As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds went back glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen. It was exactly as they had been told. Luke 2: 15-20 (gospel-reading for Christmas dawn liturgy)
If the truth be known, while Mary and Joseph were well aware that the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem that lay ahead of them would be an arduous one, they were probably relieved at the prospect of leaving behind the wagging tongues of the gossips of Nazareth. Even though they were unlikely to have been fans of Caesar Augustus, his decree for a census provided Mary and Joseph with an escape from unrelenting criticism.
As a distant descendant of David, Joseph was required to return to Bethlehem, his ancestral hometown, to register for the census. The Emperor was an astute and capable politician, who was, in time, responsible for the establishment of the Pax Romana. He saw that establishing and maintaining peace throughout the Roman Empire was much less financially burdensome than maintaining an invading army whose conquests contributed to expanding the borders of the Empire but increased the number of dissidents who then had to be kept in control. Keeping control was an expensive enterprise.
Those who admired Augustus for his establishing the Pax Romana attributed to him the title of “Saviour of the World” and regarded him as divine. Augustus revelled in that kind of adulation. It is paradoxical, ironical even, that Jesus, the real Saviour of the world, would not have been born in a stable, a shelter for farm animals, had Caesar Augustus not issued a decree for the conduct of a census. And Jesus would not have been given a manger (a food bin) for a crib. The manger, of course is a symbol of the nourishment that Jesus would offer the world through his teaching and preaching and the way in which he lived and reached out to the poor, the needy and the forgotten. Had Augustus not required a census, we would not be erecting Christmas creches around which we will gather to reverence Jesus, born into our world as our brother, Jesus our Saviour, Jesus the Light of the world.
If there is one thing for us to learn from the events that surrounded the birth of Jesus, it is that, when God takes a role in human history, what follows is far removed from human expectation and anticipation. Jewish people across the centuries had believed that the Messiah for whom they had hoped would come in might and majesty and right the injustices that had been repeatedly visited on them and their ancestors. Instead, God chose shepherds, people with a reputation for being thieves, liars and utterly untrustworthy to announce to the world the arrival of the Messiah. They could not have been more different from those who oversaw the rituals of the Temple and demanded allegiance to God’s law as proscribed in the holy books. Luke has described, in today’s gospel-reading, how angels appeared to this unlikely lot and gave them instructions as to where to go in search of a new-born baby. They followed the detailed instructions of the angels and unashamedly proclaimed what they discovered. In so doing, they assumed the role, in Luke’s view, of the very first witnesses to the good news, the original evangelists.
The details of what we now call the Christmas story are a reminder to us all that God can come into out lives and our consciousness through very ordinary events, as ordinary as the birth of a baby. The implication of this is that we cannot predict or control when or how God will come into our lives. A corollary of today’s gospel-reading is that Luke is teaching us to be alert to God’s presence in the readings we proclaim in our liturgical celebrations, in the people we encounter each day, in those we are inclined to overlook or dismiss, such as those who are caricatured as unreliable, and in the created world that surrounds us.
Finally, we are told by Luke that Mary witnessed all the things he described, and pondered them in her heart. Isn’t that a message to each of us to ponder in our hearts all the details that surrounded the birth of the Jesus who came to us in the lowliest of circumstances, bringing the promise of life to each of us and to our world?
