What comes especially to my mind in the time of late December are the awful ironies of God. How else does one account for those violent juxtapositions that follow the feast of Christmas?

The Last Days of December

by Regis Martin

No sooner have we dug ourselves out from under an avalanche of toys and gifts, the happy detritus of the holiday, and there we are, staring straight ahead into the grave of poor Stephen, first martyr of the Church. How quickly we have come from Crib to Cross! 

In a single, shattering moment we’ve gone from the quaintness of a stable to the grotesquerie of a stoning. 

Then, in yet another sudden and violent jerk, we see the slaughter of the Holy Innocents, their hapless cries cruelly silenced by the impacted hatred of Herod, who will stop at nothing to destroy the Infant. 

And then, the very next day, we commemorate the butchery of Archbishop Becket at the altar of his own cathedral.

Finally, of course, at week’s end, Jesus himself will shed blood, the feast of Circumcision being but a foretaste of the much bloodier Passion to come.

As a wise mother who cares for her children, but not at the expense of telling them lies, the Church lets us know straightaway that life is hedged about by death. That the helpless Child we see in Bethlehem’s Crib has come to die on Calvary, his spirit descending into the silence of Sheol. The saints know this, of course, but we, cosseted in cheap holiday cheer, prefer not to notice.

“We run heedlessly into the abyss,” writes Pascal, “after putting something in front of us to prevent our seeing it.”

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