Imagine...a Christmas meditation
Imagine a young girl who has accepted a great challenge, which is also a gift. Because she has accepted this challenge, the gift she finds is courage and she is fierce to the end. The courage she finds is her capacity to be theotikos, the “God Bearer”, the one who literally births God into the world. This was no small task, the story tells us that the risk was so great it could have cost her her life. But her betrothed, who, as the story goes, was not the biological father of the child she carried, yet he protected her and the unborn babe, and with them created the holy family. This mother had no idea, at this birth, how the story would end, with her holding vigil at the foot of the cross as love died a wretched death. That she would stay fierce and courageous to the end. But she did. Imagine, as the story goes, that this young girl Mary, and Joseph, about to be a mother and a father, have travelled a long way and when they arrive at their destination, the girl ...