Michel Quoist
MEET CHRIST AND LIVE!

translated by J. F. BERNARD
GILL AND MACMILLAN

21. It's Christmas at our house

We are happy because we have a son. His name is Benedict, and he was born yesterday-a healthy eight-pound boy. We wanted a son with all our hearts and, with God, we created him. My wife is still in the hospital. I visited her today, and we took a moment to reflect together on the great mystery of life and on our own joy so as to give it an eternal dimension. But it has not all been joyful. We have also shared the difficulties, anguish and failings common to man who is so often unaware, selfish and with respect to his extraordinary creative power.
This evening. I had a talk with our parish priest, and then I had dinner with my brother and sister-in-law (our two other children are staying with them). I went home immediately after eating, and our house seemed empty and lifeless. I wandered around like a 'lost soul' '. missing something: the tangible affection of the woman who has become 'one' with me. Yet, I am bound to her by love now, just as I was a few hours ago when I embraced her at the hospital. And I know that these reflections are hers as well as my own.

My wife and I, before reflecting on the grandeur of our mission as human beings, and before speaking of our happiness at the birth of our son, recalled first of all the re actions of our friends and acquaintances at the news of my wife's pregnancy.
These reactions fall into several categories. There was the unbounded and healthy joy registered by young couples who want children themselves. Then there was the quiet acceptance of older couples who, with children of their own, are quite aware of the efforts and sacrifices entailed in raising a family. And finally, there was the look of horror upon the faces of those who regarded another child as nothing short of a catastrophe.
When my wife told a friend of hers that she was pregnant, the friend immediately tried to console and encourage her. Pregnancy, she felt, was a difficult burden; but since it had happened, it had to be accepted. Some of the people in our neighborhood are not so willing to resign themselves to the inevitable. My wife has heard older, more 'experienced' women giving advice on how to terminate pregnancy and handing over the addresses of certain persons who know how to handle such things.
At work, some of my friends congratulated me, and I know that they were sincere. Others, however, either in whispers or aloud, behind my back or to my face, made fun of me or joked about my wife's pregnancy: 'You obviously don't know what to do,' and 'You let your wife put one over on you.' In any case, their comments usually provided an opening for a hundred obscene jokes and locker-room stories, some of them supposedly based on 'personal experience'.
My wife and I did not try to change our attitude towards these people, but to understand their general problem and the particular problems of each individual. Then we tried to meditate, in faith, on the exciting but frightening mystery of life. Alone, we certainly cannot find practical solutions to home and family problems. We know that there are no ready-made solutions, and that there are no solutions which fit every case in every circumstance. None the less, we tried very hard to keep in mind both aspects of the problem: first, the enormous difficulty of living, in love, the mystery of creation; and, second, the infinite grandeur of that mystery.
God is, above all, the great Master of life. He teaches us that life is sacred: 'Every hair on your head has been counted' (Matt. 10: 30).
God is the source of life, and life flourishes in Jesus Christ: '. . . for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth; everything visible and everything invisible. . . all things were created through him and for him' (Col. 1: 16).
It is God' s will that man participate, on his own responsibility, in the creation of other men. But creation is the result of love, and therefore man can truly create only out of authentic love. A man who is not created in love is 'badly' created.
Parents who take on the responsibility of giving life to a child, simultaneously take on the responsibility of developing that life. To rear a child is to continue to create that child. And, since all creation requires love, children who are loved inadequately are 'ill bred'.
A man who creates is truly the image of the God-Creator. The family unit-father, mother, child-is a living reflection of the Trinity. To create a human being means to give a brother to other men. For a Christian, it also means to give a brother to Jesus and a son to the Father in heaven. The greatest and noblest power given to man, therefore, is that of having children. But this can be hard to believe in view of how often we are petty, weak and even vicious, with respect to that power.
God gave the earth to man so that man could rule it and complete it. Nature in general is still in a state of savagery; and that particular part of nature which is the human body is in the same state. The body, therefore, along with all its faculties, must be humanized and personalized. This involves the long and difficult work of integrating all of man' s energies in the unity of the person.
Human sexuality, since it influences man at every level of his being, must also be integrated. Even more, it must be permeated with love in order to carry out fully and at every level its role as the source of life. Husband and wife, in giving themselves to one another, are giving life to each other. They re-create themselves before giving life together to a third human being.
This integration of human sexuality is not easy. Man' s impulses and instincts do not willingly obey his mind. And human selfishness tends to separate sexual pleasure from its mission of union in love and from its creative role, making of it an end in itself.
Mature, self-sufficient human beings who have decent homes should be free to have as many children as they want. Every birth should be the result of a truly human decision, and not the consequence of hit-or-miss calculations, or of a moment of weakness with respect to a poorly kept resolution, or of ineffective 'precautions', or of a simple 'mistake'. A man and wife should freely decide, before God, the number of children that they can decently support, and then they should control pregnancy in accordance with that decision. (1)
There is a great discrepancy between the ideal and the real, between the grandeur of our vocation as co-creators and the often painful and disappointing realization of that vocation. We must accept our situation as both human beings and sinners.
A family, like a man, is not ready-made. It has to be built up. There is no such thing as a perfect family. There are only families making progress towards their proper proportions and towards their creative unity. A Christian knows that the sacrament of matrimony channels the whole love of Christ the Savior into human love, and that this saving love saves and transforms human love. This is the hope and the strength of human love.
There is evil outside ourselves, in our environment, in the world. Here again, it is human selfishness that makes evil exist and grow and allows it to affect our cities, our suburbs, our work, our laws and all our structures in one way or another: poor health, resulting from ecological imbalances created by our way of life; inadequate and unhealthy housing which makes it impossible for families to grow; salaries which are insufficient to support a family; working conditions which endanger pregnancy and sometimes result in spontaneous abortion. We might also cite the marks of underdevelopment which afflict the world: hunger, slums, illiteracy, disease, unemployment and so forth. These things kill children by the millions and prevent the birth of others who would otherwise have come into the world.
If we were to compile a partial list of man' s sins against creation, it would read something like this: the lack of self-mastery which prevents a man from integrating and harmonizing all his faculties; human selfishness, which uses man' s unifying and creative power for ends other than those for which they were intended; a world so poorly organized that it does not allow mankind to develop in a healthy manner.
If we are to abolish these abuses, we must work with all our strength so that: available land, which is capable of feeding all of mankind, may be better distributed and more effectively cultivated; science and technology may be used for man' s good, so as to solve the problems of hunger, housing, etc.; medical research and psychology may discover an effective and dependable means of controlling births; man may take steps to realize his interior unity by integrating and personalizing all his faculties, that he may fight against the spirit of selfishness and develop authentic love, and, above all, that he may learn to motivate and understand the meaning of his struggle by attaining to a clear vision of the extraordinary mission confided to him by God, and that he may encounter Jesus Christ in order to accomplish that mission with him.
I wrote the following prayer for my wife and me to recite tomorrow. We will do so, thinking of ourselves, our brothers, the child God has given us, and especialIy of those who are born outside of love.

Lord, here is your son, Benedict.
He is your son as well as ours.
We have created him together, in love;
and, if you will help us,
together we will make him grow in love.

Lord, we are a father and mother,
indissolubly united in this new life 
which is the marvelous result of our love made flesh.
We are closer to you than we were, because with you we have created.
Thank you for having made us so great.

Although you are the almighty Creator,
you needed us to create a human being.
You needed us, Father, to give you a new son.
You needed us, Jesus, to give you a new brother. 
Thank you for having made us so great.

This child is the Father' s plan of love which,
through human love,
has once more been made flesh.
This child has been invited
to know the eternal love of the Trinity.
This child,
because he is a human being,
because he is a member of your ever-growing total Body,
- this child is you, Lord:
'Listen, l bring you news of great joy, a joy to be shared by the whole people . . . a
savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.'
Lord, it' s Christmas at our house.
Forgive us, Lord, for not being overjoyed at this great mystery.
Forgive us for being too happy for ourselves, and not happy enough for you and for him.
Forgive us, above all, for all the children whom their parents have 'by mistake'.
Forgive us for all the children that selfish and misguided people refuse to have.
And forgive us for this badly organized world which mutilates your Body.

You must understand, Lord, that we are only men 
and that we are prisoners of the flesh.
We're not yet used to living like gods.
Help us, Lord.
Y ou know that this great hunger we feel within ourselves, in our hearts, even though we pervert it and try to ignore it, is really an overwhelming desire to live the great mystery of Unity and of Creation.
Y ou know it Lord. But we don' t.

We wanted a son, with all our strength and all our love. 
But we understand the searching, the struggles, the failures and the despair of others.
We know that tomorrow it will be our turn to reflect, to take our places on the battlements, and to fight.
Keep us from being proud and too sure of ourselves.

Lord, you see mankind with its great problems, its defeats and its victories.
Preserve man from solutions that would destroy him.
Give him respect for life,
love of life;
For you, Father, are life itself.

[1] So far as the means of control are concerned, this is a serious problem and one which is ,beyond the scope of this book.