For Me

Christmas. Day 1

Imagining the journey of Mary and Joseph, at first I see myself as their servant, and then I mentally place myself in Mary’s position. Here I, as a woman and a mother, have an advantage over the male half — I can quite vividly imagine what it is like to ride a donkey in the ninth month of pregnancy. How hard it is to breathe, how you want to lie down, how your back aches and how the little one worries inside. And the contractions, and the search for a secluded place, and the birth — all of this somehow comes to me in the meditation from the first-person perspective. My maternal experience, in which things were not easy either, overlays this passage and I mentally hold the tiny Saviour in my arms and stroke Him, as I stroked my daughter when I was first given her to hold. All sorts of wild thoughts crowd in, such as:
I wonder what it is like to breastfeed the One Who Created All.

I find it hard to see the cave, Joseph, the shepherds who came. I feel like a Woman; I cannot take my eyes off the most precious thing a mother can have. Even then you could see the Universe in His eyes.

From time to time I return to the text of the Spiritual Exercises and there I am powerfully struck by the words:
"The Lord was born in utter poverty, and then, after so many labours, having borne hunger and thirst, heat and cold, insults and reproaches, died on the cross, and all this — for me."

It dawns on me: I never thought of it this way, as for all of us, I assumed. But where am I among this all? Behind whose back am I hiding? Or have I dissolved to an insignificant atom?

Since childhood I have thought of myself as superfluous, unworthy, unnecessary, essentially a mistake. Whose mistake?

Here’s what happens: in trying to run away from the fear of the magnitude of His sacrifice, I refused my place in the sun. My rightful place.

***

In the concluding conversation I have something to say.

Blood-red dawn, a valley surrounded by mountains, I see a herd of frolicking horses. I feel that He has stood beside me.

— You suffered for me.
I am a direct participant in the events, I am not an accident, I am not here for no reason.
To think that I have no place, that I am superfluous, is to turn away from You.
I am part of Your plan. I have never lived in vain, no one lives in vain, but the more faithfully I carry out Your will, the more meaning there is in my earthly life. And more joy, for I will co-create with You.
And when I find things difficult, I should remember how difficult it was for You.
Forgive me. If only I had even a drop of Your patience, endless as the cosmos, as You are.
From now on I will know and remember that I have the right to be, the right to speak, to act, and this right was given to me by You.
You suffered for it.