(Fr. James Altman) — Dear family, the following is 100% true – staggeringly true – every word. So I’m sharing a Christmas story from my church bulletin, a story of unimaginable grace from a few years ago, long before X and Substack, when all I ever posted was in that bulletin:
Imagine serving as a minister of God’s grace for a 21 year-old child of God, bringing faith and hope and love into her life for several years, holding her hand, trying to lift her up from a life of hell no one even could imagine – including a mother suffering from debilitating mental illness and an aunt who “pimped” her out as a young teen in order to support her own addiction. Imagine being a human “guardian angel” who brought this broken child from the edge, even allowing her to live for a time in your family home while she turned her life around. Imagine celebrating her baptism, and the baptism of her own little girl. Then imagine serving at that 21-year-old’s funeral, because she just died of a drug overdose given to her by a man twice her age – just so he could have his way with her.
Now imagine boarding a night train two days later for a 24-hour “get-away” – a time for quietude, solace, your own personal healing. Imagine that the train is fully booked, so you intentionally search out a seat next to someone with whom you know you most definitely will not have to speak a single word for the four-hour ride. Imagine it’s a young man wearing ripped jeans, a hoodie, the total package. Nothing in common. No worries about having him start up a conversation.
Imagine needing a cup of coffee. Imagine returning and having the young man look up and ask a simple question: how is the food back there? And then – could it be true – the Holy Spirit telling you, in no uncertain terms – “speak to this young man.”
Imagine beginning with the most innocuous possible words: “So where are you heading?”, because you are certainly not going to launch into a theological conversation, and were certain the issue of faith was the last thing that would come up. Then imagine him opening his mouth and saying he was going to St. Louis, to an uncle’s house who he never had met, because his mother had died of an overdose when he was 12, and his dad took off with a girlfriend leaving him and his brother to fend for themselves, and that he himself had just had a break up with his girlfriend and had no place to live so he had to board a train to St. Louis. And imagine you knew that God only knew how that would all turn out.
Which is exactly why, at that moment, you realize that it did not matter how tired you were, how hurting you were, how longing for respite you yourself were – you had no choice but to realize that Our Father loves this child so much that He placed you in the seat next to him and needed you to make the Light of Christ present to him, right there, right then.
And then imagine words of love pouring out from nowhere, recounting to this broken boy all that you had just been through, sharing with him the brokenness and woundedness of others, and how only Our Father could love him and heal him back to wholeness.
And then understand that this actually happened, exactly as it is written, because that is just how broken is the world, and pretty much how broken is everyone in it, and how much Our Father needs each one of us to step up to the plate and bring the Light of Christ to His broken children, if only we were willing.
Dear family, the Truth of the coming of Christ, for which we are preparing this sacred season of Advent, is that He came to carry His cross, in order to show us how to carry our crosses so that we can, in our turn, help others carry theirs.
I do not know how heavy are your crosses, nor how many times you have fallen under their weight. But I do know that Jesus did not come so we could celebrate Christmas once a year, but that we could celebrate His dying and rising to new life every other day of the year, and that we do that best when we share that Truth with others … even if it means doing so … on a train, at night, in the depths of our own hurt, when it feels like we ourselves have fallen under the weight of our crosses.
Dear family, if you really want to give a gift to anyone this Christmas, start by saying, “Speak, Lord, I’m listening,” and then really listen to Him … and hear Him say, in so many words, “Give the gift of the Light of Christ … to that boy on the train.”
God bless you all this sacred season, in nomine Patris + et Filii + et Spiritus Sancti + Amen.
Reprinted with permission from Fr. James Altman.
