Swaddling clothes!” These words never cease to strike awe and wonder in me every Christmas.
My first memory-engraving episode happened on the day of our First Holy Communion on the 8th of December. My companions and I were all restlessly seated as we tried not to wrinkle our spanking-white outfits and break our tall and slender immaculately white candles.
The good and cheerful parish priest took some time to ask us questions to see if we were indeed ready to receive Jesus. Among the things he asked was, “What was the Baby Jesus wearing in the manger?”
“Swaddling clothes!” I excitedly replied as Father Charles smiled with approval to my quick response. I no longer recall what else he said on that eventful night. But the words ‘swaddling clothes’ have never left my memory.
Years later, as a priest, the words come back with a newer meaning. What strikes me that our Lady could only ‘afford’ to give Her firstborn child, the Son of God, swaddling clothes.
Surely any mother preparing Herself physically, emotionally and spiritually to give light (in some cultures giving birth is described as opening a newborn’s eyes to the world’s light) to the One who is the Light of the World, would have at least managed to give something more than swaddling clothes.
Scripture does not reveal anything that would clarify this ‘lack of maternal solicitude’ for such a common material need of the newly born. It explains, however, how the sudden promulgation of a ‘censure’ by the Emperor may have upset whatever original plans and preparations Mary and Joseph had.
But even in the worse cases, it would have only been natural to at least gather the most basic necessities since ‘giving birth’ isn’t a casual daily affair. But Mary and Joseph were not even given this opportunity. They had to make do with whatever they could find and improvise upon.
With everything said and examined, God mysteriously deigned that His only-begotten Son would be born in utter poverty and isolation. Thus, as many spiritual authors have commented, God had planned all this from the beginning. He wanted His divine condescension to mark His birth and as well His death on Calvary, where He died in the same nakedness and desolation that He was born.
How did all this ‘pierce’ our Blessed Mother’s loving heart? What mother would not have experienced the bitterness of being unable to offer her firstborn the most basic material warmth and affection?
God too had wanted Mary to share in His Son’s sacrifice. He wanted Her to offer not what ‘She could offer’ but what God ‘wanted Her to offer.’ And this was to give up the natural maternal joy of being able to give anything materially valuable to Her Son.
And our Lady found Her joy precisely by conceding to this divine command of the Infant Jesus. Thus, Mary and Joseph learned that the only gifts they could truly give to God was their very own selves offered obediently to God’s will.
This, I believe, was Mary’s Advent. It became an experience that was a brilliant mixture of joy and sorrow that illumined the darkness in the Manger and gave warmth to the coldness of the world on that first Christmas Eve. All throughout Mary’s life, there would be a constant play of divine paradoxes which She gratefully embraced because they raised Her to higher degree of faith, hope and love.
Following our Lady’s example, may we also discover how to offer the things we do not have, that is, to discover how to abandon ourselves to God’s will. It is easy to set our conditions on what we want to give up, but it is harder when our Father God orchestrates our lives in a mysteriously incomprehensible and, perhaps, trying way. But this is what pleases Him most, and leads us more towards perfection.
In this season of Advent and all throughout our life, may we learn to constantly discover, like our Lady, what one unknown author paraphrases from Scripture: “God’s mind is different from man’s thoughts. As we follow Him, we discover that we LOSE to GAIN, we SURRENDER to WIN, we DIE to LIVE, we GIVE to RECEIVE, we SERVE to REIGN, we SCATTER to REAP… In WEAKNESS we are made STRONG, in HUMILITY we are LIFTED UP and in EMPTINESS we are made FULL!”