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Mary Beers read The Beggars' Christmas by John Auriello

The book that I keep going back to year after year is The Beggars' Christmas by John Aurelio. I first read the book in 1980. My copy is a worn paperback edition.

The story is set in France at the same time of Francis of Assisi. The main characters are two beggars, one blind and the other with a maimed leg. They are visited by the Angel of Death on Christmas Eve. The angel listens to their complaints and then challenges them to search for the spirit of Christmas wherever and whenever they wish.

Their choices lead them on an incredible journey, which starts in Bethlehem and ends on either side of Jesus on Golgotha. The book ends with their returning to their present time to enter the great cathedral at the stroke of midnight where the bishop is waiting for the sign that the Christ child has arrived. Incredibly, they become that sign.

I cannot read this book without crying at the end. Time and again.

Beggars? Christmas brings me back to the need to see Christ in every person, every object in God's creation.

There is so much beauty around us, if only we take the time to look. Nature is such a precious gift and at no charge, too. It also helps that I enjoy working with children. Through working with children I get to be a kid again over and over. Children are so pure in their love of nature - perhaps because they are much closer to the action height-wise. Adults do not realize that children pick up prejudices toward nature by observing the the reaction of adults around them. Subtle changes in facial expressions or a carelessly uttered "Yuck!" is stored in the memory banks of children. My job is to undo some of the damage without bashing the adult who caused the damage.

If you are not a "touchy-feely" person you may become one by reading The Beggars' Christmas. It's a brilliant study of the human condition. The lesson for me is that in spite of our repeated failures, God's love is there within reach, patiently waiting for us to extend our hearts and hands to grasp it.

(Interview conducted and written by Ann Shea, Sandwich Reads Together secretary.)

To Learn More ...

The author of The Beggars' Christmas is Father John Aurelio, a Catholic priest. You can read online his sermon A Storyteller's God. You can also learn more online about the Green Briar Nature Center.

Let us know if there are other sites you would like to see listed about this book and its topics.

Mary Beers in the director of education at the Green Briar Nature Center in East Sandwich.