IT might seem unusual to be talking about Rome at Christmas but there’s a particular image from that city that speaks to us at this time.
As bishops of Limerick, one of our shared loves – when we are not happily Shannonside! – is opportunities to visit the Eternal City, Rome. For both of us, this is one of the joys of our episcopal and ecumenical work.
There is something wonderful about walking literally in the footsteps of Peter and Paul, or contemplating those places where early Christian martyrs witnessed with such extraordinary courage. Nowadays, a visit to the magnificent crib in St Peter’s Square is a particular seasonal delight.
Rome is a city built across several hills and walking around it especially in the heat of summer can be an exhausting business. However, climbing one particular hill is rewarded by one of the more remarkable ‘hidden sights’ of the city.
One walks along a road bordered by high walls and comes to large and ornate locked gates behind which lies a grove of orange trees in the grounds of a religious house. Normally one can walk no further, but putting one’s eye to the keyhole of the gates gives an absolutely perfect framed vista of the city skyline looking towards St. Peter’s. The beauty and grandeur of the city are almost miraculously reduced to what a single eye can glimpse through a keyhole.
In a similar way, contemplating the Nativity, the crib, the scene of the Incarnation, is like having a momentary keyhole view of the whole gamut of the loving purposes of God. It stays in the mind; it textures one’s perspective on supposedly much grander sights. For as one looks through the keyhole of history and imagination at the manger of Bethlehem, somehow one sees it all – the love and humility of God, the dignity thereby bestowed on all humanity even in the midst of poverty, the inestimable value of childhood, the sense of the Peace that comes ultimately from above. It’s all there ….. eternity is ‘shut in a span’….one simply needs to make the effort to seek the keyhole and not only to enjoy the vista but to respond to it in our hearts and minds.
None of this happens without cost, to God and to ourselves. Responding to the demands of the Incarnation, to its call to respect human dignity, combat poverty, meet the needs of the homeless and the refugee, and build peace in our world and in our hearts is never an easy quest. The perfect vista of Rome through the keyhole is also a vista of a city where the lions roared in the Coliseum and where early Christians paid the supreme price of demonstrating what belief in the Incarnation was worth to them.
There are aspects of Ireland today and its challenging social conversations which are not that far removed from the issues that faced the Holy Family in Bethlehem, or the Christians of Ancient Rome. In many ways humanity has yet to grasp all the implications of the Incarnation, of what it implies to believe that God is encountered in human flesh.
But at Christmas we can renew our vision, take heart, and see the crib as the keyhole which allows us to glimpse the loving purposes of God for humanity uniquely and comprehensively made known. That view through the divine keyhole, that scene in an apparently obscure corner of the ancient world, will frankly never lose its grip on human imagination or our search for meaning. Enjoy gazing at it and absorb its capacity truly to bring out the best in all of us.
A very Happy and Blessed Christmas to all!
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