Christmas break rushed in quickly this year. Why does it always seem to take us a bit by surprise? With mid-term exams finished, the school’s hallways stand empty and quiet as students spend Christmas and New Year’s with their families.
Our Principal often says, “Coal under pressure turns into diamonds.” CRSM students embrace that. We never want stress to be so great that it overwhelms, but a manageable amount can motivate and energize. Our students appear to have found that sweet spot. I remember exam week when I was in school: hallways littered with the pages of post-test outlines and notes, snack wrappers, and general jetsam from emptying lockers before break. Not the case at CRSM. The hallways were remarkably clean and students (for the most part) smiling and friendly, as usual.
While we sprinted through that week, our students impressed us not only with their composure under the stress of finals, but also with their determination to continue community service work right up to the holidays. Each afternoon, our Campus Minister would come on the intercom and announce a bus leaving for some local non-profit – St. Anastasia’s Soup Kitchen, Northern IL Food Bank, Feed My Starving Children, etc. – encouraging students who signed up to get aboard. No difference from any other week of the school year, the buses were always filled.
Just a week earlier, led by their peers from our National Hispanic Honors Society, students celebrated “Las Posadas.” In Latin America, Las Posadas is a popular component of Advent – a song-filled, call-and-response retelling of Mary and Joseph going from inn to inn seeking shelter. Caesar Augustus had little regard for what it meant to call a census and force everyone in the empire back to their hometowns! It’s a beautiful experience, traveling with the Holy Family for the evening, being rejected time and again, only to finally experience the joy and relief of finding welcome… even if that welcome was a humble corner in the barn out back. We rejoice with the final innkeeper who said, “Look, the best I can do is a dry place with the animals, but it has a roof and some modicum of warmth.” The travelers (our saints pregnant with God by the way!), exhausted and desolate, didn’t ask for much – just some basic human charity.
Still, the other innkeepers deserve a little compassion. Think of the stress. They were likely feeling very much stuck in their circumstances. “We ‘re full-up. It’s more than we can handle. There’s too much going on. We couldn’t possibly take any more. We’re exhausted!” Sound familiar? Especially during the holidays?
All it takes to change the world is for one or two people to think beyond their present circumstances, to be motivated by the troubles of someone in front of them and get a little creative. Having the perspective to think outside of ourselves and prioritize the needs of others is no easy feat. If the Nativity means anything, it is a message of God’s desire for us to practice “radical hospitality.” We are called by faith to welcome the “stranger.” In particular, the vulnerable, the homeless, migrants and refugees. These unfortunate people did not create their situations. To vilify those caught in the middle of war, violence, economic and political upheaval and oppression, is to deny our faith… to deny that in their eyes are the eyes of Mary, and Joseph, and Christ in our world. We are in this boat together and we cannot all stop bailing until someone fixes the leak. Waiting for that, as necessary as it is, sinks us all. We somehow must find a way to do both simultaneously.
When the world is too much with us, it is really a call to find perspective, to find our humanity, to love. Our students are one little example of that – maintaining a sense of belonging to one another and the world at large despite personal stress; continuing to seek out ways to give hope to the desolate, care for the hungry, and welcome to the stranger. Even when our own worries and responsibilities try to distract us, we are called to focus on our one, true purpose in life: to love one another.
Merry Christmas! God is with us! Viva Cristo Rey!