Weekly Message

Today is the last day of exams. This is it, the end of the semester, and things are finally mellowing out here on campus. The last week or so has seen a changed atmosphere; without the rhythm of classes, the studying has intensified even while the holiday season has tried to impose its jolliness. There are festive songs coming from I-pods next to open organic bio textbooks all over the Union. I’ve had students camped out in an ongoing study session just outside my office, and visits from students who are in between exams and all-studied out. Many people had exams these last few days, so there’s been packing and present-buying in the midst of study breaks, so that one needn’t miss the next train once the last exam is finished. And as the exams are finished, the rest of the University slows down as well (except for the grading, I suppose).

As your days and work demands slow down, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, as well as a jolly time celebrating whatever else you choose to this season. Thank you for your prayers for, support of, and involvement in Protestant Campus Ministry in 2005, and I look forward to together being part of what God’s doing here at PCM in 2006. I leave you with a few thoughts on Christmas that we shared at this year’s Festival of Lights.

Christians celebrate Christmas because it marks the incarnation, a central Christian doctrine that asserts that God reached out to humanity by becoming a human being – “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

But it’s the story of the baby’s birth which charms us and shapes our celebration. The gospels of Matthew and Luke tell us of the birth of a special child, foretold by angels. The child is born of poor parents, who don’t even have a place to stay when it comes time for the birth, so the baby is born among the animals and laid to sleep in a manger. Word of the child’s birth is shared by angels to shepherds, simple peasants, and by a star to the Magi, wise scholars from far-away nations. The angels sing and the Magi bring gifts. All who hear of the birth come to see the child, and Mary, the mother, remembers and ponders all that she sees. It’s a great story, and so we tell the story – in pageants and statues, in songs and gifts and stars of light. The doctrine of incarnation doesn’t always get the center stage that our preachers and theologians sometimes think it should, but we learn the story, and love the story, and share it with our children and our churches, and from it we learn to give and to love. And for most of us, that’s what Christmas is. And it’s good.

May your Christmas be very good.

Grace and peace,

Cathy Schuyler
Chaplain, Protestant Campus Ministry
December 2005