Kathy Coffey

Under the sullen grey skies of January, some of us dread the return to ordinary time: the end of colorful lights, festive meals, carols, decorated trees, cookies, gatherings of those we love, the sweetness of the Christmas pageant. This year, some realities seem to hit with more harshness: the violence, greed, lies, cruelty, contempt for law and the environment that characterize this administration. We can resonate with Isaiah’s description of “the people who sit in darkness.” Where’s the light?

A few glimmers: Bishop Budde of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. confirmed in her talk on Christmas Eve: we may want another world, but this is it. Imperfect as it is, it may not be what God wanted either. But she reminds us of the lesson from improv. theater—act in the scene you’re in, not the one you want. (That acceptance seems to echo in Jesus’ response to John the Baptist, hardly a conventional character: “Then he allowed him.”)Isaac Slater enlarges the metaphor in his book, Do Not Judge Anyone. In an improvisational skit, the actor “can either block or accept the cues offered by a partner.” The skilled actor “overaccepts,” “takes on the cue with a kind of wild generosity spinning it in some new unforeseen and imaginative direction.” (p. 25) Isn’t that how God acts, with crazy creativity? The message of Christmas: nothing we face lies outside the reach of God’s love. God comes not into all that’s right, but in the midst of what’s broken. And some beautiful transformations ensue.

For example, a difficult situation with the unhoused in San Jose, CA. Neighbors were rightly concerned about fires, break-ins and pollution of the Guadalupe River which flowed through the encampment and their back yards. They fought the first proposal for a housing project, a classic NIMBY stance. But eight years later, Mayor Matt Mahan promised residents that the Cherry Ave. project would improve their neighborhoods and guaranteed that if any problems occurred there, the city would respond immediately. He believes getting people into dignified shelter quickly, instead of waiting years for funding and construction, can make a big difference. Indeed it has: 23% fewer people died on the streets from violence and extreme weather this year. The neighbors are so pleased, they’ve sent welcome baskets with hand-written notes, and volunteered weekends to set up rooms with sheets and laundry supplies. A county supervisor donated to the baskets; a city councilmember helped put them together. As one resident said, “I don’t want to always be the complainer. I want to be part of the solution.” (East Bay Times, 1/5/26, 1,6.)

God’s affirmation of Jesus as “beloved child” comes to each of us, bringing the confidence and support we need to face tough times. It may be easy to nod in agreement with John’s letter: “Children, we belong to God” when our mouths are stuffed with turkey or pie, but what about in the ICU? The traffic? The dentist’s chair? The immigration court?

Even there: another glimmer. District Judge P. Casey Pitts of Northern California has temporarily blocked ICE agents from arresting migrants at immigration courts in his jurisdiction. The presence of ICE has a chilling effect on those who are trying to do the right thing, showing up for their hearings. The horror tales of deportations further undermine the judicial process. The racist myth that these refugees have criminal records has often been disproven, yet they are dehumanized. It’s a far cry from “beloved child,” but let’s applaud the efforts to correct this demeaning treatment.

God is here too, working in and through us, puny as our efforts may seem. We may not see the heavens open or the Spirit descending, but that inner voice reminds, “with you I am well pleased.”

Long before Jesus preached inclusivity, Mary practiced it. Imagine being the mother of a newborn, exhausted from a trip to register for the census in Bethlehem. Then picture giving birth in a stable, which was probably not as cozy and clean as most Christmas cards depict. Mary is far away from her support system, so she can’t rely on her mother, sisters or friends for help. No casseroles, no baby blankets. 

Then, according to Luke, a crowd of shepherds arrives. They must be strangers, but there is no record of Mary feeling uncomfortable with these uninvited guests. Instead, she “treasures” the memories and is filled with gratitude. Matthew’s account of the magi doesn’t mention Mary’s response, but she must have wondered: how many more surprise visitors would crowd into their temporary housing? These visitors aren’t even Jewish–and bring the strangest gifts. 

Mary’s experience should give us fair warning. If we hang around with Jesus, we’d better keep our doors open. He brings along an odd assortment of friends. They may not bring frankincense or myrrh, but they arrive unexpectedly when there are only two enchiladas for dinner. They come disguised as the children’s friends or the lonely neighbor who talks too long while the rolls burn. They phone at the worst possible times and they interrupt our most cherished plans. And in these, says Jesus, you’ll find me.  

The beauty of this feast takes on special resonance this year, when the hero who interrupted the hateful, antisemitic shooting at Bondi Beach, Australia, was Ahmed al Ahmed, a Syrian-born immigrant. While he lay recovering in the hospital from gun wounds himself, he sent this message to mourners gathered at a memorial service: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted,” Psalm 34:18. In turn, his father Mohamed Fateh al Ahmed, lighted a candle on the menorah for the last night of Hannukah, a feast begun in bloodshed. How rare it is—and how lovely—to see tribal boundaries dissolve, and people of various backgrounds, religions and ethnicities come together to grieve, to honor what makes us all most deeply human, to include everybody.

Perhaps the challenge of the Christmas season is whether we can hear familiar stories and songs with wonder, not the yawn of “déjà vu.”  Can we allow the stories we’ve heard a thousand times—of a journey to Bethlehem, a stable, angels, shepherds and magi, to resonate at a deeper level this year? Can we attend with care to whatever God wants to birth in us during this season? As Eugene Ionesco warns, “over-explanation separates us from astonishment.” Perhaps the rest of the year can be cut-and-dried, but this is the season for mystery to flourish and awe to flower.

It helps to read Caryll Houselander’s The Reed of God, which points out how ordinary the Christmas story is. God doesn’t ask Mary to enter a cloister or become a heroic missionary to cannibals. Her life carries on much as it might’ve before Gabriel’s visit. In fact, “God did mean it to be the ordinary thing” so Christ can be born “in every human being’s life and not, as a rule through extraordinary things.” Most of the Advent figures are quiet, crossing the stage without fanfare, no swelling choirs. Hannah, for instance, carries a child into the temple. She’s not a priest nor bishop, simply a woman who could’ve easily gone unnoticed. So too, Mary and Elizabeth have a conversation on the back porch, not even in the temple. But how these women change the course of human history!

The quiet simplicity contrasts with the way of the zealot: loud, attention-seeking and forcing everyone into the same mold. The Christmas message is that we give hearts and hands to God, each unique life bearing Christ into the world. Whether we’re paying bills, mopping floors, buying groceries or washing cars, we are new faces of God. And the God of surprises grins and twirls and pirouettes in all the places we’d least expect…

“God will make a house for you” comes the Advent promise of 2 Samuel 7. An echo comes in Matthew 1:24: “[Joseph] took his wife into his home.” Despite the natural hesitation he must’ve felt, Joseph brings Mary first into the home of his heart, then his physical dwelling. In his adult life, Jesus would give people who wandered ungrounded and unhoused homes within himself, promising in John 15: 4, “Make your home in me, as I make mine in you.”

It’s such a natural metaphor, easy to imagine. Home is where we cook, eat, relax, eagerly return when it’s cold or rainy, cry, read, invite friends and family, sleep and laugh: the shelter of our truest self. In The Reed of God, a book I’ve read many Advents since high school, Caryll Houselander says, “It’s as if the human race were a little dark house, without light or air, locked and latched.” When Mary says “Yes” to Gabriel, she opens the door to a clean wind and light, “and in that little house a child was born.”

The shared belief of Christians is that Jesus has become one with humans, indeed has pitched his tent within us. None of us deserves this, so we celebrate God’s lavish abandon, the scandalous gratuity of God’s gift.

If this seems a tall order, if we’re too tired or depressed to rejoice, we can take heart from the ambiguity of the feast. Mary’s reaction to the angel is to be “much perplexed.” Indeed, the whole experience is for her a two-edged sword: joy tempered by natural, human fear.

Oh Mary, if you could see us now. Trying to evade the relentless cheer of holiday songs repeated so often we could scream, figuring out how we’ll “get it all done,” buzzing with details. You created a balance between anticipation and confusion. You focused on the important thing: making a home in yourself where the small and vulnerable could shelter.  Bring us home to ourselves, to our creative calling.

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This season seems permeated with impossibilities like the dead stump of Jesse budding. Even if we could wrap our minds around the idea of God becoming human, “pitching a tent in us,“ it’s an even longer leap to see ourselves as God’s children, heirs to the divine kingdom. Irish poet John O’Donohue writes of “being betrothed to the unknown.” Christmas means we are also married to the impossible, getting comfortable with the preposterous. It all began with Mary’s vote of confidence: “For nothing is impossible with God.” When we hear Mary’s “Magnificat,” we might remember Elizabeth’s words that precede it: “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord will be fulfilled” (Luke 1:45).

It’s a good time to ask ourselves, do we let bitterness and cynicism poison our hearts? Ironically, WE are conscious of our own limitations. GOD keeps reminding us of our high calling, royal lineage and a mission so impeccably suited to our talents and abilities, no one else in the world can do it. Again, Mary is the perfect model. She might not understand half the titles given her son in the “Alleluia Chorus” of the “Messiah.” Mighty God? Prince of Peace? Such language is better suited to a royal citadel than a poor village named Nazareth.  While her questions are natural, she never wimps out with “I don’t deserve this honor.” Instead, she rises to the occasion.

What’s become of our great dreams? Have we adjusted “wisely” to reality, or buried ideals in a tide of cynicism? Mired in our own problems and anxieties, do we struggle more with good news than with bad? If these questions make us squirm, perhaps we need the prayer of Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB: “God help me believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is.”

Remember that the adult Jesus hung out with some unsavory characters: crooks and curmudgeons, loudmouths and lepers, shady ladies and detested tax guys. In his scheme of things, our virtue trips us up more than our sin. The ugly stain of self-righteousness blocks our path to God more than natural, human failures.  Limited as we know ourselves to be, we might ask ourselves the question raised by novelist Gail Godwin, “who of us can say we’re not in the process of being used right now, this Advent, to fulfill some purpose whose grace and goodness would boggle our imagination if we could even begin to get our minds around it?” (“Genealogy and Grace” in Watch for the Light. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004, 167)

Notice the angel Gabriel’s first word to Mary: “Rejoice.” The baby in Elizabeth’s womb as she greets Mary “leaps for joy.” Let’s remember that tone this week, which can be one of the most hectic in the year. The angel says, “rejoice.” Not “spend. Clean. Cook. Decorate. Shop. Bake. Wrap. Shop again. Create the perfect holiday ambiance. Work to exhaustion. Make everyone in the family sublimely happy.”

As we do seasonal tasks this week, may we do them not as perfectionists, but with a mantra of gratitude and praise: Not “I have to do this,” but “I get to do this. Let me do it with thanks.” An added incentive: “Masaka Kids,” a Netflix documentary about children who were living on the streets in Uganda, many orphaned by AIDS, who have little to rejoice about, but dance like a fast-moving portrait of joy.

Need a gift to help an older person appreciate all they mean to us? Try A Generous Lap: A Spirituality of Grandparenting. Orbis Books, 800-258-5838, or their website: https://orbisbooks.com/

The human ego resists change, especially as we age. “Gimme my safe rut, even if it’s miserable!” we say, defying logic. But Advent presents a different approach to change.

In Jesus’ time, the governor, tetrarch and high priest seemed like the marble pillars of society, suggesting stoic permanence. Against such stony political, military and religious might, how could a voice crying in the desert have any effect at all? Ah, stay tuned… What a topsy-turvy, crazy toppling will ensue.

Change is bound to come our way this season too—the usual routines so disrupted that some people eagerly anticipate the resumption of school and work schedules. But the two key figures of Advent, John the Baptist and Mary have no guarantees, no script foretelling the future, no promise that everything will go back to normal post-holiday.

Mary models the perfect response to God’s unexpected, even scandalous intervention in her life. When she told Gabriel, “May it be to me as you have said,” she had no idea what that meant. All she’d learned was the trust handed on by her great great-grandmothers: if it comes from God’s hands, it must be perfectly tailored for me.

In times of central heating and plentiful food supplies, we no longer battle the winter as our ancestors did, finding it a precarious season to stay alive–isolated from others, running low on resources. Our great-grandparents who endured many cold, gloomy nights must’ve rejoiced at those glints of light in dark forests, when almost imperceptibly, the planet tilted towards spring, and the days became longer.

We too have reasons for despair, crippling fears, anxiety over how much we need to do before Christmas. If problems are more serious, do we run from them, or lean into them, wondering what they might teach us? Can we befriend our pain, knowing we’re more than its sting? Could we embrace for once an imperfect holiday, not scripted by Martha Stewart, but perhaps closer to the first, where an unmarried couple had to scrounge an inhospitable place to have a baby?

This Advent may be one of the darkest ever, especially for fearful immigrants, hungry people losing food security, those deeply concerned about the future of our democracy, and those watching their health insurance premiums soar. All that is desperately wrong may highlight our need for God. It may also alert us to the glimmers of hope—the watchful whistles warning of ICE raids in Chicago, the staunch federal judges unafraid to name unlawful government actions, the churches and synagogues that continue the centuries-old tradition of offering sanctuary, the bold journalists—and comedians!–who name the evil.

Such signs help us start Advent not with dread or foreboding, but with joyful anticipation. It’s like welcoming into our homes a dear friend or relative whom we haven’t seen for a while. There’s probably a flurry of cleaning, grocery shopping and cooking—all done with delight. When we look forward to renewing a close relationship, the preparation isn’t a burdensome chore. It may be tiring, but it’s happy.   

Jesus gives the disciples similar advice in today’s gospel: don’t be snoozing when an important visitor arrives. Be alert, awake, watchful as people are at an airport, searching the crowd for a beloved face.

How much more carefully we await the arrival of God. God is already with us, always and everywhere. Our Advent preparations highlight that presence, helping us become more aware. If we are lulled into anesthesia by despair, busy schedules or overfamiliarity, Advent is the wake-up call. Look beyond the current mess, towards God’s unfailing care. Do we surrender our bedrock beliefs because of a would-be dictator, who might be short-lived? Do we give up hope so easily?

It’s encouraging to read how people in other, sometimes worse regimes, responded to de-humanizing brutality with creativity and hope. In El Salvador, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, the US during slavery and Jim Crow, and many other places, ordinary heroes mustered their courage, “threw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.”  This dark Advent may call us, as it did others in history, to a “conspiracy of compassion.” In previous years, we’ve prayed it ritually; this year it may be more heartfelt: “Come Lord Jesus, and do not delay.”

At first it may seem odd to have a feast for a basilica, as Catholics do today for St. John Lateran. But then consider: during the World War II Nazi occupation of Rome, Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty (yup, Irish) rescued over 4000 Jews and Allied prisoners of war through a clever network of hiding places in churches, monasteries and homes. (The daring exploit was recorded in the film The Scarlet and the Black, 1983.) That feat makes even more special a tradition that has always revered sacred spaces. Furthermore, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians tells people they are sacred dwellings: “You are God’s building…Do you not know that you are the temple of God?”  (3:9, 11)

While scripture and tradition say clearly that churches should be places for good news, beautiful art and music, nurture, affirmations–never condemnations–most of us learn in more domestic spaces what Jesus means by “make your home in me as I make mine in you.”  What a blessing it is to stay (or live) in a home where the welcome is authentic, the plush towels are piled high, the frig. is well stocked and the conversations are relaxed, interesting. Sometimes I think Thomas Merton, writing from his stark hermitage would laugh at me checking the thread count on the sheets. But he writes: “all our salvation begins on the level of common and natural and ordinary things….the psalms of one’s coughings and sneezings and coffee drinkings… “

And what of those who wash the dishes, change the beds, fold the towels, tuck toothbrushes and band-aids into bathroom cabinets, do the grocery shopping, cook the food, subtly make sure each room is a haven? They’d probably say, “just doing my job,” like the people in Mathew 25:37, who seem genuinely startled when they ask, “When, Lord, did we see you hungry and give you food, or thirsty and give you something to drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you?” Or they act like the good host in Lk. 14:15-24, who despite their rudeness and lame excuses, keeps inviting people to dinner: “come in that my home may be filled.”

It may seem a stretch from St. John Lateran to the local swimming pool. But there, a drama unfolded when a mom brought a boy with neurodivergence for his first swim lesson. The child was terrified, bellowing in fear as he clutched mom and teacher in a death grip. I doubted he’d be persuaded by the toys the teacher tried, but eventually, she eased him into the water. Cradling him tightly, she never let go as they tentatively entered a little shallow water. Gradually, the screams of terror turned to shrieks of delight. By the end of the lesson, the boy rode grandly as a prince on the teacher’s back as she swam a half lap to the delight of other swimmers.  Mom took pictures of a quiet miracle: that teacher had helped the child feel at home in the water. So too parent-God holds us tight in a fearful world, slowly suggesting it’s our home.