Mgr Kieran Heskin, Sacred Heart Church, Ilkley

CHRISTMAS can be one of the most stressful times of the year particularly if we allow its arrival to arouse unrealistic expectations in us. Realizing this, Churches Together in Ilkley recently held a Service entitled “the Blue Christmas Service”. It provided an opportunity to reflect on the Christmas story in the light of the joyless as well as the joyful realities of life.

Anyone who had a heart breaking bereavement during the year is not going to escape the pain of separation from someone they dearly loved simply because Christmas has come. Floral tributes on graves and candles in the home express such heartfelt feelings as: “we miss you. We remember the Christmases when you were with us. We are sad that you won’t be with us this year”. Likewise, other losses in areas such as relationship, health, employment and finance won’t disappear just because the calendar now reads 25th, 26th or 27th December.

The Holy Family themselves had their own worries during that First Christmas. Joseph was contemplating divorce. Mary endured a long and challenging journey before giving birth in animal quarters. Wise men arrived with myrrh, a perfume more associated with coffins than cots. Male babies were slaughtered by Herod, their “neighbour from hell” forcing them to take shelter in a foreign land.

Of the many portrayals of Jesus, the ones that have been particularly helpful to those who struggle with life’s challenges are the two that show him at his most vulnerable: in the manger and on the cross.

It is consoling for us to know that God became man and lived a commonplace life for thirty years on this earth during which he was the companion of a generation in the mediocrity of their ordinary working days. He did this so that we would know in every solitary and insignificant human moment, in every wretched and unwanted occupation, in the hidden places of our darkest hours that he has passed there too. He made himself familiar with good days and bad, with heartache and headache, with summer and winter.

He did this also to encourage his followers to show similar compassion and kindness to anyone they see struggling on the road of life; he asks that they accompany them, like he did, as fellow pilgrims, sharing their frailty, their fears and their brokenness.