Still No Room

Father Ron Rolheiser

I’ve never been happy with some of my activist friends who send out Christmas cards with messages like: May the Peace of Christ Disturb You! Can’t we have one day a year to be happy and celebrate without having our already unhappy selves shaken with more guilt? Isn’t Christmas a time when we can enjoy being children again? Moreover, as Karl Rahner once said, isn’t Christmas a time when God gives us permission to be happy? So why not?

Well, it’s complex. Christmas is a time when God gives us permission to be happy, when the message from God speaks through the voice of Isaiah and says: “Comfort my people. Speak words of comfort!” But Christmas is also a time that points out that when God was born two thousand years ago there wasn’t any room for him to be born in all the normal homes and places of the day. There was no room for him at the inn. Peoples’ busy lives and expectations kept them from offering him a place to be born. That hasn’t changed.