Backbone > Frankly Speaking
Answering the Call
by Frank Crocitto; Illustration by Leslie Bender

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There’s more to Christmas than meets the eye, just as there is in every event that God has a hand in. More so in this one, though, for He was in this one with both hands.

We all know the Nativity story, for we’ve seen it represented in painting and sculpture and music, season upon season. The annual swell of artistic interpretations of the same old story stems from some short paragraphs in the Gospels—a piece of a chapter in Matthew and another, more painterly piece, in Luke. But there was a lot more about Christ’s birth in the mouths of people at the time, much of which only moved from mouth to ear, while some of which fell out of the realm of sacred gossip and dropped into words on paper.

Whatever form the gossiping took, oral or written, it eventually became a tradition that ran, concurrent and parallel, to the more public, official gospel report. Since any real event rays out in all directions, each of these extra-orthodox glimpses into the Nativity derive from its distinctly different aspects. There were elaborate descriptions of the Magi and their purpose, fuller details concerning the three shepherds, insights into the simple reality of the relationship between Joseph and Mary, surprising reports of power that issued from the holy birth and of the miraculous effects it produced. Each story—simple, shocking, or charming—carried a particle of the meaning pulsing in the great event, making it more vivid and drawing back some veil so the essence of it would more fully impress itself upon the heart.

Listen to this esoteric account of Joseph’s frantic effort to find a midwife for the laboring Mary, a glint of the secret meaning of Christmas. The story speaks of stillness, a stillness seen through the eyes of Joseph—an experience familiar, with perhaps less intensity, to anyone who has gotten their feet wet in the waters of eternity. A near-death experience, a near-life experience, an over-shock of beauty or love, a deep meditation, extreme exertion, or some sudden, unprovoked epiphany.

As the couple, Joseph on foot, Mary on her donkey, made their slow progress toward the “House of Bread,” the little town of Beth–lehem, Mary turned to her husband. The setting sun upon her face enriched the wan, winsome look she wore. Joseph, sensitive and alert, looked to her.

—We must stop here, now. My time has come.
Joseph looked about desperately.

—But we’re in the middle of nowhere. A little further and we’ll be in the town.

And though it was true they were in the middle of nowhere, Mary realized also that this is true wherever one is. So she smiled.

Joseph groaned and darted about, hoping to find some shelter, but the harder he looked the blurrier everything looked.

While Joseph lurched in his distress like a man in a pathless swamp, Mary—as if, or perhaps in fact, assisted by an angel—slid carefully off her little mount and walked, in a straight line, to a cave a few yards distant. Awakened at last, Joseph followed his wife to what seemed a predestined destination.

The two peered into the black mouth of the cave. The sun in its final flaring lit the air all around, accentuating the dark they were facing. Joseph murmured a surmise that the cave had never had the good light of day enter its bowels. But Mary stepped into it nonetheless, with her usual liquid motion. She turned and, out of the shadows, directed her anxious spouse.

—Go into the town and find a midwife to assist me.
Joseph nodded eagerly. He reached and pressed her hand between his. Her gentle smile seemed to push back the dark. He turned and was off.

In the gathering dimness—dark coming quickly in that part of the world—Joseph raced toward Bethlehem, his loose clothing flapping like a flag behind him. He ran, stumbling and slipping on the rough road, his mind intent on his mission. He ran until his lungs were burning in his chest; then he ran harder. Up a low hill he went, and down, down the road that dipped toward the town. There were lights already in some doorways and windows.

Then he noticed that though he was running as fast as he could, he stood ever in the same place. He seemed to be held in an inexplicable grip. He looked up at the sky, which still held some blue. The clouds were pinned in place; the birds, thrifty of the light, were caught on the wing, suspended in mid-air. On either side of the road, workers in the fields—gathered after the day’s labor around a fire to eat their evening meal—sat stiffly as if frozen, or salted. He who was cutting the bread was fixed in the act of cutting. He who was pouring the wine was fixed in the act of pouring. Those who were bringing morsels to their mouth had stopped, neither biting, nor chewing, nor swallowing. And their campfire was transfixed like a flower cut out of ruby.

Beyond the shadowy fields, on the hillsides the sheep, bound for the fold, stood transfixed where they stepped, some legs up, some down. The shepherd who with upraised hand urged them on stood like a statue holding a living gesture. By the river some lambs with outstretched necks reached for the water, their mouths touching it. They looked but they did not drink.

A profound stillness had settled over the world. Yet not everywhere. In Rome in the temple of Apollo built by Romulus, where the oracle meddled darkly in the affairs of men, the pillars began to shake and sway until the great temple fell to rubble. As if at a signal, all the idols anywhere upon the earth were at that moment toppled. Thus were all those things upheld by darkness brought low.

Other movements there were in that moment. In a fountain near the Tiber, where one day would stand the great Church of Santa Maria, the water—which was never known to stop—turned to oil, oil pure enough to anoint the sick and the dying. And near to Jerusalem in the oasis of En-Geddi, where the citron grows, from which in its season a balm derives, in that blessed moment the citron flowered and gave fruit and the fruit ripened and the syrupy essence of a miraculous healing balm flowed from that fruit.

In the worldwide astonishing stillness Joseph, the runner, was inspired to lift his gaze heavenward. There in a magenta sky a star bloomed. It was a star so deep, so bright, Joseph’s eyes smarted to behold it. Never—Joseph thought—has there been such a star. Before his blinking eyes the streaming light of the star took the shape of a lovely woman with an infant in her arms, an infant newly born, a crown of flaming light resting upon his head. Joseph’s eyes followed the path of the star as it traversed the heavens back to the spot where he had come from, where it stopped—hovering benevolently over the cave where Mary was soon to have her child.

In that moment the hushed world began to move again, and Joseph, his heart leaping within him, resumed his headlong run to Bethlehem to find a midwife for his Mary.

This is an excerpt from Frank’s latest work, The Secret Meaning of Christmas. Available from Candlepower for $4.95. To order, call (888) 744-1317