CHRISTMAS MEDITATION BY FATHER JAMES CARNEY

The following are excerpts from Fr. Carney’s notes for giving retreats, the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, to members of women’s religious congregations, apparently written in 1966.

Father James (Guadalupe) Carney had worked in Honduras for 18 years as a Jesuit (member of the Missouri Province). His defense of human rights and his support of the farmers' organizing efforts resulted in his deportation in 1979. In 1983 he returned to Honduras as a chaplain to an armed revolutionary column; shortly before doing so, he left the Society of Jesus in order to avoid implicating the order in the action he was about to take. His intention was to ask for readmission later.
The group was captured by the Honduran army, and Father Carney disappeared. The Honduran military suggested that he had starved to death in the mountains.

Meditation on the Incarnation, by Fr. James Carney

Jesus was entirely directed by the Holy Spirit of Love in him. He had complete single-mindedness, simplicity. We have to be like Christ. This singleness of purpose-- “return all to the father”--gave unity and integrity to Christ’s life; His life was all-of- a-piece.

For Christ, from the beginning to the end , there was a work, a mission to be accomplished, a way to be walked, and Christ was always on the way “to the Father.” He said in the beginning: “… behold I come…to do Thy will, O God.” Right up to His last breath: “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit. It is consummated; I have accomplished my purpose.”

From this great driving purpose in Christ’s life, there flowed His great energy. Where there is lack of purpose, there is lack of energy, and boredom comes. Where singleness of purpose exists, it is exemplified by energy that drives one forward. Look at the life of any saint–your own founder, for instance. This is the secret of sanctity--the desire, the ideal, the singleness of purpose that drives one on to self-sacrifice: “ to go to the Father with Christ, through Christ, in Christ.”

And from this singleness of purpose and resultant energy there flows a cheerfulness, which was so characteristic of Christ and of the first Christians. And also a great peace of soul: I am in Christ and with Christ, and through Christ in his Holy Spirit of Love I’m going to the Father. “What can separate me from the love of Christ?”

This is Christ’s gospel: the “good news,”which we have to tell to all people. The angel said to the shepherds, “ I bring you news of great joy…”

Jesus didn’t become man and it’s over; He is still becoming man. But now risen, He develops His identity with human nature until only at the Parousia will He be fully man. We are now His fulfillment, pleroma, building up, developing the whole Church.

Acts 9,3-6; Mt 25,40; 1Cor.12,12-27; Eph.1,22-23; Jn.15,1;6,57-58;17,21-26.
Explain all these texts with them reading them, stressing not only oneness with Christ, having His life through his Holy Spirit of Love, but stress our union with each other. The body has many different members according to the graces the Holy Spirit gives each. Each cell is different, but all necessary. When you criticize a person for being ignorant or something, you are criticizing Divine Providence who made him that way.

The only supernatural life I live is the universal life of the whole Mystical Body and organism. What goes on in me is part of the whole, just as what goes on in an organ like the stomach is part of the whole organism. Seeing God in all things means principally seeing Him in my brothers and sisters--seeing Christ in all people, accepting all persons as they are, accepting divine Providence in them. And whatever I do or think of them, I do or think about Christ. They are Christ prolonged, a part of Christ.

1 Cor 12,26: “If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members share its joy.” [v. 27: “You, then, are the body of Christ. Every one of you is a member of it.”]

Seeing Christ in all people = finding God in all things. How is Christ in all people? How is He in me? By His Holy Spirit, directing my free choices. I am Christ to a certain degree. A saint is all Christ as much as he/she can be, completely directed by His Holy Spirit: “I live, now not I, but Christ in me.” So what there is of Christ in me, the grace in me, is lovable; the same goes for all people.

Christ’s Holy Spirit is working in all, even in those who are sinners, trying to convert them–even in pagans who don’t know Christ, trying to convert them. I can’t judge who is a live member of the Mystical Body and who is a child of Satan, so I must assume all people are in the state of grace. At least God wants all to be. And so I love all people as my brothers and sisters.

The Mystical Body started out small, grew, and will grow--till it reaches the full stature of the complete Christ....

Hidden Life

Let us meditate on the baby that Mary gave to the world, lying on dirty straw in a feedbox in a dirty cave used as a stable for dirty sheep. The poor ignorant shepherds are still kneeling there with us, when the baby Jesus begins to cry.

And so, let us begin this meditation with the contemplation which St. Augustine tells us was his favorite contemplation. When the baby cries Mary picks him up and begins to nurse him. Yes, sitting there on some dirty straw on the dirt floor of the cave, right in front of us all without any shame at all. Only for Americans is it a little strange or shocking to watch a mother nurse a baby at her breast. For 9/10 of the world it is the most natural and beautiful everyday sight. So we continue to kneel there with the poor shepherds.

The beautiful scene and the Holy Spirit of love living in us should help us to understand this wonderfully contradictory scene which He in His Divine Providence planned to teach us many lessons. This little baby is the infinite God, the infinite Majesty, all-powerful —here helpless? This baby so poor that he is born in a dirty cave is the King of the Universe. These dirty, ignorant, poor shepherds and farmers are His friends, His court? This young 15-year-old girl in bare feet, sitting on the floor is His immaculate mother, the queen of all hearts? This creature living from her very body -- her creator? Contemplate the scene as much as you can.

Let us learn more deeply this lesson Christ insists on teaching us in every phase of His whole life, namely that His way is the way of poverty and humility. And He is the way, the truth and the life. Open to Philippians 2,5-11. Our way is Christ; we must take up our cross and follow Him, obedient unto death or crucifixion.

The second scene teaches us the way of Christ, of poverty and humility in His hidden life of 30 years. Let's visit their tiny house in Nazareth when Jesus is about twelve, Mary would be a beautiful, fully developed woman of 28, and Joseph about 35. There we are at Nazareth, a tiny village lost in the hills of Palestine, a colony of the Roman Empire.

The people here are real hillbillies, ignorant, simple, honest, dirty, joyful, loving, poor, dirt poor. They live in small cottages like the adobe houses of the Mexicans with dirt floors. Usually one room which the family shares with the pig, the chickens, and the dog. That's the way almost all of the villages in the poor countries of the world are still today. And that's the way the little village in Palestine was.

I never knew about Jesus, Mary and Joseph really till I went to Latin America and saw and lived the kind of poor life that about 80% of the world still live, the life of the masses of people which has hardly changed since the time of Christ You know that 2/3 of the world today is hungry, never getting enough to eat.

And we religious? Jesus, Mary and Joseph were of this mass of poor; Jesus chose to be one of the masses of poor of the world, not of the middle or upper classes which lived in the big cities in his day too, the tiny class of well-to-do surrounded by the great mass of people living in poverty, insecure about tomorrow's meals.

We religious are the only ones who freely choose, like Christ, to be poor—poor with Christ poor. But 80% of the world is actually poor like Christ was actually poor, while we with the vow of poverty to imitate Christ not only in poverty of spirit but to be really, actually poor with him, we are of the 20% who are secure materially, who do not have to worry about where our food will come from tomorrow.

We live often enough in palace-like buildings in many high schools and colleges. We are working with the middle class and upper class of the Catholics in general, while Jesus gave as a sign to the disciples of St. John the Baptist that he was the Christ the fact that "the poor have the gospel preached to them."

That's Christ's way. He went to the poor and lived as one of them, one of the masses, not one of the privileged class to whom the poor have to more or less bow down. Every one is supposed to bow down to us religious and respect us because we have a habit on; we expect special treatment and special privileges.

That is not Christ's way. There wouldn't be any communism in the world today, if the priests and religious had really gone to the poor, been poor like Christ. Pope Pius XI said it: "the greatest scandal of the 19th century was the loss of the masses of working people to the church."

Poverty of spirit, detachment from earthly goods, is indeed the most important thing in our vow of poverty and without it, the vow isn't worth anything; but for me poverty of spirit is for all Christians, while the evangelical counsel of poverty means actual poverty like God was: "if you would be perfect go sell what you have and give it to the poor, and come follow me"; but following God means that "foxes have their dens and birds have their nests but the Son of Man does not have anywhere to lay his head."

It was in France when I was a soldier in World War II that I learned about poverty and misery, and I had to do something to help the masses of poor: my vocation was born. There was also my priest worker month in Colombia with banana workers. I think each one has to overcome his or her bourgeois background as best he can to imitate Christ poor.

I've never seen pictures of Jesus, Mary, or Joseph that I like, that are realistic. They show Joseph as an old man, Mary dressed as a queen in a house with marble pillars, Jesus a chubby little baby playing with birds.

Let's face the facts about this also. Let's see Mary first in Nazareth, 28 years old, beautiful, but poor, in a one-room house, sweeping the dirt floor early every morning. She goes out twice a day to hunt for firewood. See her splitting a log with an axe, as I have seen all kinds of women in Latin America doing in this twentieth century still, and see Mary carrying on her back, bent over, the dirty pile of firewood which she needs for cooking.

She is dressed prettily? Like a peasant girl with bare feet rather. See her kneel in the dirt and build the fire with the wood in their crude stone stove. Take a look at her hands after chopping and starting the fire. That is one of my favorite contemplations: comparing the hands of Mary, or of Joseph, or of Jesus with my hands or with a nun's hands.

Joseph, Mary, and Jesus are the way. Who in the world follows their way? I've now met thousands of girls, who live like Mary lived, not too many in the States-- but there are poor in the U.S. too-- but in Latin America, Africa, and all of Asia where just about all women are as poor and primitive as Mary.

Now contemplate Jesus at 12 or at 25, after Joseph dies and Jesus is the support of Mary. A worker, carpenter with ancient tools which carpenters today would laugh at. See him haggling with a man from the next village who is bringing him some of the freshly cut pine logs on mules.

See Jesus, God, with the axe trying to smooth the rough logs into boards. Look at God's hands: dirty, calluses—like the hands of the laborers in the coalmines today or the hands of a farmer today. Jesus, one of the masses, a poor working man.
And look at the color of his skin. It's not lily white, but dark: Jesus, Mary and Joseph are dark skinned like practically all the people in North Africa and the Middle East. I've seen lots of people from there while in Marseilles in the war. Jesus and Mary had dark skin like Mexicans.

Let's face it: many Americans would be prejudiced against Jesus, wouldn't even let him in their house-- dark skin, poor, dirty finger nails, poorly dressed workingman, one of the masses of the lower class, the proletariat. Poverty and humility personified: contemplate Jesus. He's the way that's the truth and the life.

And 30 years the Word incarnate spends like that, and only three in conquering the world. What a lesson on the apostolate about the value of the hidden life of poverty and humility, hidden work done out of obedience. We may well learn on judgement day who the greatest saviors of souls were: a cloistered nun, a school teacher, a housewife, a street cleaner, a farmer-- all can save souls just by offering their hidden sacrifices to the Father along with Jesus, in the Holy Spirit of love.

St. Therese, saint of missions, saved as many souls as Xavier. As a fellow Carmelite said often: "It's love alone that counts." And "a straw picked off the floor for love of Jesus can do more for souls than an hour of prayer or a sermon." It's grace that converts sinners, and grace is a gift of God won by prayer, by sacrifices, by the Holy Spirit of love-- accepting whatever the divine providence sends at each minute, obedience to God's will made known through our superiors that builds up the mystical body.

The world needs apostles, priests, sisters who will preach Christ because without hearing about Christ and His way how can they accept Him? But the hearing isn't all: they need grace to accept God and His way, which is won by the hidden love of humble souls.

So contemplate these two scenes of Mary nursing her baby, seated on the dirt floor of the cave in Bethlehem, and in Nazareth chopping wood and sweeping the dirt floor of her one-room house—and deepen your love for the poor, for the masses of the lower classes in the world and learn to love the way of Jesus and Mary, the way of the hidden life of obedience, poverty and humility.