On Christmas night, the fury of hell saw the glory of heaven, and the earth shook

I wrote this short story for Christmas in 2013. Hope you will share with your family. Audible link below

My little cousin and I watch as my uncle washes away the blood and examines the wound. He is making that odd breathless noise — halfway between a gasp of surprise and a sigh of regret — that he always makes when an attack has been thwarted. My uncle, after all, is nearly 40, an old man long past the charms of making his bed upon the chill earth at night, disenchanted with stargazing while wolves in the dark distance howl, or creep in silence, just beyond our sight.

It is different for his son, my cousin. Joining us in the fields, he had adopted the self-important swagger of a boy set to working among the men, but a month of raw weather, of keeping predators at bay while saving the sheep from themselves — for there is no stupider creature on G-d’s earth than a sheep — has brought a dullness to his step. A wolf can be cunning but does not have to be; even a lupine dullard is smarter than the filthy, stinking sheep we guard and save and lead and nurse back to health, when we can.

This sheep, my uncle pronounces, as he treats the wound with garlic and honey and binds it tightly, will likely live; its wound is slight. As I watch him work, my imagination and my stomach conspire against me. Our meal tonight was only lentils and bread, and at the notion of a lamb roasted with garlic, my gut has gone rude and noisy.

This, more than anything, overwhelms whatever meager pleasures a shepherd might take in his labors: the hunger. For all that the night sky fascinates and the breezes alive in the grassy pastures may bring delight, there remains a constant sense of hunger — of an appetite never fully assuaged. This gnawing emptiness is no accident of poor planning; it is by design. To be slightly hungry is to be awake, alert. A shepherd who eats his full finds his senses dulled — he becomes more likely to want a nap, and that always becomes a hard sleep. If a predator comes, or a sheep gets himself lost or trapped — or has stumbled into harm’s way, as they always do — the shepherd will be too weighed down to react, his reflexes too slow. One cannot run well with a full belly.

Still, when we bake our breads upon the fire daily, my wish is to add a few fistfuls of flour into the mix; to bake enough bread to fill in the chinks until I am finally sated. When I have tried, always my older brother has stayed my hand. “We have the rations,” I argue, but he shakes his head. “Be prudent and stay prepared,” he says. “Each day we must have bread.”

I hate being a shepherd.

Tonight, my cousin and I will have the first watch. My cousin — as he does most nights — raises his fine young voice in song. I take a mouthful of water and amuse myself, not for the first time, with the idea of becoming a pirate; I imagine the tang of salty air — a breeze that bears nothing of the sheep’s traveling stench upon it — and all the fish and bread I can eat.

A daydream can be almost as distracting as a good sleep, and so I give it up after a while, and make my survey. My cousin has left off his singing; the flock is peaceful and sleeping. The early clouds of evening have given way, and all is bright.

So what is it that has raised the hair at the back of my neck? Even a placid night has its share of howls and screams in the distance and yet — there, again — a noise at once frantic and angry. It is a sound so eerie and unfamiliar — the growls of defensive, indignant rage and weird, guttural shriekings; there is a timbre, a tone that I have never heard before — of hellish, ruthless hate, something desperate and deep, and it chills all of us to the marrow. My cousin and I seek each other out and our fathers and the rest arise, and we stand a confused and terrorized guard. The harrowing fury is all around us, it seems drawn up from the very bowels of the earth, yet we do not seem to be directly under siege.

The caterwauling makes me cover my ears, but I am too afraid to close my eyes. My cousin is screaming, though, bent prostrate in terror, and the rest of us are rooted where we stand.

Above the noise there comes a snap! A sound like a crackle of lightning only faster, and brighter, and something great and terrible is upon us! The furious tumult that has surrounded us is met with something equally loud, equally fearsome but of a different nature; it is the booming, crystalline sound of light, and for a brief moment — it can only be a moment, but it seems to go on and on, into eternity — we are encompassed within a battle, and a reality, that bears no relation to any thing we have seen with our eyes, or known though our senses or tasted with our mouths. For this brief instant we are in a place of hair-raising truth, of things-as-they-are, visible and invisible, and of a fullness that is absolute.

And suddenly, the commotion dies; the howling shrieks of rage recede and are silenced and now there is a hum — a vibration, growing near, and becoming loud — as though the very heavens were a hive. There is light building upon light, yet we are not blinded. Before my cousin something is formed within this light and it bends toward him. It says, “Do not be afraid.” His trembles stop and he looks up; and in this strange new reality of integration we see what we are hearing, and are hearing with our eyes. “Behold!” we hear, we see: “I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

And the hive of heaven is rent; the skies are filled with these messengers, these beings, these … I do not know what! And the thrum and murmur grows marvelous, bursting into a song of surpassing, unearthly beauty: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

We are in the midst of holiness; we are introduced to a wholeness — earth and heaven, field and sky — this sense of oneness, so much greater than ourselves; a resolute invitation away from the awful, inescapable loneliness of our small sect, our smaller selves.

It is irresistible. We walk to Bethlehem, bells ringing, bringing our sheep. My uncle carries the injured one on his shoulders, and we travel familiar, narrow byways that keep us, always, at the margins of the city — away from marketplaces and inns, for we know our place; we are shepherds; we stink of the sheep.

We find the hewn place, like a cave, and again there is light or not light, precisely — oh, how do I tell it? It is a kind of mist of brightness, and it is alive; it contains a hum, a buzz, a fizz that is like pulsing life, and it is everywhere, and it bathes everything and everyone in its warm glow.

All is as we have been told. As we approach I see tears coursing down my father’s weathered face, and he does nothing to staunch them. My uncle stands in muted awe, lamb still across his shoulders, and my cousin steps eagerly forward and is stayed by a man. He is older than our own fathers and his countenance is careworn, kindly — radiant, within that luminescence. We tell him what we have seen — that we have been invited — and he tells us his name, Joseph, and permits us to linger at the edge and peer within. We behold a young mother cuddling a newborn. Having fed him of herself, she is in the act of placing him on the freshly-lain, sweet-smelling straw with which the manger has been filled. After a glance at Joseph, she raises the babe, that we might better see him. She holds him high against her breast, showing off her son with obvious pride and love, and with her right hand she makes a gesture of presentment. We are confounded to adore him with an ardor strangely equal to her own. Finally, she lays the child down. In the food bin, he rests.

By his loud sigh I understand that my uncle has been holding his breath, not daring to breathe in the sight of this intimacy, “which will be for all the people,” he murmurs to no one in particular.

Here, in a small spot on the edge of Bethlehem, the old stories and prayers and songs flit through my memory like leaves turning in the wind; “in your light, we see light.” And, “But you, Bethlehem … out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”

I shiver to recall the words. Shaking my head to clear it, seeking normalcy in routine, I take a shepherd’s survey of my surroundings. Here are beasts of burden; over there, cattle and fowl, for sacrifice and for feasting; there, a supply of grain, some fruits — the good nourishment of the earth. There are jugs of water, and of wine, and the small satchel of flour, common to us all, because each day we must have bread. There are a man and a woman and a child.

My father, cheeks still wet with tears, leans toward me, his arm at my shoulders, pulling me into rare embrace. “My son,” he whispers, “we are in Paradise.”

Yes. In the small time of the night — the hours during which only perhaps mothers join shepherds in wakefulness — we have been privileged to stand at Eden’s threshold.

I cannot be a mother, so a shepherd I will remain.

If you would like to listen to the story on audio, check out Julie Davis’ beautifully narrated podcast.

“Set aside every fear…” with the help of Catherine of Siena

It was a great pleasure to be asked to blurb the latest edition in Ave Maria Press’ “30 Days With a Great Spiritual Teacher” series of small devotionals. This one, Set Aside Every Fear, features the writings of Catherine of Siena, and her words worked powerfully on me, and so I gave it a very enthusiastic thumbs up:

“Set Aside Every Fear not only helps us to become acquainted with the great St. Catherine of Siena, but brings to the reader an unusual and fine sense of “quietening.” In reading the meditations grounded in Catherine’s work, one’s spirit settles and becomes be-calmed as it is drawn into the presence of a saint and her mystical relationship to Christ Jesus. Mysteriously, deliciously, the daily thought we are encouraged to ponder begins to penetrate into all of our routine craziness and anxiety, and there comes to us a sense of peace and wellness that inspires us toward further prayer, further contemplation, and thus a deepening of faith. I really love this book, and know that I will return to it again and again. There is grace within these pages. This is a beautiful balm of a book.”

The whole series is terrific and I recommend it to you, but I do think the Siena book may be my favorite. You can pre-order it and have it when it is released in January — just in time to shake off the noise and busyness of the holidays and get centered again.

While we’re talking about Catherine of Siena, I’ve been meaning to direct your attention to OSV’s new translation of her Dialogue, — an edition that is highly readable and accessible, and a beautifully bound addition to their “Noll Library” collection of Catholic spiritual classics.

Don’t let the fact that I wrote the intro scare you off it. The fact is, once you’ve made Catherine’s acquaintance in the first book, you may very well want the second. She is a woman speaking with relevance to our times even from the 14th century, and a fearless model for the layfolk who may become the great force for reform in how we create our priests and teach our faith.

And yeah, at this point, I may as well direct your attention to another favorite book on Catherine, which would be Edmund Gardner’s classic The Road to Siena, which I wrote about at some length over at Word on Fire a while back and was recently re-edited by Jon Sweeney and reissued in paperback via Paraclete Press. It’s very good, too.

I’m kind of sorry I didn’t think to write about these books while everyone was Christmas shopping, but I only got an advance copy of Set Aside Every Fear in the mail today, so…you know…

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How Duke Ellington Kept Christmas All Year Long

The story goes that if the legendary composer and orchestrator Duke Ellington had met you and gotten his hands on your mailing address, you could expect a Christmas card from him. It may not come at Christmas but at some point during the year, his personally written and signed greetings would grace your mailbox.

“Duke Ellington and I exchanged Christmas greetings each year,” wrote Joe Delaney of the Las Vegas Sun. “Mine were sent in mid-December. Duke sent his when the spirit moved him.”

A reformed Ebenezer Scrooge may have pledged to “honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year,” but for Ellington, no reform was needed. His card list was extensive, and he faithfully wrote out his greetings while traveling, or when there was a little downtime between gigs. Friends said he found nothing strange in dropping some Christmas wishes in the dog days of summer, when chestnuts roasting on an open fire seemed a hellish idea, and a stable suggested only a stench.

The cards we are receiving at our house this year, though timely, have seemed relentlessly self-absorbed and unseasonal; the majority of them are not even cards, but photographs. They are pictures of families — or at least of the children, no matter how old — posing in bathing suits on a beach, or with a parrot on a cruise, and with nary a manger or an angel in sight.

Well, why would there be when, in fact, these messages are not really about Christmas at all. They’re about the selfie-ness of the senders, for whom even the recipient has become an irrelevant detail — an acquaintance confirmed via printed label stuck to the envelope. Not a pen is lifted, nor a name scrawled; not a warm sentiment is betrayed. The message is, in essence, “We had a nice vacation this year and liked this picture so here it is, and oh yeah, Happy Holidays.”

I don’t mean to be cranky. It is nice to get the pictures. Still, I can’t help but think there is something profoundly anti-Incarnational about the Christ-lessness it all.

Incarnation is a process; it is actually a succession of processes — an ongoing pursuit of becoming. Incarnation involves intention and then consent, but not in isolation, and not just once; the consent happens again and again. It is a consent to be present; a consent to see, to hear, to listen, to respond, to love, to ache, to surrender in order to attain the fullness of that intention with which it all started.

The quasi-narcissism on display in these “holiday greetings” suggests no intention to seek out a greatness beyond ourselves; it consents to only the barest engagement with an ever-diminishing sense of social obligation. As such, it is empty and void; the “nothing” that is only possible without God. For with God — the angels tell Mary — “nothing” is “impossible.”

We can learn a lesson from Duke Ellington and his dedication to the cards that kept Christmas alive in his heart year-round and, with every postmark, communicated a theme of Incarnation. For him, Christmas was always coming — the Christ was always on His way, or newly arrived. In troubling himself to hand-write his messages, he was demonstrating profound intention and consent; the lucky acquaintance who opened Ellington’s Christmas cards in April, or July, or October, was hearing a message not so far removed from the song of the angels: You have been thought of; you have been brought forth with intention; you have been seen, and heard, and listened to; you have been loved. And Christ is coming. And Christ is here, where love is.

This is the message of Christmas, but the great secret is that it is the message of our every day, too. Perhaps it was easier to remember this when Christians would pause briefly, every day, to recollect the great mystery of Incarnation by praying the Angelus:

The Angel of the Lord declared to Mary:

And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.

Behold the handmaid of the Lord:

Be it done unto me according to Thy word.

And the Word was made Flesh:

And dwelt among us.

One evening, while awaiting his train at Penn Station, my elder son was approached by a disheveled, mildly aromatic middle-aged woman; she said she was hungry and wondered if he might spare some change. Instead, he walked with her to a food stand and bought her a hamburger and fries and a drink. As she ate, he sat with her, and they chatted pleasantly. When I asked him why he didn’t simply hand her a few dollars and keep walking, which is what I would have done, he said that would have seemed “dismissive” — that the woman was as deserving as anyone else of being seen, and heard, and known, even if just for a little while.

In the noise of the world and our harried distractions and self-absorption, we lose track of the mystery and message of Christmas: that we are meant to be an Incarnational people, a people of intention, consenting to be aware of each other, fully present to each other, alive to each other, affirming each other, for God’s sake.

Duke Ellington used to tell his audiences that he loved them, and madly. Nat Hentoff, in a fond piece, quoted him: “It’s true. I love those people madly. . . . Maybe 30 years ago I used to think, ‘I play for myself. I express me.’ And an artist has to please himself first. But . . . when someone else happens to like what you’re doing too, this brings on a state of agreement that is the closest thing there is to sex, because people do not indulge themselves together unless they agree this is the time.”

Intention, consent, seeing, listening, being present, affirmation. It is an Incarnational way of living that perhaps only someone like Ellington, who kept Christmas well and understood its secret, could manage.

In 1974, Hentoff was the glad recipient of an April Christmas card from the Duke, who died weeks later, in May. “What came back to me as I looked at that card was what sideman Clark Terry told me: ‘Duke wants life and music to always be a state of becoming. He doesn’t even like definitive song endings to a piece. He’d often ask us to come up with ideas for closings, but when we’d settled on one of them, he’d keep fooling with it. He always likes to make the end of a song sound as if it’s going somewhere.’”

That’s the Incarnational process. Perhaps Ellington’s great understanding was informed by the God-spark residing within his own artistic gift. As he first composed to please himself, so did the Creator create. But now all creation resides within the unending note of “yes” that emanates, still, from God. A world of truth, order, fulfillment, and new creation hinges on the agreement, the corresponding “yes” of the creatures.

So much depends on our ability to see beyond the distractions of a day, and our willingness to unplug, in order to hear the eternal note of invitation and consent to the process of becoming.

This piece originally published at National Review Online in 2013. Resurrected thanks to a friend who posted it to social media today from a source with broken links. Thanks, Millie, for reminding me of it!

The Sheen Postponement: What was I thinking?

If this feels “long” to you, you can get the shorter version here

In general when on social media, I have tried to have a care, and to say what I mean with sincerity and clarity, and I’ve been told that I manage to do so with some success, most of the time.

But sometimes, it all goes splat.

Yesterday was one of those times. I made a terrible mistake on Twitter — a big mistake, all of my own doing, out of my own personal head, and mine alone — and I own all of it. While I could plead a “post-sickroom haze” for it I won’t bother because regardless of why, I was not giving my best on the platform. Sloppy is sloppy, thoughtless is thoughtless, insensitive is insensitive, and I was all of those things on twitter yesterday, and then some. At the shocking news of the unprecedented, all-but-11th-hour postponement of the canonization of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, my thought processes were firing all over the place and I, like a true bonehead, let my fingers fly with them in an uncharacteristic fashion that shocked many and — much too late — shocked and embarrassed me, too.

I apologize to everyone who follows me, and those who don’t but who were also taken aback by my posting underdeveloped ideas — so poorly expressed that people were ready to believe I was tagging Fulton Sheen as a man with same sex attraction and advancing an agenda. I wasn’t doing either of those things, but I expressed myself so inelegantly that it’s what some took from my posts, and they were rightly appalled. What I said was speculative, imprudent, and insensitive to an emotionally charged situation. In the glare of morning, I am myself appalled, and have decided to remove the tweet. I really can offer no excuse beyond thoughtlessness and perhaps a bit of pride. Which always cometh before a fall.

And I fell. In thinking about it this morning I see that I’d actually done, myself, what I’d accused the Diocese of Peoria of doing: writing too quickly and not carefully vetting my words in anticipation of how people would take them. So, I apologize to those good folks, too, in deep sympathy because when one is writing in a whirlwind, things are not always as tidy as they could be.

In my case, “untidy” doesn’t begin to describe it — I was reckless even to the point of using outdated language I had pulled from my memory, another stupid move.

All in all, yesterday I provided big fat sticks for people to beat me with (from all sides, because that’s just how bad the post was), and the thumping was (for the most part) well-deserved. Everyone has a “bad day on Twitter” once in a while — a day they wish they could erase or do-over. Yesterday was mine, and as I shuffle my feet in embarrassment and contrition for my tone-deafness, I hope for a small portion of what charity still remains on social media to come my way, because none of my stupidity was intentional. Stupidity almost never is.

I revere Fulton Sheen (whose words I have quoted while writing about lay involvement in the necessary reforms that will hopefully happen in the wake of our horrific sex abuse scandals); I want to see him canonized as soon as possible, which on any other day I wouldn’t have to state that explicitly, but today I do. I have also apologized to Fulton Sheen this morning for adding to an already muddy and unclear situation by my wrongheaded words and insensitivity.

As to pulling the offending tweet, I was intending to keep the tweet up because while it was stupid, it wasn’t built on anything malicious or intentionally meant to offend — such an intention WOULD be sinful — but on consideration this morning I have decided I will remove it, because I have no wish to cause further confusion for those who might see the post but not this afterthought, and because I don’t wish to tempt mischief.

Mea maxima culpa. To have made a mistake of this size suggests to me that I need to use this Advent season to shore up my spirit, and recalibrate my radar away from my own pride and more toward the sensibilities of others, so that is what I am going to do — starting with removing myself from social media until until the Bridegroom has come.

Happy Advent. In your spiritual generosity, please pray for me.