Christmas and God's Ultimate Answer to Our Anguish

My father died suddenly on Christmas Eve morning when he was 49 years old, leaving my mother a widow with seven children. The struggle I faced that Christmas, so I came to realize, was no different from the one that afflicts everyone every day: loss and longing.  My challenge was to pay special attention to Christmas -- seeing past the superficial -- to get to the mystery's real meaning. Can Christmas offer an answer to keenly felt sorrow and pain? I have never forgotten consoling words I discovered years later from poet Rainer Maria Rilke to a hurting friend: "Celebrate Christmas in this devout feeling that perhaps God needs this very anguish of yours in order to begin." And who of us these days is not feeling intense anguish?