A Gift that Lasts All Year: A Subscription to The Cottage!
Give the gift of The Cottage to your pastor, a friend — to anyone looking for thoughtful, heart-full companionship of “faith different” on their spiritual journey.
TODAY’S ADVENT CALENDAR is a reflection on an icon painted by the artist Janet McKenzie. A group of women writers - including me - were asked to contribute essays to a collection of Janet’s art. The result was a beautiful book entitled Holiness and the Feminine Spirit, published in 2009.
Window 22
Many icons of Jesus and Mary depict the Christmas scene. The newly birthed baby wrapped in a makeshift blanket, so very fragile, being tenderly cradled by his awe-filled mother. For those fortunate enough to have held an infant, such renderings draw the soul back to new-born intimacy, a fitting reminder of the deep human connection with God through Christ.
But the manger scene typically does not show us anything of the child Jesus. At the birth, we may feel protective wonder, a kind of spiritual tenderness, but we cannot really see Jesus. He is swaddled and cradled, his presence illuminated only by light. We see him only through the other actors, mother and father, animals, and angels. The Christmas vision of the newborn Jesus is often one of hushed awe, of time paused to adore the mystery of holy infancy as Mary kneels by the improvised bed.
This icon, however, is not that of the infant Jesus. Here Jesus is a baby, well fed and sturdy, with wide and curious eyes and a full crop of hair. He appears to be eight months old or so, head straight and belly round. Under his mother’s robes, his legs push and kick as Mary holds him firmly in place. If she was not clasping his hand, he might be stretching outward toward the unseen object that has captured his attention, teaching, as the artist may want to convey, in our direction. We see Jesus as a real baby, active and energetic. His mother no longer cradles him; she secures him. And her gaze has shifted from wonder to worry.
While we know that Jesus will grow up, reach out, and be rejected by the world, he does not know that. Nor does Mary. She does know that growing up is hard. Her world is plagued by sickness and disease. She knows all the daily dangers facing Jesus. She need not anticipate demonic tempter, untrustworthy friends, angry mobs, or Roman soldiers. Each day of motherhood brings enough worry for itself. She and her child live with the shadow of the cross. Jesus’ actual death on a cross recedes from some of its horror when compared to the quotidian cross that mothers like Mary have borne for their children throughout human history. Being a mother is never easy—worry is mother’s milk—but for the countless and nameless masses of our mothers, merely securing their babies’ safety was paramount.
We may not often consider the quotidian cross. Yet it forms the background of Mary and Jesus’ lives, as it does in this icon. Here, the cross is simple, fashioned from African cloth, a cross of everyday material. The cross is not something big, dramatic, or unusual beyond normal experience. Rather, the cross is just what it is—the fabric of daily life: all the things that deaden our souls and threaten our children; the things that keep us from our full humanity; the things that cause mothers to worry and to cling more tightly to their babies. The quotidian cross.
Although Jesus was born to the quotidian cross, he was born to defeat its fear, oppression, and enslavement. As preacher and teacher, he inverted the quotidian cross, always extolling the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers, and the poor. He pointed out how the everyday was holy. Jesus wore the regular fabric of humanity and by wearing it he redeemed it, coming to us as an infant to teach us the way to live and draw us into union with God. Through Jesus, God made the quotidian cross the path to life.
From my essay, “Mary and Jesus,” in Holiness and the Feminine Spirit: The Art of Janet McKenzie. The book is no longer in print, available only used or through the artist. You may email her at jmckenzie2000@hotmail.com to inquire about any remaining copies she might have to sell.
One Saturday morning he went to the river to play.
He molded twelve sparrows out of the river clay
And scooped a clear pond, with a dam of twigs and mud.
Around the pond he set the birds he had made,
Evenly as the hours. Jesus was five. He smiled,
As a child would who had made a little world
Of clear still water and clay beside a river.
But a certain Jew came by, a friend of his father,
And he scolded the child and ran at once to Joseph,
Saying, “Come see how your child has profaned the Sabbath,
Making images at the river on the Day of Rest.”
So Joseph came to the place and took his wrist
And told him, “Child, you have offended the Word.”
Then Jesus freed the hand that Joseph held
And clapped his hands and shouted to the birds
To go away. They raised their beaks at his words
And breathed and stirred their feathers and flew away.
The people were frightened. . .
Alone in his cot in Joseph’s house, the Son
Of Man was crying himself to sleep.
— Robert Pinsky, an excerpt from “The Childhood of Jesus”
Jesus was born, he lived, and he died. The child called Yeshua — his name in Aramaic — entered the world as helpless as any newborn and just as dependent on adults. As a boy growing up in the backwater town of Nazareth — which held only 200 to 400 people — Jesus would have skinned his knees on the ground, bumped his head on doorways and pricked his fingers on thorns.
Jesus had a human body. Like you and me.
— James Martin, SJ
This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There’d have been no room for the child.
— Madeleine L’Engle
Thank you for answering my question re "quotidian cross." I, of course, know what "quotidian" means, but I had never heard it associated it with the "Cross." So, that was very enlightening.
Thank you for the daily Advent meditations. They have significantly enriched my experience of this Sacred Season of Light and Love. But, I have a question from today's reflection. Specifically, while I know what "quotidian" means, I don't fully understand what the phrase "born to the quotidian cross" mean, and would appreciate your explanation. Margaret