The Tribune

CHRISTMAS is a time to celebrate and to reflect on the Incarnation, God’s very personal and redeeming gift in the person of Jesus Christ.

The theological reference of Imago Dei recalls how we are made in the image and likeness of God and how in kind we may offer to others and to the world our finest human gifts and our better selves.

In the imitation of Christ, the finest gifts we may bring at Christmas and year-round are those gifts that rekindle and rejuvenate the divine spark within ourselves and others, gifts like friendship and fidelity, joy and peace, kindness and compassion.

These are among the finest gifts we may bring, which is essentially the gift of oneself in a spirit of gentleness. When we eschew harshness, judgmentalism, and nasty, unkind and uncharitable mindsets, we rediscover and reveal the divine spirit.

In The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, there is a dialogue among the Trinitarian community whose Divine Heart feels the sin and endless pining of the bodies and souls made in their image and likeness.

Christ, the Divine Mercy, is sent to smash the original sin of human beings who keep forgetting their original blessing of being crafted in the image of their Creator. This is one of the profound gifts of Christmas.

We are the ultimate expression in creation of God’s love!

When we forgive, reconcile, and show mercy beyond measure we manifest the image and likeness in which we are wonderfully made. In this spirit, some meditations for Christmas.

Kate

About a year before she returned to Canada in 2015 for health reasons, after living in The Bahamas for approximately 60 years, this writer ran into Kate Seiler in the parking lot of a grocery store in Cable Beach.

“How you doing’, Kate?” With her signature twinkling eyes and ebullience she enthused, “My joints are hurting. I have my health challenges. But I’m great!” Sometimes stubborn and blunt, Kate was an irrepressible and incandescent spirit, not given to self-pity.

Her mane of blond hair and colourful scarfs were a welcome and joy-filled sight for the many people she knew from every walk of life. It seems that just about everyone had a personal story of Kate’s bountiful generosity, which she never advertised or wanted others to know about.

Generosity

Kate’s generosity was as selfless as it was anonymous. She helped scores of people in myriad ways over her decades of community service and volunteerism. When she saw someone in need, her generosity of spirit flowed. She did not give in order to be recognised or to ingratiate herself with others.

Kate passed away in 2020. A memorial in the Montreal Gazette offered: “Kate never sought praise or the spotlight for the acts of kindness she performed; some of the charities that she supported were the Tara Xavier Hepburn Foundation, the Bahamas Humane Society and Operation Potcake.

“It was a common sight to see Kate driving around town throwing dog biscuits to the potcakes at the side of the road. She loved to support local artists and musicians.” She was also a jazz enthusiast.

“At an age when most people would say ‘I’ve done my bit, let someone else volunteer’, she was still going down to Chez Doris women’s shelter, twice a week, to serve lunches to between 60 - 80 women.”

The Bahamas was her home. Kate did not want to leave and missed her adopted country dearly. For years, she volunteered at the Princess Margaret Hospital. She was devoted to animal welfare. She supported various charities with a variety of gifts, including those of encouragement and joy.

Kate, who came from a privileged background, likely thought that among her greater privileges and finest gifts was a life devoted to the service of others. In a world of unquenchable greed, Kate demonstrated extraordinary generosity.

Ethical living

Albert Einstein wrote and spoke volumes on ethical living. In one of his meditations, he mused, “How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it.

“But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people – first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy.

“A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labours of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.”

Our capacity for service and love is so often stymied by our limitless self-absorption, spiritual lethargy and selfishness.

We are irrevocably screwed up as human beings, seemingly broken beyond repair, or seeming repair or partial repair. Refashioned, renewed, forgiven, we keep breaking, smashed by our own actions those of others.

Each of us is like a precious vessel, shattered throughout life by addictions, merry-go-rounds of pathologies, Achilles heels, betrayals, pretensions, hypocrisies, deadly sins, weariness and more. And yet!

There is a glue that repairs the cracks: love. We are lovable, capable of love, because we are flawed. Perfection can be quite boring. We are wonderfully brittle creatures.

Balms

Reconciliation, forgiveness and mercy are wondrous tourniquets and balms. To be gingerly pieced back together by the loving hands and courageous patience of a spouse, partner, friend or community is joy incarnate.

Joy incarnate is the lifeblood of Christmas. We screwed up human beings are capable of glorious truth, goodness and beauty.

The French philosopher and humanist Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) played a critical role in the promotion of the radical dignity of the human person in the face of the threats of the dehumanising onslaughts of the 19th and 20th centuries, including two world wars and the Holocaust.

He contributed significantly to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. An agnostic turned believer, Maritain described how personal is the Incarnation for every human being.

He insisted: “We don’t love qualities; we love a person; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as their qualities” and “Let us not go faster than God. It is our emptiness and our thirst that He needs, not our plentitude.”

It is from this “emptiness” and our “personhood” that light more easily emanates and flows.

The light at Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere begins its evocative journey with the change of seasons and the resulting new interplay of day and night; days and nights growing longer or shorter depending on one’s geographical and emotional longitude or latitude.

Light and shadow

With the year ending, the memories of light and shadows from the past year come into greater relief, with questions we might ask ourselves, including from the better self we want to become.

“How am I ending this year?” “What have been my sources of light and my shadows?” “How could I have been more generous or grateful?” “How, in this season of light, can I be a greater source of light for others?” “What continues to prevent me from a greater openness of heart and eyes about myself and others?”

Light is all around us, including light we cannot yet perceive, light to which we are blinded.

A prayer of supplication we might offer is to become a greater source of light and hope and joy for others, including those struggling with ill health, physically and mentally, as well as generosity to the poor, and for those whose Christmas may be more blessed by our love and presence.

When we say that we don’t feel the Christmas spirit this often means that we have forgotten or have neglected the love and light that animate the “thrill of hope” that is the Light of the world.

It is not about “feeling” Christmas. It is about letting go of those attitudes and habits which obstruct the light desperately seeking to penetrate closed eyes, blocked ears, and hardened hearts.

Kate Seiler knew the names, the stories and life journeys of many people. And many knew her name. She touched and manifested the light because her heart was so open and generous. In this is the essence of Christmas. Thank you, Kate. Blessed Christmas!