The Hidden Face of Christmas

Every reality has a reverse side just like a coin. The moon always presents us with the same face, but there is another face that is veiled to us. In Christmas time, there are nativity scenes of all kinds: big ones, tiny ones, but they all have a part that cannot be seen. Underneath the green moss is the whole structure, stones, wood, water pipes, electric wires, small mechanisms, etc.

The first Christmas, the real Christmas, also had a hidden face that not many people are aware of. We read the Christmas story in the light of the many Christmases we have already lived through, as well as the concept that today’s Western society has of Christmas. We therefore neglect details that we even know are there, at least theoretically, but we hide them so as not to ruin the spirit of Christmas and the Christmas joy that we are supposed to feel at this time.  In the north central mountains of Portugal, called “Serra da Estrela”, where I was born, they like to say, “Well milked sorrow is the cream of joy". Underneath the Christmas joy there is a well milked sorrow; that is, a sorrow that was so well processed and managed that it turned into joy.

Maria appeared pregnant
On her return from a visit to her cousin Elizabeth that lasted several months, Mary appeared pregnant. What could she say? How could she explain what has happened? Becoming pregnant by the work and grace of the Holy Spirit was unprecedented, it was a unique event in human history; it had never happened before and was never going to happen again. It was expected that the Messiah, whom the people of Israel awaited and still awaits, would appear in a natural way from the house of David.

Jesus’ Christmas was Mary’s Easter or passion. The Lord’s Passion was also Mary's passion. Still today, even in a society that is neither puritanical nor sexist, a sex scandal delights the mouths of many people. It seems that our own self-esteem grows when we see others’ sinking. There is nothing more degrading and stigmatizing than a sex scandal: everyone points the finger at you, you live without honour and with a name that is forever ruined, it is like dying while still alive.

"Calumnia, que algo queda" says a Spanish proverb, that is, “Slander that something will remain forever” or “Throw enough mud at the wall, some of it will stick”; in other words, cast doubt on someone in areas of sexual behaviour and that person's bad reputation will follow him to the grave. It may even turn out to be a lie, no matter, people will always remain in doubt, they will cling to the first report as being true and the denial as being a lie. These scandals open the television news and make the front page of the newspapers while the denials appear in a lost column inside the newspaper that no one reads.

Physical death by stoning was also very close... Mary was considered an adulteress because she was betrothed to Joseph, and although they were not yet living together, for the purposes of the law she was already married to him. Such a relationship can no longer be broken, unless there was a divorce. We well know what was the punishment for adulterous women ... (John 8:1-11) they were stoned to death.

What used to happen in Israel on a regular basis is still happening today in some Muslim countries where Sharia law applies; there are videos on certain websites that document these sad facts in the 21st century.

Already many, thirsting for blood, had stones ready in their hands, waiting for Joseph, the injured party, to cast the first stone. Casting the first stone was a right that belonged to the one offended. Casting the first stone was, at the same time, a declaration of the verdict by the offended and the first act of execution of the sentence, which the bloodthirsty hypocrites were gladly waiting to carry out.

For Jesus, in the episode of the adulterous woman (John 8: 1-11), the right to cast the first stone, that is, to judge and pass a death sentence, is not the right of the injured party, nor of the one who has authority by delegation or election, but of the one who has the moral authority, that is, the one who is without sin.

Jesus does not believe in retributive justice because it is nothing more than legalized revenge, it is the old decree of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. On the contrary, Jesus believes in restorative justice, the one that God practices, because he does not want the death of the sinner, but that he repents, converts and lives (Ezekiel 18:23-32).

Joseph's dream
Joseph was a righteous man and he was certainly not going to stone Mary; but the reason he was not going to stone her was not so much that he was indeed righteous and good, but because he loved Mary unconditionally; love goes beyond what is purely and coldly legal, unconditional love forgives. There are no crimes of passion in unconditional love.

One day, a married man with five children said to me, "If I knew my wife was unfaithful to me, I would divorce her right away.” “Great is the love you have for your wife,” I said in a sarcastic way, “you don't love your wife, you love yourself. Her infidelity does nothing to an unconditional love, it only disturbs a self-love.” He who truly loves is sad, but does no harm to the object of his love; because love, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, is to will the good of the other.

The second Joseph in the Bible, the spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, after his ancestor Joseph of Egypt, was also a dreamer who let himself be guided by his dreams. Dreams are in fact a star in our lives; they are messages from the subconscious to the conscious or even from God Himself. They are phantasmagoric and highly exaggerated so to make them more difficult to forget during the day; if they were not, they would be easily forgotten and upon waking, we would remember nothing.

Dreams are always subjective; they are ours, even when we dream about other people or places. We are always the subject of our dream, never a place or another person; what appears in our dreams are not objectively the places or the people, but its deep psychological significance to us; that is, what these places and people mean to us.

After his dream, Joseph had the same knowledge as Mary; and so, he was going to share with her the same pain and undergo the same passion, suffering all this with resilience and in silence as Mary was proficient in doing (Luke 2:19) because there was no reasonable way, they could explain the situation to anyone and excuse Mary... Mary was destined to bear the stain and the shame for the rest of her life.

As for Joseph, our patriarchal society considered a man that accepts such a woman as being dispossessed of his manhood. And since I want to depict the pain of Mary and Joseph in a very graphic and real way, I dare to write here the slang used for such men, that is, a “sweet cuckold”.

Jesus, the son of Mary
Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart (Luke 2:19), and suffered in silence, not being able to defend herself against the slanders... The suffering lasted her whole life, as is natural in cases like this.

Here and elsewhere in the gospel, this stigma resurfaces, for example in one of the confrontations that Jesus had with the Pharisees, in John’s Gospel at one point they said, “We are not illegitimate children” (John 8:41), so as to say… “as you are…”

“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” Mark 6:3

In a patriarchal society, no one is known as the son of his mother, that is, no one is known by reference to his mother, but by reference to his father. Let us remember that Jesus when addressing Peter in a personal way, to ask him if he loves Him, calls him by his family name in reference to Peter's father and not his mother: "Simon, son of John...” (John 21:15-19).

The evangelist Mark, despite being a Hebrew from Jerusalem, writes his Gospel in Rome for the Romans and not in half measures: he relates the truth as it is. Jesus is called by reference to his mother and not by  his father. Even if the father had died, a Hebrew would never be called by reference to his mother; if they did, it was because Jesus was, to the people of his time, the son of an unknown father; to the shame of his mother and Himself.

Matthew, the Gospel written for the Jews, corrects and says, “Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?” (Matthew 13:55-56). Luke, in his Gospel, also records the episode of the Lord's visit back to his hometown; however, as a respect for Jesus he does not copy Mark, but he does not tell a lie either like Matthew, so he chooses not to reveal what his countrymen called him.

Conclusion: The birth of Jesus was experienced by Mary and Joseph as a lifelong passion and death. Unable to explain her pregnancy, she the one that for us had been conceived and conceived without sin, in her social environment, had to live the rest of her life stained with the most defamatory sin of all times.

Fr.  Jorge Amaro, IMC