Holidays - Seasons Greetings!

The young carpenter gave the baby to a priest, who accepted him with practiced hands, and, as he turned toward the altar, an old man named Simeon peered into the folds protecting the baby’s face, and at once fell back, shielding his eyes. He emitted a cry which attracted attention, and Joseph, concerned for his son, also looked into the folds of the swaddling to make certain that Jesus was all right. Mary clasped her hands and closed her eyes.

The old man was a devout and conscientious Jew who had done many good works in his life. He longed for the promise of redemption by God, and his longing was so poignant that the Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that he would not die until he had been permitted to see the messiah.

Because of this, Simeon had attended the presentation of male sons every morning for many years, waiting for the promise to be fulfilled. He had grown old waiting. The daily inspection of infants by Simeon had made him, in the eyes of some priests, a pest. Now, for the first time, he had looked at one more baby’s face and had fallen back as though blinded.

Joseph did not know him, nor the story of the promise.

Before anyone could stop Simeon, he took Jesus from the arms of the priest and, with aged eyes on the morning sky, crooned a hymn to God.

“Now,” he sang, “you may release
your bondsman, 0 Master,
according to your promise,
in Peace!
For my eyes have looked upon the salvation which you have prepared
for all the nations to behold,
a Light to illumine the Gentiles,
a Glory to grace your people Israel.”

The priests and the communicants listened in wonder.

Mary opened her eyes and saw at once that this was another in a long chain of divine manifestations. She looked so kindly into the face of the old man that Simeon handed the baby back to the priest, and turned to Mary with tears in his eyes.

“Alas!” he said to her. “This babe is destined to be the downfall no less than the restoration of many in Israel!

His very name will provoke contradiction, and your own soul, also, shall be pierced by a sword!

And thus the secret thoughts of many a heart shall be laid bare.”

This was the first that Mary knew that, in her selection as the mother of God; there would be sorrow and tragedy. If, as seems likely, she thought that her enormous honor would carry with it nothing but the pleasant task of bringing the infant up in righteousness to do the will of the Father, she was mistaken. She was beginning to learn that the work of the messiah was a study in contrasts.

He was God, but he had chosen to be born in the humblest abode. Still, his advent had been heralded by angels from Heaven. His mother was a poor, unknown virgin and his foster father was a poverty-stricken carpenter, but rich wise men had come, unannounced, out of the east to adore the baby. Now, in the holiest place in all Israel, an old man had stepped forth to state, without blasphemy, that this child was the salvation of the world. ‘Who told him? She wondered. How did the old man know? And what did he mean by saying that her soul would be pierced by a sword?

She was meditating on these things when a commotion arose and out of the crowd came the oldest-looking woman Mary had ever seen. Her face was a skeleton over which saffron skin was stretched. The woman dragged her legs forward, toward the infant, and no one tried to stop her. The priests acknowledged her presence by bowing curtly. This was Anna, the prophetess. She was the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Aser, and she was known as one of the holiest of women.

Anna had married young and, for seven years, had been happy. Her husband had been taken from her suddenly, and she had turned to God and the great temple. She was there every morning; she was there every evening. She had been a widow for eighty-four years and, counting the seven years of marriage, and the ritualistic age of fifteen before marriage, the prophetess was probably one hundred and six years of age.

When she had dragged her ancient frame to the side of Jesus, she peered at him, and turned away, thanking God over and over. From that day on, she went among the women at the temple, preaching about Jesus to all who hoped for the redemption of Israel.

Order was restored in the temple, and the baby was presented to the Lord. He was found to be without blemish. Joseph redeemed him with money and with a sacrificial offering of the doves. The sun was hardly at its zenith when Joseph led his spouse and the baby back to where the jackass was tethered.

Joseph took another look at the baby, to see if he could see anything unusual-any radiance, perhaps-which might have moved the old man and the old lady in the temple. What he saw was a round face, dark ringleted hair, clear olive skin, and red lips pouting a little in sleep.

He saw a baby.

Joseph said that it would not be wise to return to Nazareth and then come back for the visitation to the temple. It would be better to remain in Bethlehem and, on the morning of the forty-first day, to take the child to Jerusalem, obey the law, and return to the cave and pack up preparatory to leaving for the long trip home the next day.

Altogether, the carpenter would be away from his business for many weeks. This, for a young man who had recently concluded his apprenticeship, was a long time. He must return to his work. In a craft as precarious as his, it was important to remain in good favor with the townsmen and a man could not do that if he was not available for work.

Mary agreed. She was a tractable, obedient wife, a girl whose hours were taken up with her baby. The baths, the feedings, the changes, sitting with him in the early sunlight on the side of the hills, rocking him to sleep and crooning to him in the late hours all tended to confuse the young mother between her son’s divinity and his human aspects. He was a baby-her baby-but he was also God, and the daily ministrations to his normal needs moved her mother’s heart to dwell upon him as an infant who needed maternal care and love.

But, when the baby slept, and she and Joseph had time to discuss, in whispers, the wondrous things which had happened, and which would come in the future, they were beset by anxiety and they did not know what was expected of them. Joseph seemed at times to have a deeper appreciation of the destiny of the youngster. Mary, on the other hand, had an appreciation of each of the wonders of the birth of the messiah, but seemed unable to group them into one big mural.

It was better this way because, had the Father permitted her to see the enormity of the whole plan, she would have been overwhelmed in the presence of Jesus and could not have discharged the duties of a good mother in the normal intercourse of raising a child. Another factor was that the Son of God had come to earth to be born, to “grow in wisdom and in favor with God and men,” to engage in a public ministry to show the true and only way to heaven, and to die in self-willed pain for all men. These things would not have been truly of earth if Jesus had not elected to be as human as his neighbors.

Neither Mary nor Joseph ever lost sight of the real mission of Jesus, nor of his divinity. They knew. In the years ahead there would be many strange and awesome things to remind them, again and again, that the human aspect was condescension of God to man, whom he created and loved. The divine side would be hidden for more than thirty years and, when it was revealed publicly, it would be done at a marriage feast, and solely to please his mother. The sorrows were still far away.

The first forty-one days were sentimental ones for Mary and Joseph. They were happy ones spent in the humblest surroundings. When the census taking was over, they could have moved up to the inn because there was room, but it would have been an added expense, and Joseph’s carpentry in the stable had turned out so well that the young couple felt relaxed and at home among the domestic animals.

At dawn on the forty-first day, Joseph saddled the little jackass, and packed enough food and water for one day’s travel. It would be five miles up to Jerusalem and five back. Then, after a good night’s rest, they would pack everything, pay the innkeeper, and start the five-day trip to Nazareth.

Jerusalem and its great temple were like a giant hive to the Judean bees who appeared in long dusty lines along the inbound roads in the morning and who, after the last evening sacrifice, left in long slow queues, like thousands of dark insects who, after spawning, leave at a common time without communicating with each other.

In the northbound group, Joseph led the little animal and, on it, Mary and Jesus. He saw the backs of animals and people ahead of him, and he accepted the alkali dust on his lips and the gritty taste between his teeth as a concomitant of travel. The Jews they met were not friendly because it was not considered seemly to exchange greetings. In ordinary conversation, well-educated people averted eyes because it was felt to be immodest to stare into another person’s eyes.

Joseph passed the big field of the potter to the south of Jerusalem, walked up the Valley of the Kidron to the north side, and entered the Sheep Gate. He tethered the ass, and took Mary to the Gate of the Women and gave her some coins. Joseph took the baby in his arms and the mother smiled at the awkwardly tender manner in which he held Jesus, and she adjusted the folds of the swaddling clothes so that the sun would not hit the baby’s eyes.

The foster father first walked out into the courtyard and bought two turtledoves for sixteen cents. This was called the offering of the poor. A proper offering would have been a lamb, but the price of unblemished lambs on the temple grounds was seventy-five cents. In a land where the average family income probably did not exceed fifty dollars, Joseph could not afford anything but the most modest sacrifice.

The mother stood timidly in the area reserved for the women of Israel. She saw many other women, of all ages, worshiping. Then she heard the high, thin wail of the organ, which announced that incense was to be kindled on the Golden Altar. This summoned all women who had recently given birth to infants, and who had come to the temple to be purified.

Ahead of Mary were huge trumpets standing on end, their wide mouths standing like golden lilies against the marble of the house of God. She recalled Joseph’s instructions and into one of these she dropped her offering for the sacrifice. She walked up the fifteen steps to the Nicanor Gate. There were other young women with her. On the far side of the gate was the Court of Israelite Men, and females were not allowed there.

The station men of the temple met the young women and assisted in the sacrifices, the burnt offerings, the sin offerings, the drink offerings, and as the incense floated up into the blue morning sky the hymn of praise, TrisHagion, filled the cold corridors. Afterward, Mary was levitically clean, pure of stain, and could participate in sacred offerings. She rejoined Joseph and Jesus.

Joseph took the baby into the sacrificial section of the temple. The presentation ceremony was, in effect, a buying back of a son. The first-born, under Jewish law, was reserved for God. He must be free of such bodily blemishes as would bar him from the priesthood and, on his thirty-first day or after, the father must first offer the male son to God, and then redeem him from a priest. The cost was high-about $2.50.

There he sat in the dark in his shop, which was a shed that leaned against his house. There, with his hands touching the wood and the rough tools of his daily toil, he was at home to face this thing out with himself.

For some reason Mary feared him. That much was plain. Evidently she had gone away to the hill country of Judea to avoid him. And now, even though she had voluntarily returned, she could not at all bear the sight of him or endure his company. Something had happened which had made him suddenly distasteful to her, or there was some hidden, terrible reason why she feared him.

He cast about futilely in his mind for any word or action of his which might have frightened the maiden, for she was not as other young women of her age. But, somehow, he seemed to know that this thought was idle.

The trouble, whatever it was, was a thing that went deeper than any chance or ill-considered word of his could have gone.

Suddenly, a mist swam before his eyes, and his hands gripped desperately at the friendly familiar things about him to keep his hold upon himself. The world stopped in its course and staggered, while his senses reeled from the searing pain that shot through his heart.

Mary was lost to him!

It smote him with a shock of agony that seemed to wrench his very soul from its moorings. It shot through his mind like a shaft of burning light, leaving him dazed and numb with a paralysis of all thought.

Mary was not for him!

He did not argue, he did not struggle with the thought.

It leaped upon him and bore him to the earth.

He had no complaint, no blame. It was all a part of the futility, the failure, the emptiness of his whole life. He, the son of kings, the son of David, had ever stood by and seen the prize of life snatched from him, even as he would have put out his hand to it. Failure, humiliation, bread turned to stone; these had been the law of his life and the wages of his toil all the days from his youth up. Was it indeed his punishment, for that he had let the royal blood of David lie stagnant in his veins, for that he had not risen up, as that David would have done, to strike a blow for his right, for the people, for God?

Then his heart went back on the way of self torture to the pictures it had made of Mary. He saw the sainted girl standing in his doorway, a blessing before all men. He saw a thrice-blessed woman guiding his household in gravity and love and the grace of godliness.

And his soul cried out in unvoiced agony. And his heart, in its torture, wrung itself dry of blood, so that he swooned and fell upon the ground, a broken thing.

The light which awoke him was not the dawn. It was the radiance which the Angel brought from the Throne.

“Joseph, son of David,” he heard a voice, as he lifted his arm to his eyes to shield them from the light,” fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.

“And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.”

Then the light was gone from the shed. And Joseph reached out his hand to the teeth of the saw, and they were sharp and tore his fingers. And he put his hand upon his hewing axe, and it was heavy to lift. These things were real. He had not dreamt a dream. And the light stayed in his heart.

So, early in the morning, he sought the rabbi Amon and brought him with him to the house where Mary dwelt.

Mary, seeing them approach, was frightened with a terrible fear; for Joseph must surely be coming, thus with witnesses, to put her from him with the dread “bill of divorcement.” But as they came nearer her eyes were quick to see the light in the face of Joseph. And she knew that God had listened to the cry of her heart as she had prayed in the night, and had revealed His truth to him.

So she came forward and stood before him. While he, looking upon her in great and tender reverence, said:

“Mary, God hath had pity on my blindness.”

And, blessing God in the wonder and adoration of their hearts, they went to their home.

Joseph, the worker in wood, wrought dizzily through the heavy heat of the June day, working by the side of a fire which he had built to heat water so that he might soak the wood and bend it upon the spokes for the felly of the wheel. It was back-breaking work, and the dry heat entered into his bones so that his head swam and his arms refused their strength. But so he had toiled all the years of his life, a man hewing to the line, severe upon himself, ever giving more than the measure for which he was paid. It was no new thing that he should labor to the point of utter weariness. Hard, unstinted toil had been his uncomplained portion all the days of his life.

This man was the son of kings and a king, of right. The havoc of time had robbed him of his birthright and of all the things that should have come with his blood-of all things save an honored name and the great, brave spirit of David his father. The irony of life which gave him the blood and the spirit of a king and with these in his heart forced him to hew other men’s wood for the barest needs of living had ever cut deep into his heart. In his youth he had rebelled and chafed in spirit that the blood of David should be thus demeaned on the earth. And there had not been wanting foolish men who harried the soul of the young man with talk and with unspoken jibes.

But these things had never been able to embitter the sturdy heart of the man who walked straight with God. Nor was it poverty, or labor, or the consciousness of the injustice of the world that now weakened his spirit and robbed his frame of its strength. There was a deeper trouble that touched the very fiber of his being and made his heart to bleed inwardly, in silence.

Mary, the light of his eyes, the maiden whom he loved with a tenderness passing the love of all other men, had been gone from the village these three months now. She had gone secretly, without even a word for him. She was his promised wife, and it was his right to have known whither she went, and why. But there was no blame in his heart for her, as though she had thought but lightly of him. Her guardians could only tell him that she had gone to her kin in Judea. They could give him no more reason than he himself could conjecture.

He knew that Mary had done nothing in ungentleness; the reason for her going must have been one that compelled without question. Something beyond endurance must have troubled the maiden to drive her to this secret flight. He had been minded to follow, to protect her if there were need, and to bring her back. But he had not ventured to do so, though it would have been his right. There was that about Mary which he had never understood, something in her of which he stood always in tender awe.

His heart was wearied and troubled sick as he bent his back to his task. But now, as he lifted his eyes a little, his soul leaped up into them; for there was Mary climbing the hill from the great roadway. He could not be mistaken; there was none other like to her in the entire world!

He would have rushed down to greet her as she came opposite his place, but something, in the look she gave him or in the wearied hesitation of her walk, told him that she did not wish to talk and kept him standing hurt and silent by his wheel. So Mary passed by to her house.

In the evening he would seek her out and she would tell him of this thing which had troubled her.

He found her sitting in the gloaming by her house and softly spoke her name, saying:

“Mary, Mary, how is it with thee? And how was it I should not know this thing that troubled thee?”

But the girl, rising in panic, looked up at him with startled, frightened eyes. Then she burst into tears and fled away from him into the house.

Now Joseph was dumbfounded and more sorely troubled than ever. He thought to follow her into the house, to get an understanding of the unusual conduct; for he was sure that only some deep and terrible fear could have made Mary deal thus with him. But he did not follow. He turned and went sadly back across the ridge of the village to his own house.