Everyone loves a Christmas story. We know the main ingredients: a woman, a child and a miracle of joy. The following is a true story:
It was Christmas Eve when a man entered the blue door of Madonna House. He was thin, hunched over and very cold. I provided food which he started wolfing down.
Suddenly he stopped; racking sobs tearing through his body, and he told his story. He had married too young and had been caught in the great depression. When his wife became pregnant, he was frightened of the poverty and abandoned her.
Now, six weeks later, he was searching for her and his child. Where were they, on this Christmas Eve, the feast of babies and mothers? He lay slumped, his head in pieces of bread and peanut butter, the upset of a bowl of soup trickling its contents onto his thin overcoat and onto his tightly clenched hands.
I lit a candle in the window and began my rosary. Without warning the door opened. A woman with a baby wrapped in a shawl stood there, framed like a picture, the snowflakes on her melting quickly in the heat. I stood up to greet her, but the young man was quicker. He had turned and had seen her.
He almost jumped through the space that separated them. She was quickly in his arms. He was repeating her name over and over again. The baby began to cry. Then everything was silent.
I gently closed the blue door the woman had left open in her excitement, and went into the kitchen to finish my rosary, (told by Catherine Doherty, founder of Madonna House in Ontario).
This year may you be open to the miracle of Christmas. May the birth of Christ be in your heart, and may your door be open to the needy who come calling.
Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year!
