The Woman's Word

... Today the world celebrates the memory of your great birth, O Jesus, and every year the world would keep this memory as a feast, to the pealing of bells and the beating of hearts.

And the children would sing to you, and dance around their trees lit with candles and adorned with colors, rejoicing at the return of your day.

And the voices of the bells in Nazareth, in Bethlehem, and in Jerusalem would rise up in joy, and the waves of the ether would carry them to every land on earth.

... Hundreds of years have passed over that great day, and never on any day have we been as we are today.

... Never have our hearts been so wrung with pain, in a fog of sorrow and gloom... ... Never have our eyes been so cast down in shame — they have no eyelids to lift in prayer and praise! ... Never have our throats been so hoarse with the choking of defeat and humiliation...

With what eyes shall we look upon you, with what lips shall we murmur our prayers, with what heart shall we supplicate and give glory, when we have failed you and broken our covenants with you, and proved to ourselves that we were never worthy to guard your cradle, O Jesus...

And by what right do we guard your land? Behold your children and your neighbors, who used to band together and gather on such a day as this every year to glorify your holy name, that their hearts might be filled anew with your love and your purity — shell and bullet have driven them out, so that they for-sook your manger, your olive trees, and your tomb, and here they stand before your face, O Jesus, today, with no shelter, no garment, no crust of bread...

The lowly grotto that sheltered your pure body is today alone and abandoned, and the storms threaten it with collapse and ruin...

No righteous shepherds shield it from the fury of the tempests... No

gentle sheep warm its cold corners... No pious Magi perfume it with balm and incense...

And the little manger, made holy by the touch of your feet and your hands, and tended with care and devotion by your mother Mary, is today grim and mournful; the swine root through it and defile it with their filthy mouths.

And the ancient bells in Nazareth and Bethlehem, whose iron was once rung in reverence and awe, are today mute; desolation is killing them, and they fold in upon themselves, moaning...