AN ADVENT "CHRISTMAS CAROL" RETREAT - XV

[Continuing our reading of and meditations on The Christmas Carol]:
         

          After his last prayer in the cemetery, Scrooge finds himself in a different resting place: his own room in his own time.  His present.  The present in which the future is shaped by life.  “Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!”

          Scrooge repeats his resolution to “…live in the Past, the Present, and the Future! … The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this! I say it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees!”

          He sees his surroundings through those times: the bed curtains not yet stolen, the window through which Jacob Marley left, the place where the Ghost of Christmas Present sat.

          And he could laugh, most of all at himself: “Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs!”

          One of the consequences of conversion is restitution: repairing what one has damaged.  In cases of money, Scrooge’s obsession, it is making up for defrauded wages, extorted goods, financial abuse.  The Gospels illustrate the Christian posture in this respect: when Zacchaeus the short tax collector becomes the object of attack by some, he defends himself by citing his almsgiving to the poor and his restitution to the cheated.  One cannot be truly converted if he is “sorry” for his cheating but wants to keep ill-gotten gains.  Of course, not all wrongdoing from the past can be fixed: one should not become scrupulous.  Where restitution is not possible, almsgiving is – and as the old saying puts it, “charity covers a multitude of sins.”

          Scrooge demonstrates his conversion through his newfound charity.  He begins with Bob Cratchit.  Having seen his “Christmas Present” dinner, he anonymously sends him a “prize turkey.”  Walking the streets, he encounters the men seeking charitable contributions he had turned away the day before.  He gets their attention and whispers into their ears what he will now give.  It’s not just false humility.  Dickens, a Christian, is doing two things: he applies the Biblical injunction about not letting one’s left hand know what one’s right hand is doing, and he does not give a number as much as an example that everyone, according to his abilities, should imitate.  Christmas Day’s restitutions end with his nephew, where the restitution is not monetary compensation but familial reconciliation.  There is a Swiss pop song from the 1970s whose lyric declares: “It is hard to ask forgiveness//it is easier to say ‘I love you.’”  But, sometimes, you can’t honestly say the latter without saying the former. 

          In preparing for Christmas, where do I stand with restitution?  Is there anybody whom I’ve injured to whom I owe recompense? Has my Advent almsgiving covered any of my sins?  Is there anybody to whom I need to say “I’m sorry?” 

           I am not ready to spend Christmas Day until I address these things.