Spiritual Reflection, January 2024

The Christmas Star

“A winter’s day.
The winds came howling in across
the plains, and it was
cold in the cave in the hills where the child lay." [1]

These are the opening words from the poem “The Christmas Star”, found in the famous novel Doctor Zhivago, authored by Jewish Christian author Boris Pasternak. This novel is a reflection about the experience of humans thrown into the maelstrom of history, their search for meaning, and their discovery of God’s involvement in that history. The question of the meaning of history was for Pasternak a question of theodicy (defined by Merriam-Webster as the defense of God's goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil) and the justification of God's existence.

During the last three years, we have found ourselves part of a particularly intense maelstrom of history. While many people wrote what sounded like "right words" about the lessons of the previous centuries, human behavior has shown that we haven’t learned anything from the past. Reading the news can sometimes seem as though God has left humankind alone with our own feral ways, and there is no rescue in sight.

"But one star till now unknown to them
seemed to twinkle close at hand, hesitant as the light
behind the window of a watchman’s hut in the night,
and it showed the way to Bethlehem."

The light of the star still breaks through the darkness of history and the turmoil of our circumstances. At the point where that light intersects with our despair, God’s hope sparks: “Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. The Lord, your God, is in your midst” (Zechariah 3:16-17).

This kind of hope marks Jewish history. I believe it is this hope in God, rather than foolish fearlessness or recklessness, that Rebbe Nachman had in mind when he said we should not be afraid even though the world is “a very narrow bridge”.

Hope which rests on nothing but the lived memory of the Covenant can be expressed only by gratitude “…not in word or tongue, but in deed and truth" (1 John 3:18). This gratitude can be expressed by our readiness to share with the vulnerable, and to become a link in the chain of solidarity with those who suffer.

Mother Maria (Skobtsova), murdered in Ravensbrück for helping Jews, called it “the sacrament of sister and brother”. Whenever this sacrament is celebrated, it brings God’s light into the darkness and opens the perspective of eternity on history. Despite the darkness of recent years, I choose to hope in God, and express that hope in gratitude. My prayer is that my gratitude will light the way for others, pointing them toward Bethlehem, just as the star did 2,000 years ago.

Svetlana Panich