Blessed Christmas Eve!
I am safely arrived and settled in NYC for a couple of weeks.
Sunday, flight day, and Monday were the coldest days of the year to date. My bizarre faux-Cossack hat and super duper Arctic-worthy coat stood me in excellent stead! Yesterday I braved the cold and like a good tourist, made my way just for the heck of it (though had a goal in mind which was this Prints and Textiles exhibit at the NY Public Library) from 61st and Lex down Fifth Avenue to 42nd Street. HORDES of people. At the library, HORDES of people. At St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where I stopped in a for a blessed respite, HORDES of people.
Once or twice a year, I can kind of get into that type of scene. A carnival atmosphere prevailed, with rollicking Christmas pop tunes, massive displays of mutantly ginormous red bulbs, wreaths, trees, and bows, esp on the facades of upscale department stores. Older gals with heavy makeup and sexy Santa suits rang their Salvation Army bells, held out baskets, and sang “Rockin’ Aound the Christmas Tree” karaoke-style. At each intersection, HORDES of swarming people would grind to a reluctant halt, pool in a squirming mass, and when the light turned green, slither between the massive cluster of cars that had gotten caught in the middle of the intersection over to the other side of the street.
Through this midst walked many many dear young women with baby strollers and carraiges. And amazingly, the crowd inevitably, somehow, good-naturedly give them the right of way.
I had a free hour or so after the library and a brief stop at Muji (where I wanted to buy a small $3 notebook but realized I’d have to stand in line at the cashier for at least 30 minutes, and so left) and, making my way back up Fifth Avenue conceived of the brilliant idea of stopping in at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Where, as I said, there were HORDES of people. It was like getting into a VIP-only nightclub and, once inside, the hordes of people had fanned out into the aisles and pews and were madly chatting, filming themselves, holding selfie sticks aloft, trooping up to the altar as if expecting to see something exciting, like a corpse, and all around the sanctuary children were shouting, arguing with parents, doing gymnastics, and slobbering candy.
I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. It seemed very much like the crowd that would have gathered to watch the Crucifixion–fun! an execution! did you bring your camera?–with so very little sense of reverence or holiness or any kind or cognizance that we were in a church.
And on the other hand–“they were like sheep without a shepherd.” To bring your four kids to NYC for Christmas–to HAVE four kids–is not a gesture. It’s a whole-life 24/7 effort that I, for one, can barely imagine. They’d at least come to a church, which many people wouldn’t, even if to cross another item off the must-see list, seemed cause for celebration. Maybe the mothers and fathers and all kinds of other people, like me, just desperately wanted someplace to sit for a minute. “Many people were coming and going, so there was no time to eat. He said to the apostles, ‘Come by yourselves to a secluded place and rest for a while.’” Matthew 6:31)…
Anyway, I found a spot and got out my rosary and to the non-stop accompaniment of an 8-year-old girl who appeared to be high on amphetamines and did not once the whole time stop shrilly talking, prayed the Joyful Mysteries. During which time I realized that little girl was me–over-stimulated, vaguely unsettled by the high ceilings, the altar, the gold, the sense that this was a place set apart but not exactly knowing what or why and thus…let’s not be quiet and feel…let’s just talk, and talk and talk…how many times in my life have I done just that? And if not exteriorly, then interiorly.
In retrospect-there was the miraculous birth, right there. Never what you expect. Never what you think you want. That may well turn out to be the high point of my whole two weeks…that holy interlude in the midst of the throng at St. Patick’s.
After that I met my dear old friend Patrick in an Asian food court and I had a delicious heap of noodles from Prawnaholic, and we shoved our way afterward past the Rockefeller Plaza tree (more HORDES of people!) and he walked me up Park Ave to St. Vincent Ferrer, where I made the 6 pm Mass with two minutes to spare.
Perfection.
Wonderful reflection from Caryll Houselander in today’s Magnficat about Christ being born in the empty, broken, poor place in our heart and how if we want the whole world to love Christ as we do, where do we think that movement will start but with us? In each individual person’s own heart…
I will be at the 4 pm Vigil Mass at St. Catherine of Siena this afternoon…
Finally, independent journalist Matt Taibbi has been a light these past years–an old-school liberal who never bought into the totalitarian groupthink, and who’s a husband, a father, and a deep-down optimist who insists on celebrating family, common sense, and as in this article wishing one and all a Merry Christmas (and while remaining a resolute nonbeliever (or so he says: raised Catholic and as we know, once a Catholic..), the eternal realities… (Did that sentence have one, or maybe two, too many independent clauses?) As in kids’ eyes will always shine as they open their presents on Christmas morning, husbands and wives will always want to get old together…but read the piece yourself. It doesn’t take much but somehow Matt, too, often makes me cry.
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