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Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.
Isaiah 9:6

            The birth of a child is the outcome of the erotic passion between a man and a woman, so movingly described in the Song of Songs.  Passion, it seems, brings out both the worst and the best in human beings. 
            On the one hand, religious passion is behind the terrorism which is the principal scourge of our age.  Acts of unbelievable barbarity are committed in the name of Allah, the compassionate, the all-merciful.  In a book entitled The End of Faith  Sam Harris poses the stark alternative: if civilization is to survive, religion has to go. 
            But, on the other hand, passion leads to acts of extraordinary generosity, which are brought to our attention during this Christmas season.  In today’s edition of the Toronto Star I read the story of a U.S. soldier who adopted a 9 year old Iraqi boy with cerebral palsy whom he had met at the Mother Teresa orphanage in Baghdad in 2003. 
            The adoption took place only after overcoming seemingly insuperable obstacles, both in Iraq and in the U.S.  The boy started referring to his rescuer as “Baba,” Arabic for “daddy.”  This reminded me of the Aramaic word which Jesus used to refer to God, “Abba,” which also means “daddy.” 
            When the boy come into the American’s custody, the soldier said, “I could hug him.  I could hold him.  I could protect him.  And forever started.”  FOREVER STARTED!  Think of Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “Love never ends” (1 Corinthians 13:8). 
            Religion, like life itself, is governed by two forces: passion and reason.  Reason is the discriminating faculty which looks outside for signs of order and seeks to rule the realm within, to impose structure on it, to subdue it and control it. 
            Passion comes from hidden, mysterious depths.  It arises from within ourselves as a dark, unknowable force, sometimes creative and healing, sometimes shattering and destructive.  It strives beyond whatever can be understood; indeed, it is detached from understanding altogether. 
            Passion has the stamp of the divine; it comes from another realm and hints at the unspeakable mystery of a fascinating secret.  In this holy night let us pray that we may love God with the passionate love with which he loved us in sending us his only Son, Jesus Christ.          

December 24, 2007

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