Sunday, December 29, 2024
Fifth Day of Christmas
Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
See what love
God sets a father in honor over his children, and a mother’s authority he confirms over her sons.
In his book of Chicago stories South of Cermak, Paul Teodo writes about a Polish family on Christmas Eve. Their basement flooded, and Uncle Stan dried it out, filling dozens of holes in the wall with putty, gunpowder and rebar. Invited by his sister he returned for the party on Christmas Eve (Wigila), dressed in clean work clothes, shy, nothing to fix, nothing to do but … well, as it turned out, fall in love.
Stan won’t live long perhaps; he has lung cancer. He has trouble getting his breath. But he can’t stop looking at Alicja, a small woman wearing a red babushka, and she can’t stop looking at him. In the dry basement Big Joe’s Happy Polka music empties the kitchen upstairs and every woman grabs a man. A young girl not quite four feet tall stands alone at the bottom of the stairs. Stan spoke to her.
“You want dance?” She backed away as from a bear about to attack. Stan extended his calloused hand.  “Do you know how to dance?” she asked timidly.
“No! Never do.” Stan bowed. “We learn together.”
The two hopped around like broken kangaroos.
“I think one-two, one-two,” she said.
The young girl’s mother appeared, the woman who had captured Stan’s attention with her shy, quiet, beautiful way.
“Momma, I learned to dance the Polka!” She turned and pointed to Stan.
Stan’s sister found another album.
“Stravinsky,” she said. “Music so beautiful. Is waltz.” She placed Stan’s hand in Alicja’s. “One-two-three. One-two-three. You do, nice, slow. Flow to music, like water in stream.”
Stan, struggling to breathe after the polka, breathes in as deep as he can.
What does Henri Nouwen say about God’s love?
You must believe in the yes that comes back when you ask, “Do you love me?” You must choose this yes even though you do not experience it.
On Christmas Eve, as Stan dances with Alicja, she tells him her husband was killed by Russians. A Polish resistance fighter. Stan remembers his own life in Warsaw.
“Men did what they needed to do.”
“Sorry for you, for daughter.” She nuzzled closer. “Shh …” she whispered. “one-two-three, one-two-three. Just dance.”
Nouwen is Dutch. Stan and Alicja are Polish. All the same.
You have to trust the place that is solid, the place where you can say yes to God’s love even when you do not feel it . . . Keep saying, “God loves me, and God’s love is enough.” You have to choose the solid place over and over again and return to it after every failure.
My family came from Germany. All our families came from somewhere. But we are all one, and we live together always within the generous arms of our Father. The Lord bless you from Zion!
See what love the Father has bestowed on us, that we may be called the children of God. And so we are … Whoever honors his father is gladdened by children, and when he prays, is heard. My son, take care of your father when he is old; grieve him not as long as he lives.
(Sirach 3, 1 Samuel 1, Psalm 128, Psalm 84, Colossians 3, 1 John 3, Luke 2)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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