January 13, 2006
(Note from Father Kelly) Fr Gerald O’Collins is Professor of Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He is a noted theologian and is the author of many works on Christology and doctrine. Fr O’Collins is an Australian Jesuit. I was a student in Fr O’Collins class while I was in Rome. Fr. O’Collins is one of the best-known and most beloved professors in Rome. He is known for his brilliance and his wit. . His latest book is Catholicism: The Story of Catholic Christianity (Oxford University Press). He has written this article for the Tablet Magazine at Christmas 2005. We reprint this article with the kind permission of the editor of The Tablet.
Born in the Shadow of Calvary
In painting as in poetry, in carols as in the gospels and in the work of theologians from the earliest days of the Church, the joy of the birth of Christ is linked inextricably to his pain and suffering on the Cross, and the shadow of Calvary is cast over Bethlehem
ATTRIBUTED to a fifteenth-century Perugian artist, Benedetto Bonfigli, and found in the National Gallery, London, dramatically juxtaposes the Magi adoring the Christ Child with a scene of the Crucifixion. This appearance in one scene of two episodes, one from the beginning and the other from the end of Christ's earthly story, conveys a sense that he was born to love, suffer and die for the human race.
Other paintings in the collection of the National Gallery also express, if more subtly, the same theme: The Nativity at Night by .Geertgen Tot Sint Jans (d. c. 1490), The Madonna of the Meadow by Giovanni Bellini (d. 1516), and The Adoration of the Kings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (d. 1569). In Geertgen's work the naked Christ Child radiates a brilliant light, but it is a light surrounded by deep darkness. The manger in which the baby lies is a rough container, more a tomb than a cradle. In front of the manger some stalks of wheat allude to the faith that he has come not only as the Light of the World (John I :9) but also the Bread of Life (John 6) that will be made available for everyone through his crucifixion and resurrection.
Bellini portrays the Madonna holding the Christ Child in her lap. Instead of being awake and upright in her arms, he is soundly asleep. Naked and stretched out on his mother's knees, the Child holds one hand on his chest in a gesture traditionally suggesting burial. The rigid posture of his right leg also prefigures death. Other details in Bellini's painting evoke a sense of the coming Passion of the child. To one side, a sinister bird perches on a tree that has no leaves - an obvious allusion to the tree of the Cross.
The Adoration of the Kings links the visit of the Magi with the death Christ will suffer for all human beings. In Bruegel's painting, the child is very small and almost naked, unlike the well-clothed and heavily armed people who stand nearby. The piece of cloth that loosely covers him looks like a tiny shroud. He seems threatened by the arms carried by those who have come to see him. The halberds held by two of them end in the form of a cross. One of the Magi offers the Child the gift of myrrh, an obvious reference to Christ's death and burial. The child shrinks back from the gift, prefiguring the agonized struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he will pray: "Abba, Father! Everything is possible to you. Take this chalice away from me" (Mark 14:36).
One could cite many other paintings and works of art that link Bethlehem and Calvary and any full-scale treatment of this theme would introduce the icons of Eastern Christianity. One icon that came from Crete has become popular around the world through the work of Redemptorists, "Our Lady of Perpetual Help". Held in the arms of the Madonna, the Christ Child is small but already has the face of an adult. Two angels in attendance carry a cross and other instruments for his coming Passion and death. Many traditional Eastern icons of the Nativity portray the newly born baby wrapped in what could pass for a shroud. He lies in a kind of trough cut into a large rock that seems like a tomb.
The birth and infancy stories of Matthew and Luke, the liturgical feasts that follow Christmas Day, some familiar carols, and texts from great preachers and poets can be cited in this context. They also let us glimpse a deep connection between the birth of the Son of God and the climax of his human history on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
The Adoration of the Magi attributed to Benedetto Bonfigli (active 1445; died: 1496), 1465-75. National Gallery, London
Through the figure of Herod the Great, Matthew introduces the shadow of a violent death that menaces the Christ Child. An old and paranoid tyrant fears that this newborn child will threaten the power that he wants to pass on to his own sons, and so he orders the massacre of all boys two years old and under who live in and around Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16-18). But the link that Matthew establishes between the Nativity and the Crucifixion goes beyond the killing of the Holy Innocents.
The question of the Magi, "Where is he who is born King of the Jews?" (Matthew 2:2), receives its extended answer when Jesus is condemned, mocked and crucified as "the King of the Jews" (Matt 27: 11,29,37,42). At the end, the King is to be found on a Cross at Calvary. The liturgical feasts that follow Christmas Day play their role in associating the Nativity with the redemptive Passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. On 26 December comes the feast of the first Christian martyr, St Stephen, a feast celebrated on that day since the fourth century. The readings for the Feast of St John the Apostle on 27 December evoke first the incarnation of the one who came to share with us eternal life (1 John 1: 1-4) and then his resurrection from the dead (John 20: 2-8). On 28 December in Western Christianity (on 29 December in Eastern Christianity), the Feast of the Holy Innocents recalls the slaughter ordered by Herod when he learned that the King of the Jews had been born. The liturgy joins with St Matthew's Gospel in seeing the shadow of the Cross falling upon the birth of Jesus.
Lastly, from the middle of the sixth century Christians began celebrating the Feast of the Circumcision on 1 January (see Luke 2: 21). Since 1970 the Catholic calendar has called it "the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God". The change in the designa¬tion of the feast can shift attention from something often treasured in the past by popular writers, painters and theologians: the pain and tiny loss of blood suffered by Jesus when he was circumcised. They understood that this event initiated his bloody sacrifice for the expiation of the sins of the world.
Carols foreshadow the redemptive suffering that the Christ Child will suffer. Thus the last line of The First Nowell declares "... and with his blood mankind has bought". In a special way the carols that feature the Magi foretell the Passion of Christ. From the earliest times the gift of myrrh, an aromatic resin that was used in the Middle East to embalm corpses, has symbolized the passion and burial of Christ. In We Three Kings of Orient Are, a whole verse is dedicated to myrrh: "Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume/ breathes a life of gathering gloom; sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in a stone-cold tomb."
The gospel writers, some liturgical feasts and popular carols place the birth of Christ within a redemptive setting that culminates at Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Through the centuries Christian preachers and poets have supported this link. In a homily preached at Christmas (Sermon 191, 1), St Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) depicted the newborn Child and the sufferings he would face. He spelled out the aftermath of the Nativity: "The Creator of human beings was made human so that the ruler of the stars might suck at the breast of a woman; the bread might be hungry; the fountain thirst; the light sleep; the way be wearied with the journey; the truth be accused by false witnesses; the Judge of the living and the dead be judged by a mortal judge ... the foundation hung upon a tree; Strength be made weak; Health be wounded; Life die."
Augustine drew massively on St John's gospel to ' recognize in the Christ Child the Bread of Life, the Light of the World, the Fountain of living water, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. In this powerful homily preached at Christmas, Augustine declined to treat the Nativity in isolation. He associated it with what came "before" (in the creation of human beings and the stars) but even more with what was10 come: Christ's future sufferings and eventual death "upon a tree".
More than a thousand years later, John Donne (d. 1631), also in a sermon preached at Christmas, pictured the Nativity and Good Friday as so closely connected together as to form one day: "The whole life of Christ was a continual passion ... His birth and death were but one continual act, and his Christmas Day and his Good Friday are but the evening and the morning of one and the same day."
In The Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot (d. 1965), the Magi travel for a long and hard time before they succeed in finding the Christ Child. They return home wondering, "Were we led all that way for Birth or Death?" Such details in Eliot's account of their journey as seeing "three trees on a low sky" have already alerted readers to the death Christ would suffer on a cross between two other crosses. Eliot joins Augustine and Donne in acknowledging the profound link between the birth of Christ and what he calls the "hard and bitter agony" involved in his death.
Unquestionably there is much more to be said about Christmas and the profound mystery of the Incarnation. But painters and many other Christian witnesses recall a central truth: the radical link between the Incarnation and Christ's atoning death, or the way Calvary casts its shadows over Bethlehem. We dare not forget that Jesus began his life in solidarity with the powerless and marginalized of this world. That life would end with his death on a cross flanked by two criminals, who represent within the tragic outcasts of our race.
The Madonna of the Meadow by Giovanni Bellini (d. 1516). National Gallery, London