EDI TO R I A L UP FRONT BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR
Will there be a Christmas this year?
Christmas
has been celebrated in many different ways throughout Christian history. Since the return of the coronavirus, many of us have wondered how we will celebrate it this year. As it draws closer, the element of uncertainty becomes more pronounced. It has set me recalling some testimonies of Christmases past when believers found themselves returning even more deeply to the mystery of these days. Alla Andreyeva and her husband were arrested in 1938 for publicly criticising the Soviet system. Alla spent nine years in a Moldavian gulag. She remembered that there were Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Protestants among the prisoners. With different dates for Easter, they managed to arrange among themselves how to celebrate it and give their fellow prisoners the opportunity to celebrate it. Christmas was different. They celebrated on the same day, but it was always a workday, even if it were a Sunday. She describes one particular Christmas. “On April 19, 1984 I was convicted as a political prisoner for the third time by the supreme court of Soviet occupied Estonia. They sentenced me to 10 years of incarceration and five years of exile for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, as a ‘seriously dangerous criminal’ whose sentence was to be served in high security prison. We were clothed in prisoner kit. My companions were a Ukrainian poet, an Arminian and a Greek Catholic priest. Usually, the prison guards did not hinder the observance of a quiet Christmas, so prisoners always managed to find some pieces of a fir-branch with a few candles. This time, everything was confiscated after several thorough body searches. We still managed to find a finger-length bit of an evergreen branch in our walking compound. Into some
tin foil, we put a dab of margarine and into that a wick twisted from some threads. We were allowed matches, and so our Christmas candle was lit! We prayed and our priest sang sacred songs. Suddenly, the door was shoved open and the watch officer with two guards burst in. They swept the small candle to the floor, tramped on it with their jackboots and all this was accompanied with the requisite threats, invective and vulgarities. The priest made the sign of the cross towards the guards. They backed off slightly, stopped yelling their obscenities, brought a broom and shovel, and took away what remained of our candle and piece of fir-tree. The watch officer opened the small shutter to tell us that homemade candles were strictly forbidden, that everything was forbidden, even singing, that we should sit in silence and be with our God in spirit and thought, and that God doesn’t really exist anyway. So, we sat silently, spoke quietly, listened to the priest read religious verse, prayed and held our Christmas.” In her Auschwitz Chronicle, the museum historian records how, on Christmas Eve 1942, Polish women prisoners in the staff building lighted candles on a fir bough that had been smuggled in. Carols were sung in many places around the camp, which lifted people’s spirits and gave them hope of surviving. In Block 18a, a prisoner who was a Catholic priest obtained some bread and used it as a substitute host. He had also managed to procure some grapes. They were soaked in water and the juice was sufficient to consecrate as the Precious Blood. Just before Christmas 1943, a young German theologian called Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote his Christmas letter to his parents. The Bonhoeffers were socially well-placed, and Dietrich could expect a university chair but
these were not good times. Dietrich was not writing his Christmas letter from his university study where he directed young men preparing for the ministry. In fact this was his second Christmas in prison since it had been noted that he was not standing in line with the official Lutheran Church. A letter from prison was hardly what the Bonhoeffers were expecting as the Christmas letter of their favourite son! “Viewed from a Christian perspective,” he tells them, “Christmas in a prison cell can, of course, hardly be considered particularly problematic. Most likely many of those here in this building will celebrate a more meaningful and authentic Christmas than in places where it is celebrated in name only. That misery, sorrow, poverty, loneliness, helplessness, and guilt mean something quite different in the eyes of God than according to human judgment. That God turns toward the very places from which human eyes turn away! That Christ was born in a stable because there was no room for him in the inn — a prisoner grasps this better than others, and for him this is truly good news. And to the extent he believes it, he knows that he has been placed within the Christian community that goes beyond the scope of all spatial and temporal limits, and the prison walls lose their significance.” All of us at Redemptorist Communications and Reality wish you every blessing this most unusual of Christmases.
Brendan McConvery CSsR Editor
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