The Long Wait, or Giving a Shit about Baby Jesus

For some time, I have thought my life is like a long Advent.

There once was a relatively short period of time in my life where I had mystical experiences in a row. Putting down those words, I hesitate. It is usually not a good idea to publicize one’s mystical experiences. The so-called mystical experiences may have been mere delusions, and even worse, the act of writing about them could be rooted in one’s pride. Additionally, I doubt that an essay about my mystical experience will enhance my career or social standing in this secular age. “While Paul was so speaking in his defense, Festus said in a loud voice, ‘You are mad, Paul; much learning is driving you mad.’” (Acts 26:24) Even in the first century, this seems to have been a commonsensical response when someone recounted his mystical experience.

St. John of the Cross gave splendid generic advice about how to treat such experiences: just don’t give a shit. Obviously, he did not express his opinion in such a vulgar way, but I believe I have effectively summarized the saint’s spiritual counsel as far as I understand it. His reasoning is delightfully clear. You might have been delusional, and you should not care if that was the case. The mystical experience could have come from the Devil as well, in which case you should also ignore it. The final possibility is that the experience was genuinely from God, but who do you think you are to be much concerned with it, when even the prophets in the Bible could not fully understand what they experienced? Just forget about it. If it was God, He will let you get what you must know about it. Saint John of the Cross, who is known as the Mystical Doctor, was surprisingly practical in his spiritual direction.

Writing is caring, or giving a shit about something. You cannot write without giving a shit, at least a tiny little bit. Writing is also an attempt at interpretation. Even if you do not intend to interpret anything, every representation will unavoidably entail certain interpretations. Non Dei est interpretatio, asks Joseph, the son of Jacob, in Genesis 40:8. Many English translations render Joseph’s question into smoother forms, such as “Do not interpretations belong to God?” or “Do not interpretations come from God?”, but I have always preferred the Vulgate’s crude genitive “Dei”, along with the singular “interpretatio”—Interpretation, better written with a capital I, is of God. No need to gloss over it. The interpretation of a mystical experience, essentially, is not a human job.

During my meditation today, nevertheless, I felt I should write about an experience of mine against the wisdom of St. John of the Cross and Joseph, who clearly grasped the limits of human understanding. For a long time, I hadn’t recalled the incident I wanted to write about. I do not necessarily regard the impulse to have been of a divine origin. Quite likely, it naturally came from meditating on John 16:27: “For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God.” I was pondering the emphasis in the phrase “the Father himself”, what it means for God the Father to love.

However, it is perhaps also because Christmas is near, the time when what is divine becomes human.

It was many years ago at Gaudete Sunday mass, the third Lord’s Day of Advent. I received the Eucharist, came back to my seat, and closed my eyes. That was when something unexpected happened. I sensed St. Joseph there, right in front of me, holding Jesus in his arms. It is hard to describe or rationalize how I noticed their presence. I did not see them with my physical eyes or have mental visual imagery. They were simply there, with absolute certainty.

I was horrified because of Jesus—not because of His divinity, but because of the opposite. He was just a newborn baby who hadn’t even opened His eyes yet. My first thought was that if St. Joseph dropped Him by mistake, it could snap His neck or back, and He could die in an instant. The next thought was how easily I could kill Him as well. It is not that I wanted to kill Him. He looked that helpless, completely unable to defend Himself and unaware of what was happening around Him. If this tiny and fragile baby was the long-awaited Messiah, we were in trouble.

Still, it seemed just for the world to burn a thousand times over and every soul to burn in hell for eternity than to kill this innocent baby, defenseless and sinless. He was perfect, more so than the word could describe, and beautiful, which led me to think the Incarnation was a terrible idea, literally, as in causing terror. What kind of loving father comes up with the horrendous plan to put his beautiful son in such a vulnerable position, so that he will be murdered to take away the sins of others?

Father, why do you even give a shit about us, I wanted to ask, as if I would have been capable of comprehending His answer. Looking back, I might have also wanted to beg St. Joseph to get the hell out, run away, forget everything about God and His angel, dump his fanatic wife if necessary, give the best life to his adopted Son, and tell Him to reconsider everything that had to do with this whole mad becoming-flesh thing when He grew up a bit more and came to His senses.

Like, both of you, Father and Son, why can’t you two just act like normal, almighty God?

Nonetheless, I could not say anything because Jesus reached out. His tiny hand took hold of my left little finger. His hand was so tiny that he could hold my little finger only. It was as firm a grip as a newborn baby could manage. Then, everything made sense at once, even though I could not make sense of anything.

He was the God the Son, who knew what He was doing, the long-awaited Messiah, and everything was going to be okay.

Justin Popović, a Serbian Orthodox saint who was a staunch critic of Catholicism and a profound reader of Dostoevsky, wrote in his Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ: “In Christianity truth is not a philosophical concept, nor is it a theory, a teaching, or a system, but rather, it is the living theanthropic hypostasis-the historical Jesus Christ (John 14:6).” I can confirm he was absolutely correct. More simply put, Truth is a Person. I met Him, and He cannot be predicated or interpreted by words. Truth is always beyond the words we know.

After the incident with the Baby Jesus and St. Joseph, I have never had any mystical experience. It just stopped. Unlike before, when I used to feel so certain about the presence of God with me, I do not sense Him anymore, technically. I do feel some things, sometimes, but it feels like receiving occasional postcards from strange lands far away that I do not know of. The postcards do not have many legible words on them, and I am not even entirely sure it is God sending them. I might be just imagining things. All I can do now is to believe that He is there, or here with me, as much as I can.

Writing this essay, I had an intuition that for the rest of my life, there would be no such mystical experiences anymore. I will be happy to be proven wrong by God—it is God’s job to disprove the limited human outlooks, to show that there is always more to life than they can ever comprehend or imagine. My job is to just wait, not knowing what will happen. If not in this life, then in the eternal one. It is human to wait.

In a certain sense, the plot of the Gospels and the Acts is absurdist. Jesus comes back from death, only to leave again. He tells His Apostles that he will return again, but when? He has not returned for two millennia. In the prequel, He did the same to Abraham and his descendants. He said the whole land of Canaan would be given to them, but when, exactly? Moses did not even get to enter the promised land. God must have been satisfied when He created Samuel Beckett. He is the original Godot, and all we can do is to wait.

Strangely enough, despite all the absurdity, I might not mind waiting all my life at all, to see that tiny incomprehensible baby once more, who makes everything comprehensible. So, here I am, waiting during Advent, like always.

Because, Father, I do give a shit, too.

If you enjoyed my work, you can buy me a cup of tea. I am not a coffee person, by the way.

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