POSADAS
No room at the inn – but room in a jail cell

The posadas are a Advent tradition in many Latin American countries. It is a little bit like Christmas caroling but more dramatic. For about a week or so before Christmas groups go throughout their neighborhoods and stop at a house, usually prearranged. Often two people are dressed like Mary and Joseph or carry statues of Mary and Joseph. They go to the door and knock, seeking “posada” – a place to pass the night. There is a song with parts for the people on both sides of the door.

The words are pointed, especially these verses:
The group outside sings:
Beloved innkeeper,
the queen of heaven
seeks a place to stay
for only one night.
Those inside sing:
But if she’s a queen
who’s asking this,
how can it be that
she is wandering
so alone at night?
Finally the group inside relents and sings:
Come in, holy pilgrims,
receive this corner,
and even though my dwelling is poor,
I heartily give you this place to stay.

This past Wednesday I accompanied Sor [Sister] Inez to La Granja Penal, the local penitentiary. After we had helped some men with reading and writing, we were invited to take part in the posadas in the prison. Men from two adjacent jail cells divided up – one group within and one without carrying statues of Mary and Joseph. We sang the posadas and after we had all crammed into the cell we prayed together, with a reading led by a prisoner. We did this twice.

Each jail cell is about 8 feet by 18 feet and houses about 20 men in bunks four high. In the first cell, an inmate had made a Christmas crib out of cardboard.

I was deeply moved but not until today, Saturday, have I been able to figure out what moved me so much. Today there was a Christmas celebration for faculty at the Catholic University. A posada was part of the pastorela, a Christmas pageant. The difference was telling – but as I sat there after the posada my experience in the prison began to make sense.

Joseph and Mary sought shelter in Bethlehem but there was no room in the inn. Today still there is often no room at the inn for the poor, the homeless, the outcast, the refugee, the “illegal” immigrant. And there is little room for prisoners and ex-cons. But in a prison cell Joseph and Mary were welcomed. Christ can be born not only in stable but in a jail cell and in the hearts of prisoners.

Thomas Merton put it well in an essay, “The Time of the End is the Time of No Room,” in Raids on the Unspeakable, a book which I highly recommend:

“Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because He cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, His place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, who are tortured, bombed, and exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in the world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst. . . . It is in these that He hides Himself, for whom there is no room.”

May Christ find room in our hearts this Christmas and may we welcome the marginalized in our lives.