Miracle on 10th Street Read online

  “That was pretty stupid,” the man said. “Look where it got him.”

  Mrs. Brown’s face peered out of the old blanket. “You hadn’t ought to talk like that.”

  A young man on a bicycle rode through the red light. He carried a large transistor radio which blared out, “Joy to the world! The Lord is come!”

  “Joy, joy, joy.” The man spat the words out. “What good did it do, this Lord coming? People were bad then, and they aren’t any better now. Fighting. Bombing. Terrorism.”

  “You’re upsetting Sister,” Mrs. Brown said.

  Sister Egg watched the light change yet again from green to yellow to red. “It’s all right,” she told Mrs. Brown. “Really it’s all right.”

  “What’s all right?” the man demanded.

  “It’s all right to say what you feel. Only—”

  “Only what?”

  “I don’t have any answers for you.”

  “Thank God,” the man said.

  Sister Egg smiled. “Do you?”

  “Well…no. Thank you.”

  Sister Egg shivered. “I really have to make the next light.”

  “You’re not warmly enough dressed,” Mrs. Brown chided.

  “Oh, I’m fine, as long as I keep moving.”

  The man stood up, and Mrs. Brown’s little dog barked.

  “Shut up, mutt. What’re you doing tonight, Sister?”

  If she heard the suggestiveness in his voice, Sister Egg gave no sign. “We always go to the cathedral for midnight mass. Are you coming, Mrs. Brown?”

  “Sure,” the old woman said. “I been coming since you first told me it was okay. Beautiful. All those candles. And the music. And people smiling and being nice.”

  “Yeah, and they come around with silver plates and expect you to put all your money in.”

  “Sister Egg puts in something for me,” Mrs. Brown said. “Anyhow, you don’t have to pay God.”

  “Yeah? And who pays for all those candles? You got to pay somebody.”

  The light changed to green. Sister Egg fumbled in her deep pocket. It would never do to give the man one of the crumbled cookies. Then her fingers touched something more solid, and her fingers pulled out a silver-foil-wrapped chocolate kiss. She dropped it in his lap, then started across the street, feeling herself flush as she heard him making smacking kissing noises after her.

  I should have had some answers for him, she thought. I should have known what to say.

  A flake of snow brushed her cheek. She hurried to her favorite vegetable store and bought cranberries and oranges and some good celery for celery sticks, and a bunch of celery that had been marked down and a bag of onions for the turkey stuffing.

  “Merry Christmas, Si’r Egg.” The Korean man at the cash register greeted her, and charged her half price for the oranges.

  She would have to hurry. Christmas Eve Vespers and the blessing of the crib was at five, and the chapel would be full of children from the school, and parents, too, and there would be hot, spiced cider afterward, and cookies.

  It was always a special time for the children. They sat through the singing of Vespers, restless, but then there was the procession to the crèche, with the shepherds adoring, and the Wise Men still far off, because they couldn’t arrive till Twelfth Night. And food! In half an hour the cookie plates would be empty, and the Sisters had been baking for weeks.

  What did the children think? Was it all cookies and fruitcake and presents? Did they think at all about God coming to live with human beings as a human being, or was it only a baby in a manger? Did they see the shadow of the cross, and failure, thrown darkly across the golden singing of the angels?

  Hearts were hard two thousand years ago. Hearts were still hard.

  She started to cross Broadway again, but the light had already been green when she started so, again, she was stopped at the island.

  Mrs. Brown was gone. That was all right. She would see her after the midnight mass.

  But the man was there.

  And she still had no words of comfort. For him. For herself.

  “Take me there,” the man said.

  Startled, she nearly dropped the bag of onions. “Where?”

  “To the church. The cathedral.”

  It was not far. One block south, one block east. But there was no time. “Mother Cat won’t like it if I’m late,” she started.

  “Mother what?” he roared.

  “Oh—Mother Catherine of Siena.”

  “Is there a Sister Hen and a Mother Dog? Do you all have idiot nicknames?”

  “Oh, no, and we don’t call her Mother Cat, you know, it’s Mother Catherine of—”

  “But she calls you Egg?”

  “Sometimes it’s Frideswide.”

  He snorted. Rose. “Let’s go.”

  “But—”

  “Here. I’ll carry your bags.” He took the heaviest one, which contained the cranberries and oranges.

  She could leave him. She was quite capable of saying, “I’m sorry, I can’t be late for Vespers.” She could direct him to the cathedral, she—

  “Hi, Sister Egg.” It was Topaze, one of the children who were in the school. His father was in and out of jail. His mother looked as though if she spat, nails could come out of her mouth. Topaze looked like an angel. “Can I carry your bags?”

  “You know I can’t pay you anything, Topaze,” she said. The child picked up quarters and occasionally a dollar by doing errands.

  “Hey, Sister Egg, merry Christmas!” And he took the bags out of her arms, leaving her empty handed. “Where’re we going?”

  “To the cathedral,” she said. “Mr., uh—I don’t know your name.”

  “Joe,” the man said.

  “Mr. Joe wants to go to the cathedral. If you’ll carry the bags to the convent and give it to one of the Sisters, you won’t be late for Vespers.”

  “What about you?” Topaze asked.

  “I guess I’ll be late. Tell them not to worry about me, Topaze. I’ll come as soon as I can.”

  “Unh unh, Sister Egg. I’m staying with you and Joe. Merry Christmas, Joe.”

  “Merry yourself.” Once again Joe’s scowl seemed larger than his body. “Let’s go.”

  Sister Egg knew that Topaze didn’t want to miss Vespers. Nevertheless she was glad to have him accompanying her, especially when they turned off brightly lit Broadway to the much darker east-bound street.

  The cathedral loomed at the far end, the large and handsome lamps in front of it brightly lit. Another flake brushed Sister Egg’s face, but the snow had not really begun yet; there was just an occasional flake drifting down from the low clouds.

  People were already starting up the steps in small groups, to be sure of finding seats, even though they would have to wait for hours. A few greeted Sister Egg. Topaze walked on her left, holding her hand. Joe walked on her right, his threadbare coat hanging loosely. But his feet did not shuffle and his scowl was fierce.

  They walked up the steps, an odd trio, Sister Egg thought, and she felt a wave of compassion flow out of her and over the man whose coat had once seen very much better days. The boy squeezed her hand.

  Once they were in the vast nave of the cathedral, they stopped and looked around. The clusters of people hurrying forward to claim seats seemed small and few in that enormous space. Both sides of the nave were lined with bays, small chapels in themselves. There was a bay for St. Francis, a bay for education, a bay where a long-dead bishop was buried. Joe stopped at the bay of the Transfiguration, where there was an enormous painting that had been given the cathedral, of Jesus, James, John, and Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration. Jesus’ face and garments were brilliant even in the semi-darkness of the cathedral, but through and behind him was the shadow of a cross. Depending on the angle at which one looked
at the picture, Jesus was transfigured with light, or his outstretched arms were on the cross. It was a stunning painting, and the bay was one of Sister Egg’s favorites.

  Joe put his hand against his chest, and his scowl became a grimace. “Water,” he choked. “I need water.”

  “Topaze.” Sister Egg pushed the boy in her urgency. “You know where to go. Hurry to the choir rooms and get a glass of water, quickly.” Perhaps Joe needed food, too. His face was not gray. She did not think he was having a heart attack.

  As soon as Topaze had put the bags of groceries down at Sister Egg’s feet and vanished into the shadows, Joe braced himself against one of the stone columns of the bay, then reached out and grabbed Sister Egg’s wrist. “Don’t scream. Don’t try to run. Give it to me.”

  “What?” She tried to pull away from his grasp, not understanding.

  “Your money. I know you have some. You didn’t spend it all on two bags of groceries.”

  For this she was going to be late for Christmas Eve Vespers. Even if Mother Cat—Mother Catherine of Siena—was not angry with her, the other Sisters would be. Sister Egg was always late, always stopping to speak to people.

  “Come on, Egg,” Joe said.

  She was angry. “Couldn’t you even call me a good egg?” she demanded. “Couldn’t you just have asked me for it? ‘Sister, I need money.’ That’s all you’d have needed to say.”

  “I don’t ask for things.”

  “I only have a couple of dollars left. You’re welcome to them.” With her free hand she reached into her pocket. Pulled out a handful of crumbling cookies. “Here.” Three more chocolate kisses.

  “Come off it.” He let her wrist go but reached for her pocket, putting his hand in and turning the pocket inside out. A small wooden cross fell to the stone floor. Some knotted woolen prayer beads. A can opener. A dog biscuit. A tiny sewing kit. “Holy— What are you, a walking dimestore?”

  She looked past his head to the painting of Jesus, and now all she saw was the man on the cross. The body of the dying Christ was richly muscled. It was a strong man who hung there. Joe moved toward her impatiently, and his face came between Sister Egg and Jesus, and by some trick of the dim lighting in the nave, Joe’s face looked like that of the man on the cross.

  “Well, there you are,” she said.

  He pulled two dollars and a few coins out of her turned-out pocket. “It’s not enough.”

  “Oh yes it is,” she said. “It’s more than enough.” She gestured toward the painting. “God cared enough to come and be one of us, and just once during his life on earth he revealed his glory. We matter to God. We matter that much.”

  “Don’t shout,” Joe growled.

  “That’s why it’s merry Christmas.” She hardly heard him. “Not that he died. But that he cared enough to be born. That’s the whole point of it all. Not the Crucifixion and the Resurrection but that God cared enough to be born. That was the real sacrifice. All the power and glory of all the galaxies—” Again she waved her arm toward the painting, and now she could not see the cross, only the glory.

  She stopped for breath as Topaze hurried up with a glass of water.

  Joe said, “Give it to Sister Fried Egg. She needs it more than I do.”

  Topaze looked at them suspiciously.

  “We matter that much,” Sister Egg repeated wonderingly.

  Joe said, “She spilled some stuff. Help her pick it up.” Two dollar bills floated to the floor. Coins dropped.

  Topaze squatted and picked up Sister Egg’s assorted treasures, then slipped them, one by one, into her pocket.

  Joe handed him the remains of the cookies. “Here, kid, these are for you. I’ll keep these.” His open hand held three silver-foil-wrapped chocolate kisses. Light from somewhere in the cathedral touched them so that the silver was bright.

  Sister Egg found that she was holding a glass of water.

  When she turned to Joe, he was gone. She saw only the back of a man in a worn coat walking away.

  “You all right?” Topaze asked anxiously. “You want the water?”

  She took a sip. She could shout, “Thief!” and someone would stop Joe. Her wrist was sore where he had grabbed her. He was not a nice man.

  She looked again at the painting. The face on the cross was Joe’s. She turned so that the light shifted, and she saw the transfigured Christ.

  “If we hurry,” she said to Topaze, “we may miss Vespers, but we’ll get there for the blessing of the crèche and the baby in the stable.”

  What Have We Done to Christmas?

  Christmas! God, leaving power and glory and coming to live with us, powerless, human, mortal. What have we done to Christmas?

  Story

  When we try to define and over-define and narrow down, we lose the story the Maker of the Universe is telling us in the Gospels. I do not want to explain the Gospels; I want to enjoy them.

  And that is how I want to read and write story. This does not mean that story deals only with cheeriness, but that beneath the reality of life is the rock of faith. I ask God to set me upon a rock that is higher than I so that I may be able to see more clearly, see the tragedy and the joy and sometimes the dull slogging along of life with an assurance that not only is there rock under my feet, but that God made the rock and you and me, and is concerned with Creation, every galaxy, every atom and subatomic particle. Matter matters.

  This is the promise of the Incarnation. Christ put on human matter, and what happens to us is of eternal, cosmic importance. That is what true story affirms.

  Creed

  In the creed, as I say it each day, I affirm that “I believe in the resurrection of the body.” We don’t know how that body is going to be resurrected, or what it is going to be like. But if the apostle Paul could believe in a spiritual body so, most of the time, can I. It is yet another mystery of the Word made flesh.

  By whatever name it is called—creed, affirmation, or statement of faith—most religious establishments express what they believe in one way or another. And these expressions are all inadequate. What we hold in common is the affirmation of our faith in the mystery of the Word made flesh.

  When Paul was asked for explanations, his wonderful (and sensible) reply was “Don’t be silly.”

  In Human Flesh

  The enfleshing of the Word which spoke the galaxies made the death of that Word inevitable. All flesh is mortal, and the flesh assumed by the Word was no exception in mortal terms. So the birth of the Creator in human flesh and human time was an event as shattering and terrible as the eschaton. If I accept this birth I must accept God’s love, and this is pain as well as joy because God’s love, as I am coming to understand it, is not like human love.

  This birth has death forevermore confused

  This birth has death forevermore confused.

  That God, the holy & immortal one

  Should take on mortal flesh, should be abused,

  Be killed—oh, how could such a thing be done?

  What does this death then do to death?

  Death grasps the holy body of the Lord,

  Crushes the mortal flesh, lets side be gored—

  Oh, God! has death not triumphed over life?

  Why did you come to share our joy & pain?

  Our feeble times of peace, our constant strife?

  What did you think your fragile folk might gain?

  I do not know the answer, Lord, but you,

  Embracing death, made life forever new.

  Impossible Things

  In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass, the White Queen advises Alice to practice believing six impossible things every morning before breakfast. It’s good advice. Unless we practice believing in the impossible daily and diligently, we cannot be Christians, those strange creatures who proclaim to beli
eve that the Power that created the entire universe willingly and lovingly abdicated that power and became a human baby.

  Particle physics teaches us that energy and matter are interchangeable. So, for love of us recalcitrant human creatures, the sheer energy of Christ changed into the matter of Jesus, ordinary human matter, faulted, flawed, born with the seed of death already within the flesh as a sign of solidarity with our mortality.

  But this birth also promises us that our human, mortal matter is permeated with Christ’s total energy, the creative energy which shouted into being all the galaxies, hydrogen clouds, solar systems, planets, all life—even us! When Christ was born as Jesus, born of a human mother as all babies are born, that incredible birth honored all our births, and assured us that we, God’s beloved children, partake of eternal life. For indeed it follows that as Christ partook of human life, we partake of the divine life.

  How can we trivialize the Incarnation as we have done? Tawdry tinsel and crowded shopping malls are not the worst of it. Arguing about Christ’s divinity versus Jesus’ humanity is equally to miss the point. Like the White Queen we need merrily to accept the impossible (with us it is impossible; with God nothing is impossible!): The baby who was born two thousand years ago in Bethlehem was God, come to us as a human babe. Jesus: wholly human. It’s more than our puny minds can comprehend. It’s one reason Jesus kept insisting that we be as little children, because we can understand this wonder only with childheartedness, not with grown-up sophistication.

  We can, to some extent, understand Jesus’ humanity. We can glory in but not understand, in any cognitive way, his divinity. We are still like that fetus in the womb, comfortably swimming around in the warm amniotic fluid, with no idea of what life out of the womb is going to be like. Unlike us grown-ups, the fetus seems to enjoy being without questions! Questions are fine as long as we do not insist on finite answers to questions which are infinite. How could Jesus be wholly God and wholly human? What does the resurrection of the body mean? How can God be good if terrible things are allowed to happen? How much free will do we have? Can we make a difference?