+ CARDINAL WILFRID NAPIER OFM
A CURSORY encounter with what the media thinks and says about Christmas is enough to confuse the enquiring observer quite thoroughly. Most presentations of Christmas do not go very far beyond the snow and tinsel that is typical of Europe and America.
Some focus on Santa Claus and his team of reindeers, others on similar mythological characters, as if these actually constitute the essence of Christmas. Very, very few include Nativity scenes in their mostly secular presentation of Christmas. So, where does this leave the Christian who is searching for the true meaning of Christmas?
As I sit here in Rome after the recent Consistory, which saw Pope Francis install 21 new cardinals, my thoughts turn to St Francis of the Assisi, a saint of many colours and talents, whose most original inspiration was to create a Christmas Crib to remind himself and his simple followers what Christmas means.
He did this at Greccio, one of his favourite retreat spots, overlooking the beautiful Rieti Valley in central Italy. He used statues of Mary and Joseph, Angels and Shepherds. Then he did something quite original. He introduced live animals to link that historical event of Jesus’ birth with life in his own time.
This is how the Christmas Crib came into being. Francis’s only aim and purpose was to help him, his friars and the simple people of Rieti to meditate on the reality of the birth of Christ in a truly graphic way. Of course this is what makes the Christmas story the realest thing that the little ones down the ages have come to experience as the Christmas story in its realest form.
Making Jesus present to them in visible form, is the best way of preparing them to meet Jesus in what the church does in its services during this time. Christmas is surely the best starting point for introducing little children to the world of God, of Angels and Spirits. In other words to the spiritual realities that are so easily understood by little ones whose imaginations are their greatest gift, and can lay the foundations for a lifelong growth in loving and serving God.
This is the background to what I believe we should be doing to relate the Christmas story to our history as a country over the 30 years since independence. As we read the heartbreaking stories of the many things that have fallen off the tracks in the past generation, it is good to remind ourselves of what we dreamed we could, and were about to, become!
The first dream was that we would become the Rainbow Nation, with each colour and culture leaving its own positive imprint on the South Africa we were going to become! Then there was that enthralling ideal of us being defined by Ubuntu, the essence of humanness which distinguishes us from all other creatures on earth.
Ubuntu would be our special brand, which we would proudly carry with us into the big bad world, and show them the secret of coming out of the evils of apartheid, not mortally scarred by our horrific past, but distinguished by this most positive characteristic imaginable especially from a country with such a forgettable past.
The third feature was our seeing ourselves as a nation under God, expressed so beautifully by our newly adopted national anthem Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrika, specially chosen to express our rootedness in Africa.
Sadly, in the past 30 years the rainbow has been covered by the cloud of crime, selfishness, exclusiveness; Ubuntu has become a forgotten word and with it, the long lost ideal; and Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrica an empty ritual, since we have long since completely ignored God’s injunction to be brothers and sisters to each other, by calling us to recognise and pray to him as Our Father. Lastly our rootedness in Africa has long been undone by frequent outburst of xenophobia for any number of reasons or even baseless excuses!
So, what are we to do?
In times of trouble, which is so big and widespread the best we can do is to go back to “go back to basics”. Those basics are what is so well expressed by the feast of Christmas, which we are preparing to celebrate with these awe inspiring words: Glory to GOD in the highest, and Peace on earth to MEN of goodwill!
Happy and grace-filled Christmas, as well as a New Year that is full of hope and promise.
+ Cardinal Wilfrid Napier OFM