IN FULL CRY

What a child! What a yell..at the very moment I was    preaching. This was during Mass in a village called ‘Paradise,’ in the Caribbean island of Grenada. It’s bawling might have been heard on the other side of the globe. ‘How come?’  You may ask.  To which I reply, “Because the Mass was being broadcast on our diocesan FM station, and this is now accessible on the Internet.”

This crying child had interrupted my sermon. Some might say it served me right. I, who before Mass  always ask people to turn off their cell phones, pagers, bleepers etc., should have  asked mothers not to bring their babies to church on that particular occasion. Sorry, I have no intention of ever going that way!

During my sermon I paused so as to allow the babe to have his say. I even asked the congregation to listen to the child. I reminded them that people all over the world may be hearing our Grenadian baby crying in church. He   would be telling them that where he comes from some have the privilege of being church-goers from the first days of their lives!

This child in our chapel would have sounded no different from Jesus of Nazareth in Mary’s embrace in the synagogue. Jesus and our baby boy were separated by thousands of years and by thousands of miles. Each would have been crying for the same thing, mother’s milk.  The two mothers were separated by this same long time and this great distance. Each would have lovingly understood and responded to this demanding appeal for nourishment.

This episode, this interruption, said more to me than anything I could have said in my sermon. Through my mind, over and over again, had been coursing the words, ”In so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me.”

I can’t help bracketing together the mother with her crying child in 'Paradise' chapel and Mary with her infant in Bethlehem.  Every time I see a mother carrying her child, every time I see a mother  nursing her child, I find myself being given a glimpse of the wonder, the beauty, of the Incarnation – Mary carrying Jesus, Mary nursing Jesus...Jesus,  the Son of  God, Jesus, the Son of Mary.

My thoughts zoom higher into orbit. It was only the Father’s freely made decision that created the necessity for the Son to be born to Mary of Nazareth all those years ago. Our Almighty Father never had to search around until He found the ideal woman to be the mother of His Son. He never had to weigh up what moment,  what locality, what circumstances, would be most suitable for the birth of this child.

Rather, the Father knew precisely what He wanted – that a particular couple of His choosing should cause a girl-child to be conceived and that in the very instant of that conceiving their offspring He should cause her to be immaculate – completely untouched by sin – the Immaculate Conception of Mary, full of grace..in Judea..some two thousand years ago.

The Father could have done all this for any other woman, at any other time, and in any other place. She could have been someone in our own families, in our own time, in our own place. You, who are women listening to me now, are entitled to say, ”It could have been me!”

I can see myself wrestling with these thoughts throughout Advent. The more I ponder on motherhood, the more I shall be drawn into the mystery of the Word of God becoming flesh and dwelling among us. In the Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the divine and the human are bonded together in this one person, who is the Son of God and the Son of Mary.

While the cry of our Grenadian baby was heard over the radio around the world on only one occasion, the significance of the cry of the babe born at Bethlehem resonates in the heart of every believer throughout the ages.

The bawling of billions of infants down through the ages could never surpass, never exceed, neither in quality nor in importance, the softest cry of Jesus in that manger outside Bethlehem.