“You know, I think that Nativity scene of yours is really beautiful,” Nick said, after he had arrived at my place.
“Which one?”
“The bigger one. It’s gorgeous.”
“Thank you. I bought it at the Vatican some years ago.”
“Wow. At the Vatican?”
“The shop is very close to Saint Peter’s Basilica, though technically outside Vatican City. They have all sorts of wonders there.”
“No cheap little things, I’m guessing?”
“None at all.”
“Yeah, you can tell that one didn’t come cheap. I’ve never seen anyone love Christmas the way you do,” Nick said, turning toward me.
“I don’t do anything others don’t,” I replied, chopping an onion.
“Everybody decorates the house and cooks Christmas meals, but with you there’s something more. You live Christmas with every breath you take… I don’t quite know how to put it…”
“I have all this Christmas décor, I send cards, I invited you for lunch on the twenty-fifth—but I don’t need any of that to celebrate Christmas. If I understood you right, it seems you’ve noticed that, for me, Christmas is Christ. It’s His birthday, that midnight in Bethlehem, bitterly cold—but it’s also Jesus being born within me. And it’s from that ‘Jesus being born in me’ that the joy I feel comes. It’s so intense that it overflows and expresses itself in decorations, gifts, special meals, and everything else. If I were naked in the middle of the desert, I’d still be able to have a very happy Christmas.”
“Has it never crossed your mind that maybe there isn’t any Jesus being born in you at all, and that what you feel is just some kind of hysterical illusion?”
“That was… a heavy way to put it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. The truth is, I ask myself that question all the time. How often have I found myself publicly defending chastity while, at the same time, sleeping with someone close to me—simply because I know sex is pleasurable, and I’m giving it up for the sake of something as ethereal as ‘Heaven’?”
“But you remain faithful—to ‘Heaven.’”
“I do. I look back on my past; I recall the signs that Jesus is not an idea, but God, always present in our lives.”
I paused for a moment and went on, weighing my words with care:
“I remember my life, and I can see the presence of Jesus’ hand—intangible, invisible, scentless, silent, yet strong—guiding it. I remember, and I come to realize that my own will is my greatest enemy. God is not a fiction, and His joy is not hysteria. Still, of course, I have no way of proving any of this.”
“I have faith in you,” Nick said, softly.
“Well, I wouldn’t,” I answered. “God knows I’m not trustworthy.”
“Not completely, maybe—who is? But you’re trustworthy enough.”
“I can live with that,” I said, smiling.
No comments:
Post a Comment