So in a meditation composed during his time as Archbishop of Munich, Joseph Ratzinger, beginning as he often does from something quite concrete, reflected on the devotion to an image of the Christ Child still preserved in a tree in Christkindl, placed there in the 17th century by a man suffering from epilepsy or, as the chronicler terms it, “the sickness where one falls down”.
A church was eventually built around the tree, and devotion grew. Sweet, but is there anything more than sentimental piety here?
Well, yes. Ratzinger, in just a few words, links this tree with the tree of paradise, with Mary, the life-giving tree who gives us the fruit, Jesus, with the circular shape of the church, recalling the womb and baptism, our call to be born again as children, which is possible because God became a child.
For, as he writes, in a passage that never ceases to prompt me to pause in recognition, “we are all suffering from ‘the sickness where one falls down’ “.
How true. How very true.
“Again and again, we find ourselves unable interiorly to walk upright and to stand. Again and again, we fall down; we are not masters of our own lives; we are alienated; we are not free.”
This reflection is all the more poignant, knowing, as we do, Amy Welborn’s sudden loss of her husband in the past year, leaving her with small children. I salute her steadfastness, and find the final sentence especially moving.