because we have become self centered and so preoccupied with ourselves, and we see everything from our own point of view. Have you ever tried to say something personal to a friend only to have them interrupt and say: Yes, I know, the same thing just happened to me, and then they start telling you their story instead? Or you try to share a problem with a relative and they want so badly to fix it you cannot even finish your sentence. They will say: Let me tell you don’t waste your time feeling sad/mad or upset about it, it’s not worth it. And here ends the conversation. And of course we do that to them as well, when they want to talk to us.
But underneath all, and that’s when we circle back to our Gospel today, the reason why we are not listening is mostly because we are afraid. And the angels know that well. Each time heavens come to meet earth and share words with the people, they start by saying the words “Do not be afraid“. I wonder if it isn’t the reason why God speaks mostly in silence, or using people to speak for him, like saints or prophets or even humble parish priests, or maybe your best friend, or your Mom or the stranger you meet on the street. God knows we are afraid of what God has to say to us. And indeed we don’t want to listen because we are afraid of what we will hear. This is why, as the author of the book says, most of our relationship don’t work. We are afraid that our close ones are mad or sad, and we are afraid we’re unable to help them, and we are afraid they have something bad to say to us, that they will judge us, reject us, that they bring up something bad we did to them, that’s it’s all our fault in the end and that there is no way we can fix it. Come to think about it, it is even true not just with close ones, but even with the homeless on the street. We are afraid we are unable to do anything to help, to make up for the things we did, we are afraid we are unable to love and unworthy to ever be loved. So afraid of the bad things that we stop listening, we can get to the point where we avoid people or even give them “the silence treatment” – not so much not speaking to them but pretending we haven’t even heard what they said – yet most often we just keep talking, to speak our truth as we say, but mostly what we do is protecting ourselves, shielding ourselves under words of justification.
But what if, on this night among all nights, like the shepherds under the stars, what if the universe was trying to tell us something good? What if we’d actually listen and we’d heard, like we did two days ago reading the story of Elizabeth and Mary, what if we did listen and we heard words of blessing, comfort, encouragement, and ultimate hope, rather than hearing voices that are here to humiliate, judge and condemn? What if, as Mary sang, we were lifted up rather than being brought down? “Do not be afraid; for see I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people” say the angels. Christ is still among us as surely as he was in this night, waiting for us to dare to approach and to show us how loved we are that he, the ruler of the universe, would accept to be bound in a little manger so he could reach out to us. What more, or actually what less, could he do so we won’t be afraid? You may know this saying that you have actually to be very intimate with people when you can enjoy being silent with them, when you know you don’t have to prove, justify or even entertain, when your presence, you being you is enough for the person you’re sitting with. God does not ask us for more (or for less) than that. There is a story I really like about a woman who went on a mission to Haiti because she wanted to help the hungry. The thing is she quickly became discouraged because the more she fed people, the more people kept showing up, and she realized she could never fix it, and as she complained about it in prayer, she heard God telling her: You’re here to love. It hasn’t changed. We’re here to love and to let ourselves be loved and one of the best way to love? We set aside the worries, the ego, the justification, the shielding, the fixing and we just listen and we just be, be with one another and be with him, as he came to be with us.