Dear Friend, 

Reflection by Fr. Douglas Milewski, S.T.D.

The Ultimate “Whodunnit"

Agatha Christie is the world’s third-best selling author, topped only by Shakespeare (#2) and God (#1), legendary for her famous string of detective novels and crime mysteries.  Late in her career, though, she penned a short collection of stories and poems called Star Over Bethlehem, centered on the Christmas event, bracketed by stories about the first moments of Mary’s motherhood and the last days of her life.  In between, the so-called “Queen of Crime” provided several reflections on the implications of the Nativity that result in a mystery worthy of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot.

Those in-between pieces illustrate how the birth of Christ transforms everything: from the barnyard animals at Bethlehem, to a misanthropic neighborhood grump, to a developmentally impaired teenager.  All of the main characters deal with deep realities so easily missed by anyone around them, yet none escaping the attention of the Lord Almighty and All-humble Who meets them with love precisely at the point of their greatest need.

Maybe most curious of all is the story situated on New Year’s Day, 2000, thirty-five years beyond Star Over Bethlehem’s publication in 1965.  Its title is “Promotion in the Highest” and relates the appearance – in person – of the saints portrayed on the 14th century Rood Screen in a smalltown parish church, who petitioned to return to earth out of pity and compassion.  They found the gift of salvation too good, too out of proportion to any service they rendered the Lord in the flesh.  They felt an intense need to return, drawn to “take the field” at the dawn of the Third Millenium, not so unlike how God Himself did on the first Christmas Day.  Only now, the saints had the benefit of all that hindsight, and they desperately wanted “back in” to put that advantage to use.

They also did so, Christie says, fully aware of their own lives’ failures, sins, and faults.  They would never forget the weaknesses they share with all men and women, lest pride rule them and obscure the pathway back to Heaven.  The results of this “promotion in the highest” are thoughtful and delightful.  Heaven, it seems, is too good not to be shared on earth.

Here is where this “whodunnit” passes from a mystery to be solved to an infinite reality to be entered, just as the mystery of God, the Incarnation, the mission of the Church demand.  Here the “whodunnit” transforms into a “who will do it?”  A mystery without end.  Deo gratias!

So says Dame Agatha’s intriguing tale, set in AD 2000.  So stand we upon the 24th Christmas season of this still-young Third Millenium.  It passes to us, this awareness of the totally disproportionate blessings, graces, wonders, hopes, and joys God has already given us (and promises more still).  It passes to us, who know full well “whodunnit”, to answer: “Who will do it?”.  And thereby, alongside countless others, gladly earn our own “promotion in the highest.”                

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Fr. Douglas Milewski, S.T.D., Associate Professor of Undergraduate Theology, earned an S.T.B. in Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, and an S.T.L. and an S.T.D. in Patristic Sciences and Theology from the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum of the Pontifical Lateran University, Rome. His doctoral dissertation is titled “‘Nos Locus Dei Sumus.’ Augustine’s Exegesis and Theology of John 17 in the Light of In Evangelium Ioannis Tractatus CIV-CXI.” Father Milewski’s specializations include the theology, literature and history of early Christianity and the Fathers of the Church, in particular, Saint Augustine.