I resonate with the requirement about reading the Gospels, but I have some problems with the contemplative part. My problem is not primarily theological, even though I do have the usual Protestant qualms about “reserving the Host” (keeping the consecrated elements in a vessel on the altar so that they can serve as a continuing “real presence” for the faithful to contemplate.) The real difficulty I have with contemplation, though, is a more practical one. I really don’t know what I am expected to do when it comes to that kind thing. Even if I could talk myself into a very traditional Catholic understanding of what happens to the bread and wine in the Eucharist, I am not at all clear how I would get started if someone instructed me to spend several hours “contemplating the Host.”
So, when I came across a reference a while back to a traditional Catholic practice in Advent of a “special devotion to the Infant Jesus” I had the same sort of puzzles. In this case, however, I thought I should check out what this “devotion” comes to. I’ve always enjoyed singing “Away in a Manger,” which means that I probably am more open to contemplating the Infant Jesus than I am to trying to focus on the “reserved Host.” So, I thought, maybe this was a case where I could make some progress in pursuing a more contemplative life.
In looking into a Nativity-focused contemplation, I discovered quite a bit of imagination at work, particular in parallels people have drawn between Bethlehem and Calvary. Mary kneeling at the cradle and Mary kneeling at the Cross. The Magi’s gift of myrrh and the myrrh used to anoint the body of the Crucified One. Both the stable and the tomb were borrowed spaces.
I don’t know what to make of much of that. But I have been inspired by the general effort to establish links, spiritually and theologically, between the Savior’s birth and his death on Calvary. Of special help to me were the thoughts of Caryll Houselander, who wrote quite a bit about the subject around the mid-point of the twentieth century. The title of one of her books is itself instructive: Wood of the Cradle, Wood of the Cross. Houselander was a talented woodworker and, disturbed by much of the more glittery kind of artistic depictions in popular Catholic piety of Bethlehem and Calvary, she insisted that we focus on the rough wood of both the manger and the cross.
Our Reformed theology and piety could learn some lessons on this subject from the Catholics. Actually the Heidelberg Catechism points us—albeit ever so cautiously—in the right direction. Question 37 asks, in its exposition of the articles of the Apostles Creed, “What do you understand by the word ‘suffered’?” The answer:
A. That throughout his life on earth, but especially at the end of it, he
bore in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human
race, so that by his suffering, as the only expiatory sacrifice, he
might redeem our body and soul from everlasting damnation, and might
obtain for us God’s grace, righteousness, and eternal life.
Although the Catechism moves very quickly from “throughout his life on earth” to “but especially at the end,” it does make the proper theological acknowledgement. An adequate atonement for sin had to last for more than three hours. The suffering he took upon himself in order to save us began in Bethlehem. Jesus needed to take on our vulnerability right from the start of his life, as the One who became fully human for our sake.
The line in “Away in a Manger” that proposes that he did not cry in the manger is misleading in that regard. He did cry. He was a real baby. The swaddling clothes that covered his nakedness at the beginning were a significant part of the same redemptive package as the burial clothes that they used to wrap his body after the crucifixion. The arms that were stretched forth on Calvary were the same arms that reached out from the cradle—in both cases the Lord stretched forth his mighty arm to save.
I find all of that inspiring to think about. I don’t know whether Mother Teresa would welcome me, on this account, into the ranks of the contemplatives. But it is my own Presbyterian attempt at an Advent devotion to the Infant Jesus!
RICHARD J. MOUW is president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.
