The old priest thought about the task he faced and sighed, settling into the worn chair behind his desk. He had lost count of the number of winters that had passed since he had come to this neighborhood. Other communities changed, people came and went, the city was bursting at its center and seams with growth. But this neighborhood seemed only to grow poorer.
His church was flanked by families whose ancestors had once lived in the slave quarters of southern plantations, whose parents and grandparents had migrated north at the turn of the century; by Appalachian mountain folk who had fled rural despair in search of promised jobs a generation later; and by Spanish-speaking refugees who had arrived in the last decade with violence at their heels. Some of the older families had lived together for years, generation after generation, their children becoming friends as they had years before. But the mix had grown uneasy, explosive at times, as jobs disappeared and extended families crowded in together and resources never seemed to stretch far enough.
It was about 2 o'clock in the afternoon when the old priest sat down to write, about the time the snow began to fall. The clock in the church's tower rang out the hour in two dull, slow gongs. His life was so full with the demands of his parish that it had become tradition for him to carve out space the day before Christmas to begin his sermon for the next morning. He remembered as a young priest beginning to think of the next week's sermon as soon as he had finished the last, taking the week to pore over commentaries and polish his thoughts. Now even his most important sermon of the year found time only the day before.
He had no sooner begun to pick up his pen than a knock came at his door. It was a young woman from the parish, the worn lines on her face adding a decade to her appearance. One of her young dark-haired daughters clung to her right leg, and another grasped her left hand.
"Mama is home with the baby. Baby is sick. We need food." Desperation and the complexities of a strange language had driven her to be direct in her request, each word shrouded in a thick Spanish accent.
The old man went downstairs with her to the church's pantry and took out the last of the donated food from the large bin. He was embarrassed at the meager offering of bread and canned soup. There would be only this for their Christmas dinner -- no turkey and dressing, no sweet corn and mashed potatoes; no family gathered around a huge table, praising her as the warm aroma of a feast filled the room. He thought sadly of how long it had been since he had sat, young and wide-eyed, with his sisters and brothers around the old family table, awaiting a festive holiday meal.
His mother was always simple grace, floating in and out of the kitchen, keeping dishes filled; his father, a tall figure at the end of the table, sitting straight like a soldier, eyeing with pride his abundant and joyful progeny. A fire always crackled in the fireplace, punctuating their laughter and casting a warm glow over the animated conversation. The family dog lay expectantly under the table -- always at his feet -- waiting for crumbs to fall, and for that moment when the priest as a boy would drop a naked drumstick its way.
The priest's focus wandered back as he caught the woman's younger daughter longingly eyeing a pink doll lying at the top of a bin marked "Toys." He reached in and gave it to her, then found a similar one for her sister. Their eyes smiled at him. Then he rummaged through the bin and found a stuffed dog, telling the older girl, "Give this to your baby brother." They walked back out into the cold then, the woman clutching the food and her daughters hugging the dolls close to themselves.
The old priest sighed again and began walking back up the narrow stairs to the rectory -- his "cell," he called it with affection. He had grown more and more at home in his tiny upper room next to the old clock tower, with a bed, a desk, and a chair his only furnishings. The dark wood within the church's stone walls gave the room a medieval feel, and there were times, when life seemed to press close, that he felt a monk's calling would suit him.
The room's only window allowed him a narrow view of the street below. Its diamond-shaped panes let in a stream of sunlight each day for just an hour in the late afternoon, before the sun edged behind the clock tower.
He returned to his small desk -- an old roll-top that had belonged to his grandfather -- mahogany. With a slightly arthritic hand, he picked up his pen again, but he did not write. He gazed beyond the tiny window at the snow, which continued to fall -- about three inches on the ground now. And he observed to himself what a beautiful hush it had brought to the city.
His mind wandered to visions of the young priest: the enthusiasm, the way he was going to change the world -- or at least write his sermons more than a day before he preached them. An ironically sad smile crept over his face and hung there for a moment.
A shout from the street below interrupted his mental meanderings. "Hey, Father!" The voice was that of a man everyone called simply "The General." No one knew his whole story, but there were bits of it that circulated the streets -- a once-successful man who had come too close to an enemy grenade during World War II; a piece of something that imbedded itself in his skull and kept him in a coma for months; a family that couldn't bear the strain and left him for good in the hospital.
There was some residual brain damage and an awkwardness to his movements, leftovers from a paralysis that at one point was believed permanent. A military cadence seemed to march through his head and, when sober, he strutted the streets to beat the band. But today he was not sober. He usually wasn't around holidays.
"Jesus isn't here, preacher!" he shouted agitatedly toward the priest's window, losing his footing on a patch of snow. The priest walked quickly down the narrow stairs and, placing an arm under The General, helped him up. His eyes were bloodshot and vacant, his breath stale with the smell of alcohol. "Jesus is gone," he muttered quietly as the priest helped him, stumbling, into the church.
There was always a warm corner for The General. Some of the parishioners didn't like it, but they didn't complain -- at least not too often. His only other home was a steam grate a few blocks away, which belched hot air to envelop him in scant comfort on cold nights. It was his preferred home, but he was terrified of things falling from the sky -- including rain and snow. The priest had expected him to show up at the church that day.
"Jesus is gone!" The General shouted once more through an angry stupor, his eyes wide and riveted on the priest, whom he clutched tightly. Then he grew quiet again, and a tear slid down his old face, weathered and outlined in several days' worth of whiskers. Prying loose his grasp as he gently covered him with a blanket on the floor of a Sunday school room, the priest said soothingly, "It's all right, General. Jesus is here. Everything's all right. You get some sleep now."
The clock in the old tower sounded out 4 o'clock as the priest sat back down at his desk. An orange streak of sunlight fell across his blank paper. He gazed at it emptily. He was distracted by the interruptions, unfocused, doubtful that he had anything new to say about the marvels of the incarnation, the miracle of the Word become flesh. It was an old story, one he had told many times.
He put his head into his hands and sat motionless as the sun slipped around the clock tower. As the dark of twilight began to encroach on him, another knock came abruptly on his door -- loud and incessant, hammering the stillness.
"They've arrested my son! They've taken him away!" wailed the mother who had lived in this neighborhood since childhood. Her son was 15 now -- the age she had been when she gave birth to him. There was a husband once, but he had beaten her one too many times and she left him when their second child was still an infant.
Through her sobs the story came out. Her son had been caught shoplifting -- "trying to steal a doll for his little sister for Christmas," she said with a voice tinged with both pride and anguish. She was a woman who lit votive candles often and came to Mass every week -- not because she was a Catholic, but because she believed that every avenue to God should be tried. Ten percent of her already scant welfare check went to an unscrupulous TV evangelist, and various form letters of gratitude and prayer cloths "blessed by the preacher himself" and light-in-the-dark Jesus plaques were now fading on her walls.
The local shopkeeper had reported her son and given the police his address. They had come to the house and taken him away in handcuffs. His 11-year-old sister ran out of the house crying.
"It's Christmas Eve," his mother pleaded, shaking with fear for both of her children. "Can't you do something?"
The priest encouraged her to go home and wait for her daughter, while he grabbed his old poncho, threw it over his shoulders, and headed out the door. The snow was deep now, and it crunched under his feet as he walked toward the police station. The poncho smelled musty. It was a relic from another era, when he was a young priest on a mission in Latin America. Those were heady days, when hungry peasants were beginning to see the message of social upheaval in the words of Jesus; when talk was of justice and peaceful revolution; when prayer centered on the demise of governments and the end of exploitation and the flourishing of communities of faith that saw the Bible as their handbook for resistance.
The revolution never came. Only more brutality. He left disillusioned, broken from the weight of shattered hope and the knowledge that the suffering would never end for his friends. He took his option to return home. It was a choice they couldn't make. That truth had haunted him for 30 years.
The wind picked up as the sun sank behind the street's buildings, and he drew the poncho more tightly around himself. He thought about his room. He hoped that he wouldn't be long at the police station. He was anxious to go back, start a fire in the small stone fireplace in the corner, and write his sermon by firelight while the logs crackled comfortably and friendly shadows danced on the walls. The fireplace was one of the things he liked best about his room, and he was sure the coziness of the scene would inspire him, would give him just the right words for his congregation tomorrow.
He was at the police station for hours. The officers on duty, unhappy to be at work on Christmas Eve, were not enamored of a meddling, old priest. They refused even to acknowledge at first that they had arrested the young man he had come for. They left the priest waiting, then sent him to another police station. He waited again, only to be told that the young man he was looking for had already been taken to the jail. No pleading on his part moved the officers to release the boy to him or even to allow him to go see him.
The snow was swirling in the streets as he left the station, the wind slicing through his poncho. He trudged slowly through the deserted neighborhood, his footsteps heavy with defeat, his face to the ground.
As he turned a corner a few blocks from the church, he glanced up and was surprised to see a small figure walking ahead of him, bent over with the weight of something. He approached and called out, not wanting to cause fright. The figure turned, and he saw the young sister of the boy he had been seeking at the police station.
A shiver wracked her body as he walked toward her. In her arms was the large figure of the baby Jesus from the church's Nativity scene, made of heavy oak, crafted by one of the parishioners who at a happier time had been a woodcarver in the Appalachian foothills. The Nativity set, put on display in the church's foyer every Christmas, was the pride of the parish. Wrapped around baby Jesus was the girl's coat.
The priest drew up close to her. "I want to be good, Father," the girl said somberly, rocking Jesus and staring at her right foot as she scuffed it through the snow. Then she looked up into his eyes and whispered, "But I don't know how."
The priest took off his poncho and placed it around her trembling shoulders, noticing how threadbare it was but for the first time in a long time thankful for its warmth.
A lone tear descended the girl's cheek and dropped into the snow. "Mama says I got to be walkin' with Jesus," she said as more tears flowed. "But I lost my way."
The priest's eyes grew moist. "Here, let me help," he said, gently taking Jesus from her arms. He cradled the baby Jesus in one arm and placed the other around the girl. "Let's walk with Jesus together," he said, barely able to voice the words.
As the church came into view, the clock in the old tower chimed 12 times. The priest looked toward the sky and smiled. It was Christmas, and he still hadn't put a word on paper.
Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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