The Birth of Jesus) Luke 2:6-7
And it happened that while they were in Bethlehem the time came for Mary to give birth. She bore her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in the manger because there was no room for them in the inn.
At midnight mass we were in the little church in Solentiname celebrating Christmas Mass. The day before Managua had been destroyed by the earthquake. I told them that the wealth of the country was concentrated there alongside the greatest misery in the country. Certainly the Christmas that they were preparing to celebrate there was not the Christ Mass but the Money-God Mass. The tragedy in Managua tonight, and in the whole country, is very much like the painful scene described in the Gospel: Mary homeless and having to give birth to the Son of God surrounded by animals. I also told them that a few hours before the earthquake a group of boys and girls had gathered in the atrium of the cathedral to begin a three-day fast in protest against social injustices; malnutrition, lack of housing , exploitation of laborers, thefts from the people . . . And they were asking for a Christmas without political prisoners.
REBECCA spoke: "From the moment of his birth, God chose conditions like the poorest person, didn't he? I don't think God wants great banquets or a lot of money, as Ernesto has said, or for business to make profits off the celebration of his birth. He wants us to wait for him maybe like Nicaragua is waiting right now, because he was born as a poor child and he wants us all to be poor, right? Or for us to be all equal, and he doesn't want us to do what they used to do in Managua where Christmas was only a celebration to spend money (for the ones who had money), to have a good time, to dance or anything. They weren't celebrating his coming. That's what I believe . . . "
And other one added: "The Scriptures are perfectly clear, man. The fact is that Christ was born as a poor little child, like the humblest person. The Scriptures keep telling us this and I don't understand why we don't see it."
Another said: "These facts hurt our consciences and bring us closer to him. Because us humans easily get off the track and we need very strong shocks to be able to change."
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I'm going to break in here to say that this anonymous peasant theologian put their finger on why the normal order of things has to be broken to make anyone change. It reminds me of something that was once said on Krista Tippett's On Being, when about why the Crucifixion of Jesus would have happened, we need shocks, we need more than rational discourse and logical analysis based in "enlightened self-interest" to change.
"Self-interest" even when it puts on an 18th century costume is the problem, it won't be overcome without something superior to us being taken as commanding us to overcome it.
That's why a merely secular assertion of equality and rights is bound to be the kind of flop it has been as the progress made a half century ago falls to the corruption of American fascists, the very people who propped up the Somosa government and the oligarchich-criminal system in so many Central American countries for their own profit, the very same reason that Trump uses those fleeing largely American created criminal gangs exported from Los Angeles to El Salvador and the other countries of Central America. If there is going to be any hope of overturning that it will have to have more than a scientistic, materialist, secular basis for making the necessary changes, IT IS GOING TO REQUIRE THE BELIEF THAT IT IS THE WILL OF GOD TO MAKE THOSE CHANGES. Otherwise, it won't happen. And, the failure so often among those who profess religion shows, even then it's not any guarantee. Even in Nicaragua, now that former hope of the people under the first Sandinista government, Daniel Ortega is back in power, more than that basis is still needed there. Like the conversion of Putin, I'm not exactly convinced that his isn't more than one strand in the web of illusions he and his fellow revolutionary wife have created. Marxism can turn to oppressive, corrupt oligarchy with remarkable ease, given the history of Marxists in power, I'd say it's almost inevitable. The spectacle of Marxists with power and how fast they give up supposedly Marxist stands in favor of their own power and wealth was one of the things that informs my skepticism that materialism will ever have a truly better form than the vulgar, Mammonist materialism of capitalism.
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PEDRO RAFAEL GUTIERREZ, a Managua journalist who has been studying with us for two months, said: "I'm practically a stranger among you (it's exactly two months since I arrives in Cosme Canales' boat ), but I already feel a great affection for you all, for Octavio, Tomas, Pena, Dona Justa, Laureano, Alejandro, Willaim, Tere, Erenesto, and I'm sorry to have to leave you now to go back to the ruins of Managua to search for my family. You are really poor people, but there I'll find people poorer than you, without water, without electricity, without food, even without a communion like this one. I hope that this tremendous grief in Managua will be a rebirth. Innocents died in Managua like innocents died when Christ was born. But Christ lived, which is what matters. I hope that we can profit there from this terrible Christmas to bring about a total change. And I want to say goodbye."
JOSE the carpenter spokke: "The change has to be for everybody. We shouldn't try to dominate each otehr either. Just now we read that Jesus was born poor, among the animals. He was born there for a reason . . . "
Old THOMAS PENA, who besides being a farmer is a good fisherman; "To teach us not to seek riches, not to have a big house to have a child in, right? Just what's natural."
I said that Pedro was right in speaking of this painful Managua Christmas as a rebirth. At the Last Supper Christ also spoke of his death as a birth. Every woman suffers great pain when she is going to give birth, he said, but aferwards she is filled with joy when the child is born. This is how he explained his death and also all human tragedy. Women understand these things better. And his mother Mary would understand it very well, Mary who had her labor pains in a stable on the first Christmas. Perhaps he said this especially for her since she would suffer so much during his passion. But he said it for all of us too. Human tragedy has meaning. It is for a birth.
JULIO: "But maybe the suffering in Managua will just be the Christians, just the ones who understand. And not those who don't understand."
Another young man: "Tragedy is for everybody, understand it or not, and the birth is for everybody. Even though Christians are the only ones maybe who can understand tragedy."
Note: Like in everything, no one is required to agree with everything every theologian says. I wonder if the anonymous young man who said this would have said the same thing ten or twenty years later.
FELIPE, the son of Tomas Pena, turned to me and said: "I believe, Ernesto, that Jesus Christ has done this on this Christmas because more than anything else he lies equality. In Managua a lot of people were planning a very merry Christmas, even though others were suffering, and if the tragedy had not happened in Managua, if it had been out in the country, they wouldn't be sad. But since it's Managua that has been destroyed, now we're all living through the same thing, we're all feeling the grief that everybody else is."
And PEDRO RAPHAEL GUTIERREZ, the journalist: "What Felipe has said is very beautiful, Christmas last year was a very merry Christmas in Managua. The rich had huge turkeys, very pretty Christmas trees, and a lot of decorations and lights in their houses. But neighborhoods like Acahualinca didn't have a thing. There was more misery there than out in the country. This year again there's nothing in Acahualinca, but the rich don't have anything either. Tragedy made us equal. For the first time in the history of Nicaragua rich and poor shared the tragedy, which used to be shared only by the poor. And this is the most wonderful thing that has happened, because tragedy has brought us all together as equals."
ALEJANDERO: "We should clear one thing up. Let's not be happy because there was tragedy for everybody. The best thing would be for nobody to suffer. Let everybody have enough to be happy at Christmastime. Just to clear it up a bit."
I said that the goal is to conquer tragedy, even death. We Christians believe that one day death will be defeated (by life, which is to say, by love). From now on with love we can triumph over illness, ignorance, misery, and even the catastrophes of nature. At the moment we have a social system that cannot solve these problems. The city had a terrible misfortune, with a selfish, individualistic system like capitalism in which each one goes off on his own pursuing his own interests. And there isn't any unity or cooperation like you find among certain animals like ants and bees. In a society of solidarity and not selfishness like this one, people can defend themselves perfectly well against natural catastrophes like the eruption of a volcano or an earthquake Jesus came to earth precisely for this reason. He was born into a humanity divided and dominated by crime in order to unite us and to change the order of things. And that's where we are . . .
FELIX interrupted me: "I believe that what happened in Managua had to happen because of the sins . . . "
OLIVIA: "The earthquake didn't happen because of sins. But the consequences of the earthquake did happen because of sins, because sins are selfishness."
JULIO: "Sufferings aren't God's punishment, because the poor are always the ones who suffer most. If you're rich you pay for a car, a plane, and you get out of the city. You don't have any problem."
"I think it doesn't even do the President any good to be rich right now," said another, "because he's a man who has very wrong ideas about his money. And when a part of the presidential palace fell down he thought he was dying and he wasn't."
PEDRO RAFAEL GUTIERREZ spoke again: "I think that in this earthquake the ones who are suffering the most are the ric, and I'm going to tell you why: Acahualinca has never had any water, any electricity, any milk, any rice, any beans. Now this Christmas the rest of them don't have any either. But the poor have been without food and electricity for a long time. All their Christmases have been like this. The radio talks about people going out into the street without shoes or clothes, and how the hell long have the poor people gone without shoes and clothes?
"They've been like that since the birth of Jesus . . . "
FELIX spoke again: "I'm going to tell you one thing. Listen to me, Pedro. The rich never suffer. the government puts a five cent tax on business. And are they the ones who pay it? It's the poor. And tell me, who are the workers in Nicaragua if the poor aren't? Who creates all the business in Nicaragua? Isn't it the people that pay for it? And then this crisis comes. And who do they gouge for it? The ones that pay are us, the campesinos, the poor who work in Nicaragua."
Outside there was a lovely full moon and on both sides of the little church the lake was calm. Now it was just the young people who went on talking.
"We're not the only poor ones. Managua was full of poor people, not just the rich. Most of the laborers in the country were there. And there are poor epople everywhere."
"He came to share the lot of the poor. And Joseph and Mary were turned away from the inn because they were poor. If they'd have been rich they'd have been welcomed in."
"God wanted his son to be born in a pigsty, in a stable . . . He wanted his son to belong to the poor class, right? If God had wanted him to be born to a rich lady, that lady would have had a room reserved at that hotel. Especially arriving in her condition."
"I see in this the humility of God. Because it was his son, and his mother had him just like any dog. And Jesus came to free the world from these injustices (which still exist). And he came so that we could be united and struggle against these injustices . . . . Because we go right on being like that, whit somebody's foot on our neck. And the rich, how do they look at us? They look down on us. That's why we've got to get together to win. Or even all be a single revolutionary. Like Christ He was the greatest revolutionary, because being God he identified with the poor and he came down fro heaven to become a member of the lower class and he gave his life for us all. The way I see it, we all ought to struggle like that for other people and be like him. Get together and be brave. That way nobody will be without a house, and even if an earthquake knocks his house down he'll get another one. And nobody will have to go on being humiliated by the rich."
"With today's Gospel, it seems to me that no poor person should feel looked down upon. It seems to me that it's clear that a poor person is more important than a rich one. Christ is with us poor people. I think we're worth more. To God. To the rich we aren't worth a thing, only to work for them."
"Well, God is showing us with this Gospel that the rich think of us as dirt. Like we have no value. For them we don't exist. Here we see that that's the way they treated his son, with no consideration. Not even a roof over his head or a cot to sleep on."
"The poor person supports the rich ones because if he didn't work they wouldn't be anything. But the rich take advantage of the poor, and when they have their banquets they go off by themselves. They don't know that everything they have comes through the poor. They think they get things done through their money, but it's through the poor person's work. And of course when they have their banquets they forget all about you. They think banquets are only for them. They don't know that without us they wouldn't be worth anything."
"Jesus was rejected in Bethlehem because he was poor, and he goes on being rejected in the world for that same reason. Because when you come down to it the poor person is always rejected. In our system, that is."
" But now this Christmas Managua doesn't have any houses, just like Jesus in Bethlehem was born without a house. And there are no Christmas banquets just like there wasn't any banquet in Bethlehem when Jesus was born, Now this Christmas seems to me ore Christian., and it can help raise our consciousness. And maybe someday everybody will have a house and everybody will be happy and nobody will be rejected."
At the end we talked about taking up a collection for Managua. Some offered corn, others rice, beans. Felix asked me if I was going to Managua the next day. I told him I would try to go I had no news of my family either), although I didn't know if there was any transportation to get there.
"When there's no transportation we walk."
I gave up on my commentary because there's too much, point for point, to call attention to as it relates to the situation of today, both in the United States and in Central America and the world. The reasons we have people desperate to come here to get away from violence in Central America is directly related to the sins of the United States in those countries, including in 1972.
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