Christmas Memories

Christmas Eve memory shares story of birth, death and resurrection

By Mary Julia Colby

Midnight Mass has always been so special to me.

This night, though, I was reading from one of my late 1980 writings and remembering:

I feel His presence the strongest when I am with our campers, or in the barn with the animals. This feeling, combined with the tragedy of our eight-month-old filly’s death, led me to a new and deeper understanding of the mystery of our redemption.

It was on a stormy Christmas Eve that our caretaker Joe raced down the hill frantically calling for me. He said a tree had fallen, striking the filly. I arrived to find her dead, struck by a huge oak tree downed in the wind. It had fallen parallel to the end of her stall door. The sound of its uprooting had apparently frightened her from the barn, and she ran headlong into it as it fell. I found her in a pool of half frozen blood but not a bone broken. She had hemorrhaged from the blow on the head. My stock dog Scotty licked and nudged her, but soon, he too knew she would never get up again.

It was nearing dark, and since the fence would have to be removed in order to get the tractor to her, we decided to wait and bury her the next day. I was deeply saddened and also angry that this had to happen, and if at all, why on Christmas Eve.

Christmas had always been so special to me; a time so removed from pain, filled only with love and joy. As I prepared to leave for the [Saint Meinrad] Archabbey and midnight Mass, I tried to push the little filly out of my mind and think only of the joy of [Christ’s] birth, but my every heartbeat pulsed the reality of death.

… death in the midst of such a time of joy. …

All of these feelings stayed with me throughout Mass and afterward, during punch and cookies with the monks and other friends.

Finally, alone, about 2:30 a.m. I drove back to the farm. There was no question as to where I was going. The barn and the animals, and my need for their comfort, drew me like a magnet.

I decided not to drive past the cabin and risk waking Dave. Rather, I parked and walked up. As always, Scotty heard and joined me.

I thought that surely, finally here in this place, I would find the feelings Christmas had always had for me. What I sought was the infant of my childhood, in a manger, warmed by the breath of animals and radiant in a mother’s love.

What I found was a newborn lamb, struggling to get to its feet, and the dead filly nearby in her pool of now frozen blood.

… Birth … Death …

I sat in the straw and gathered Scotty and one of the lambs in my arms and cried. Holding them, I wept away one of the fantasies of my childhood. … Jesus did not come simply to be a lovely infant in the straw. I could no longer comfortably isolate His birth from the reason for His coming. I could no longer feel the joy of His birth without knowing the pain of His death.

The intensity of the joy of His birth is, in itself, painful, and the intensity of the pain must then lead us to the further pain of His death, and ultimately to the joy of His glorious, glorious resurrection.

… Birth. … Death. … Resurrection. …

There in the straw, holding Scotty and the lamb, I experienced healing and deep understanding. Joy and sorrow merged. The child in me whispered goodbye, and an older me whispered a prayer of welcome.
 

(Mary Julia Colby is a member of St. Meinrad Parish in St. Meinrad.) †