I WAS born in the middle of World War Two when children died in their millions and mothers struggled to keep them alive in a world exploding with new weaponry and unending warfare, with fathers lost in nuclear conflicts and superpowers annihilating smaller nations. It is not just soldiers who die in war and violence; women and children, the elderly and the sick, refugees and the homeless, civilians and non-combatants of all kinds die in equal numbers. Babies die in bombed hospitals, young mothers perish because of neglect, the lack of drugs and the absence of doctors and midwives.
When 2000 years ago all the boy children of Bethlehem were massacred, a young child called Jesus was the real target. His family escaped with him to nearby Egypt. His time had not yet come. He grew to full manhood, and was killed by the colonial powers of his time.
Even today children keep dying in wars, for example, in the Middle East, in revolutions in Latin America, through crime and drug addiction in the US, through unemployment in Africa and Asia, while migrating from great economic misery to “greener pastures”, crossing rivers and seas.
Children die in ethnic conflicts, in race wars (apartheid, “Gukurahundi”, Rwanda) and lethal epidemics in tropical rain forests (Ebola) and as “child soldiers”, being taught to shoot and kill before they have grown up enough to tell the difference between good and evil and know that human life is infinitely precious. Most childhood diseases can be eradicated, polio, measles, scarlet fever, mumps, diphtheria, tuberculosis, whooping cough, tetanus, and malaria. But do we actually make the effort? Are we determined and committed to save the children? Their parents, their brothers and sisters, families, clans and tribes cry to their Creator, to spirits and prophets, “How can our Creator, if he is a loving God, allow the children to suffer like that?” Most people on this planet have long given up on this question. But there is an answer, hidden, secret, unknown to many, but it can be found.
We are about to celebrate that answer. It is the birth of a child, the Child of Christmas. This is, in fact, where the Christian faith begins. A messenger told this young woman, Mary: “You will conceive and bear a child, and name him Jesus. He will be the Son of God, the Most High.”
Our Maker is present among us. He is not just in Heaven, inaccessible. He has been born by a woman as one of us, he has assumed our humanity. He is close to us. He appears now like one of our children. Every child on this earth is precious because of Him. We must accept every child with a loving embrace, because our Lord and Maker loves it, embraces it, gives it life and power. That is our Faith. “I do believe, help my unbelief” (Mark 9: 24). Through his humanity we touch his divinity. Our faith tells us that the Son of God has become and remains the Son of Man, the son of a woman.
Even in the midst of war, epidemics and diseases, there is this Child who cares about all children. Once His Spirit dwells in us, we too care about the youngest and most vulnerable.
I have a woman friend who has no children of her own, but is in charge of hundreds of children who have lost their parents. Another one is in charge of a school with 1 000 children, a tough job when parents cannot pay the fees. There are women without families of their own, but as midwives they have helped hundreds of children to arrive in this world safely. They have done so because divine mercy dwells in their hearts.
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Could we celebrate Christmas and welcome Mary’s child if we did not care for children about to be born or having been born? Could we cut their lives short and yet embrace the child born in Bethlehem?
The walk-out by medical workers and government firing many of them have cost the lives of mothers and their little ones who were not welcomed into this world. “Let the children come to me and do not prevent them,” said the son of Mary, having escaped barely himself from the massacre carried out by Herod.
This message must transform our world where the little ones are shunned. “See that you do not despise one of these little ones” (Luke 18: 10). They are loved by my Father who loves you too, and wants you to love them as well.
If you walk in the footsteps of the man born in Bethlehem and grew up in Nazareth, he calls you to stop all abuse of children and all violence inflicted on their mothers.
If we follow this call, we can indeed celebrate a Merry Christmas!
Fr Oskar Wermter SJ is a social commentator and writes here in his personal capacity
