A prayer to come home to.

After years of anger and emptiness, a young woman makes a little room for God and the church during Midnight Mass.

She suffered injustices, large and small, meekly, but without forgetting. A mother who didn't want her at birth was never mentioned and never sought. A birthmark that crossed her forehead like an angry red exclamation point was never covered by bangs, but she rarely looked anyone in the eye, either. When her adoptive father left her with her adoptive mother but took her brother and moved out, she calmly helped her brother pack, even though she was only in third grade. From that day on, though, she never called him "dad" or "father" again. When she had to refer to him, she called him by his given name, a quiet, passionless reference.

Though she never really wanted to be a priest herself, the thought that she wasn't allowed by the church and the church's God made her birthmark turn scarlet and her voice turn silent at Mass. By the time she was ready to be confirmed, it was no wonder that she refused. Like so many of her peers she had a backlog of reasons to question God's goodness and constancy and the benevolent role of the church. If the secret to God's longevity among us is our memory, then increasingly this becomes problematic. It was not that she couldn't love God and the church; she didn't know that she wanted to.

When her mother argued the better qualities of the church, pointing to Mother Teresa and Cardinal Bernardin, she pointed to Mother Angelica and Cardinal Ratzinger. One or two bad apples spoiled the whole thing as far as she was concerned. And that was enough to convince her God wasn't or couldn't be all he was cracked up to be.

When she turned 22, she moved out of her mother's house, but not far away. Her mother still hoped that some day she would make peace with God and the church, tolerating the imperfections she couldn't understand and forgiving the reality of sin and injustice as generously as God.

Secretly, she did too. She knew this estrangement from both the church and God wasn't good. It left a hole larger than a false idol could. She went to church each Christmas Eve not expecting, but privately hoping, that something would bridge the gap between what she could not believe iii or be a part of and the anger and emptiness she sometimes felt.

One Christmas Eve I wrote this prayer for her. I gave it as the homily at Midnight Mass.

   God,
   on this night when you once wrapped all grace in flesh,
   and bound eternity to a single birth,
   we come here uncertain of our place in your heart.

   We know you loved Mary and Joseph's son,
   and your love cost him his life.
   We know you sent the Spirit to say, "This is my beloved,"
   and all who loved him ran away.
   We know you raised him from the dead,
   three days too late by all our reckoning.
   Can you see why we might tremble before you?
   Can you understand that we might search for other gods?
   It is not that we cannot love you

   We hold you accountable,
   for all we do not understand,
   the deaths of our children,
   the betrayals of our friends
   the black spots on our lungs,
   the poverty of our imaginations,
   your silence when we needed a sign.

   We live with the disappointment of our prayers,
   as much as you live with the coldness of our hearts.

   God,
   on this night when you once wrapped all grace in flesh,
   and bound eternity to a single birth,
   we come here uncertain of your place in our hearts.

   We know this is not how it was supposed to be.
   We know you once spoke and there was light.
   We know you chose us against the planets and
   the beauty of the earth
   to be more like you than the angels.
   We know we have not been all you hoped we would be.
   It is hard for us to live with that.
   Sometimes it seems like it will break us,
   This bittersweet life is all we have, all we know of you,
   this life and one Son of Adam
   who was more of what we would all like to be,
   who did not take his eyes off you,
   who walked into the darkness with only your promise.

   God,
   it is Christmas when small things and the truth matter--
   Bethlehem, not Jerusalem,
   a stable, not Herod's palace,
   a maiden, not a queen--

   This is the truth:
   It is our doubt as much as our faith,
   our disappointments as much as our hope,
   our indifference as much as our love,
   which bring us here.

   Only You
   Who once wrapped all grace in flesh .
   can make of our divided hearts
   something whole and abiding.

   Only You,
   Who once bound eternity to a single birth,
   can find and heal what we have lost.
   Only You,
   Who once brought light out of the darkness in Jesus,
   can bear our sin and still love us.

   God,
   it is Christmas and a small thing that we are here.
   The universe does not shake when we speak,
   yet by your mercy we believe again
   that you hear us and with Jesus find a place
   for us in your heart,
   where there is as much joy over one birth
   as eternity can take.

   AMEN

She came to Communion that night for the first time in years. I suppose some might have turned her away when she came forward, assuming a pile of sin that only Confession could reconcile. ! presumed that both she and Christ had found a meeting place that night, and like the improbable but hoped for lodging in Bethlehem, she had made a little room for him. Maybe it wasn't much, but it was enough for Christ to be born in her that Christmas.

Others, who like her had come to please their parents, or spouses, who didn't expect much, who had lives of their own in which God was mostly irrelevant, also came to Communion that night. I'm sure it was grace more than the prayer, as it always is when Christ comes alive for someone. Still, the prayer provided a reasonable bit of honesty that you might want to share with someone this Christmas.

All of us know people, sons and daughters, good friends, spouses who for whatever reasons still come to church on Christmas as they will at no other time of year, secretly hoping that something will bridge the gap between what they no longer believe in and the emptiness in their hearts.

GEORGE R. SZEWS, a priest of the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin and pastor of a campus ministry parish in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. His most recent book is Everyday People, Everyday Grace (Acta, 1999).