{"id":346,"date":"2020-12-16T08:35:52","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T13:35:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=346"},"modified":"2020-12-16T08:35:52","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T13:35:52","slug":"what-child-is-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/16\/what-child-is-this\/","title":{"rendered":"What Child is This?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Father Gregory Boyle is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, a widely acclaimed gang intervention program.

It\u2019s a ministry that involves considerable heartache. 

As of 2017 and the release of his book Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship<\/em>, Boyle had presided at the funerals of 220 gang members, most of whom had died violently. 

Yet many of those young men had also experienced a measure of hope and redemption in this world.

When asked to speak a few years ago to a group of 600 social workers in Richmond, Virginia, Father Greg brought along a pair of \u201ctrainees\u201d \u2013 former gang members who are learning to tell their stories to the world. 

One of them was Sergio \u2013 tattooed, in his 20\u2019s, a heroin addict and glue sniffer who had been homeless for several stretches and had spent time in prison for crimes that began when he was still in elementary school.  He had begun his time at Homeboy in the Humble Place \u2013 that is, as part of the janitorial team \u2013 before becoming a trusted member of the Substance Abuse Recovery Team, where he was helping younger kids give sobriety a try. 

Sergio had never stood before a crowded room of nicely-dressed people.

\u201cI guess you could say my mom and me, well, we didn\u2019t get along so good,\u201d he said haltingly.  \u201cI think I was six when she looked at me and said, \u2018Why don\u2019t you just kill yourself?  You\u2019re such a burden to me.\u2019\u201d 

All 600 social workers gasped.  He was barely two sentences into his story, and no one could breathe. 

\u201cI think I was like nine years old when she drove me to the deepest part of Baja California, walked me up to this orphanage and said, \u2018I found this kid.\u2019\u201d  Sergio was abandoned there by his mother.  It took 90 days for his grandmother to convince her daughter to tell her the location so she could go there and rescue him. 

Boyle reports that Sergio then paused, searching for what to say next.  \u201cMy mom beat me every day of my elementary school years with things you could imagine, and things you couldn\u2019t.\u201d

Every day he wore three T-shirts to school.  The innermost shirt caught the seeping blood.  The second shirt soaked up what was left.  \u201cThe third T-shirt, you couldn\u2019t see no blood,\u201d said Sergio.  \u201cKids at school would make fun of me.  \u2018Hey fool, it\u2019s 100 degrees.  Why you wearing three T-shirts?\u2019\u201d 

Sergio paused again, then continued, \u201cI wore three T-shirts well into my adult years, because I was ashamed of my wounds.  I didn\u2019t want no one to see \u2018em.  But now I welcome my wounds.  I run my fingers over my scars.  My wounds are my friends.  After all, how can I help others to heal if I don\u2019t welcome my wounds?\u201d

Father Greg writes, \u201cAnd awe came upon everyone.\u201d

When we look closely at the lyrics of the world\u2019s most famous Christmas carols, it\u2019s surprising how often they address not just the birth of Jesus but also his suffering and death.  It\u2019s as if the first chapter of his story can\u2019t be told without mentioning the last.  Sometimes the carols themselves arose from experiences of suffering. 

In 1865 an Englishman named William Chatterton Dix, who helped manage an insurance company, was struck by a severe illness.

His recovery prompted a personal spiritual revival, during which he wrote a handful of hymns.  One of them was called \u201cA Manger Throne.\u201d  Years later it was set to the tune of \u201cGreensleeves,\u201d a popular English folk song. 

Today we know it as What Child is This?, <\/em>a gentle carol that wrestles with fierce questions:

How can a baby be God?  And if that baby really is God, why is he stuck in such humbling circumstances?  And why in the world would God, the Creator of the cosmos, openly embrace personal suffering?

None of that was in line with people\u2019s messianic expectations during Bible times. Here are Dix\u2019s words:

What Child is this who, laid to rest on Mary\u2019s lap is sleeping?  Whom angels greet with anthems sweet, while shepherds watch are keeping?<\/em>
This, this is Christ the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing.  Haste, haste, to bring Him laud, the Babe, the Son of Mary.<\/em>

Why lies He in such mean estate, where ox and ass are feeding?  Good Christians, fear, for sinners here the silent Word is pleading.<\/em>
Nails, spear shall pierce Him through, the cross be borne for me, for you.  Hail, hail the Word made flesh, the Babe, the Son of Mary.<\/em>

So bring Him incense, gold, and myrrh, come peasant, king to own Him.  The King of kings salvation brings, let loving hearts enthrone Him.<\/em>
Raise, raise a song on high, the virgin sings her lullaby.  Joy, joy for Christ is born, the Babe, the Son of Mary.<\/em>

Here\u2019s a contemporary version<\/a> of this carol by Michael W. Smith and Martina McBride. 

It\u2019s beautiful.  But like most modern recordings, it omits the original second verse with its mention of nails, spear, and cross.   

Jesus, however, would no doubt resonate with Sergio. 

They both were wounded, yes.  But they welcomed their wounds.

For how can we help others to heal unless we welcome our wounds?   <\/em>
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Father Gregory Boyle is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, a widely acclaimed gang intervention program. It\u2019s a ministry that involves considerable heartache.  As of 2017 and the release of his book Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship, Boyle had presided at the funerals of 220 gang members, most of whom had died… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,23,112],"class_list":["post-346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christmas-carols","tag-incarnation","tag-suffering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":348,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions\/348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}