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“From the cradle to the crucifixion, God reveals to us a profound mystery.” I woke up this morning with this familiar Christmas refrain. The mystery here isn’t a detective’s puzzle. It’s a reality beyond reason. Or rather, both beyond reason and within reach, as God became man and, as a human being, cannot be incomprehensible. Not incomprehensible, but at times perplexing.
That’s how Joseph, not understanding why his fiancée was pregnant before they lived together, decided to discreetly break off the engagement. Then God spoke to him in a dream. Why does God speak clearly to some and through dreams to others? That’s another mystery. At least once, we have all woken up to a dream through which a message was conveyed. God probably speaks in dreams to make us understand everything at once.
In a very pragmatic spirit, the Holy Scriptures scorn dreams as “the fantasies of a pregnant woman,” advising to stick to God’s clear commandments and common sense—unless those dreams “are sent from the Almighty.” Only the heart bears witness to that.
Joseph followed this kind of “advice received in a dream.” Dreams sent from the Almighty with very precise instructions. First, it was the advice that gave us the Christmas crib, “Do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” Then it was, “Get up, take the Child and flee, for Herod wants to kill Him.” Later on, “Get up and go back to the country, for he who sought the Child’s life is dead.”
Sometimes, fleeing is the right thing to do. That’s one of the lessons we can draw from the Christmas Gospels. Let the mothers who speak so well about cold mountain houses and garages transformed into shelters take comfort in this, those whose offspring are now in France or Canada. They went to the mountains “until the situation changed.” Joseph and Mary stayed in Egypt until the tyrant was dead.
Joseph, Mary and the child lived as migrants and foreigners before settling in Nazareth, with the vicissitudes of a nomadic life. It’s relevant today. The excellent Christian site “Croire” reproduces a Bruegel painting this month depicting the census in Bethlehem, an evangelical scene never painted before. In it, Joseph, Mary and the donkey are waiting for their turn to be registered in a Brabantine Bethlehem. Night will fall soon, and the time for Mary to give birth will come, without Joseph finding a place in the inn.
It’s in the deepest night that God’s mercy shines. It shone for the first time at the birth of the Child, in the heart of a freezing Judean night. It shone again in broad daylight, in thick spiritual darkness, when the cry “Why have you forsaken me?” echoed. Today, it still shines amid the darkness of Gaza, Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh, Sudan, the White House, 10 Downing Street, the Élysée, Mediterranean oil platforms, lithium mines and so on. The list is long of places where the shadow of death looms and yet light still shines.
Amid this darkness, what is Lebanon? What is this nothingness that is our fortress? What is this so-called coexistence that carries no weight and is, mostly, a set of rules of politeness? What is this will to live together that is our identity, our home and our strength?
As it stands, this restrained and somewhat artificial conviviality is a powerful machine to demine the history that lies ahead. Conviviality and coexistence thrive on honesty. It is built. Institutions embody and strengthen it. By paralyzing them, violence is persistently inflicted on us. The absence of a president proves it once again.
Lebanon’s history lies in pieces, and we pick it up randomly every day in conversations. The assassins and undertakers are still among us. Triumphant. When will we, like Joseph, hear an angel in a dream say to us, “Rise up and return to Lebanon, for he who wanted to take the life of the country is dead?”
