as retold by Tanja Cilia

Before we begin our story, close your eyes and imagine a country where all the buildings, stretching for miles and miles, are made of stone, and have flat roofs! Now, can you imagine your favorite bed-sheet, about ten times its actual size floating down from heaven?

Let us begin our story with Cornelius the Centurion in the city of Caesarea.  He was called a centurion because he was in charge of one-hundred soldiers in the Roman Army.  He was a kind man, and his family helped the poor.  One afternoon, an angel called Cornelius by name and told him that God had heard his prayers. He also told him to send to Joppa for Peter to come and bring salvation to his household.  Now this was a wonderful thing, because until that time, it was thought that only Jews were going to be saved. This was a misunderstanding, because Isaiah was one of the prophets who had insisted that Israel was to be a light to the non-Jewish people, like Cornelius, who were at that time called Gentiles.

Now let us return to the flat roofs of the houses.  These sometimes had steps leading up to them from the street, as well as from inside the house, and one could go from one roof to another. The roofs were – and still are – used as an extension of the house.  People may even have picnics or hang clothes to dry, or sleep there in summer, or dry straw or cure salted tomatoes and capers and pickles, on them – or even have some “quiet time” to pray.

You can imagine what they are like if you imagine a patio on the top of a house, rather than as a balcony.  By law, the roofs have a low sill or ledge at the edges for safety, about four feet high.

One afternoon, Peter was very hungry, and while downstairs a meal was being prepared, he went up the steps to the roof to be alone in prayer.  This house was in Joppa, by the Mediterranean seaside, and it belonged to a tanner, a person who cures hides to be made into leather items. The work created a lot of nasty smells, and the sea was a handy source of salt water needed for it. This tanner was called Simon.  His was not a holiday house – it was by the sea because in Biblical times, anyone who did this kind of job was considered not good enough to live in the centre of the city. Tanners worked with the bodies of dead animals, and they were considered “unclean.”

Did you notice how often people in the Bible are referred to by their names and their jobs?  The fact that Simon is a tanner is mentioned twice, as if to show us that Peter decided to go to the house of a Jewish person who would have had to wash himself ceremonially several times before going to the Synagogue to pray in order to become “clean!”

There, on the roof, Peter had a vision.  A cloth that was much, much larger than a sheet, something like the sails of a yacht, came down from heaven.  Inside it, he could see all kinds of animals. This huge sheet was lowered and raised three times.

Peter heard a voice that told him “Rise, Peter! Kill and eat!”  Now the Jews have a lot of rules that concern which animals may be eaten, and which may not, and if you want you can look for it in the Book of Leviticus, chapter eleven, verse one, and Deuteronomy, chapter fourteen, verse three.

The food that is “good to eat” is called “kosher.”  Unclean food is not kosher. For example, unclean animals include the camel, badger, rabbit, lizard, pig, shark, catfish, snake, bat, eagle, hawk, vulture, owl, gull, and stork.  But in Peter’s vision, the animals that he could eat were both kosher and non-kosher. This was a powerful symbol that Peter understood immediately. It showed that Jesus was the Savior of both the Jews and the Gentiles, who at that time were considered unclean.

When Peter’s vision was over, guess who came to see him?  That’s right – Cornelius’s messengers – two servants and a soldier – to invite Peter to his home in Caesarea! They had been traveling for about thirty miles, having left after Cornelius had his vision. This incredible “coincidence” confirmed that the Word of God was for everybody, not just for the Jewish People. Think about it! Peter saw a vision on the roof of Simon’s house and the Romans promptly came in through the door of this very house asking him to preach to the Gentiles.  The house itself became a symbol of God’s welcoming love for the whole world!

Simon the tanner actually invited the Romans inside (they were just in time for lunch!) – and this, too, was a wonderful thing that had never happened before, because Jews and Gentiles did not usually mix together, socially. They certainly never ate together!

Peter later went to Cornelius’s house and brought them the Good News of Jesus Christ. When he returned from Joppa to Jerusalem, he began preaching that non-Jews were also a part of God’s family.  Some did not like it, but Peter chided them, saying, “If God therefore gave to them the same gifts as He gave to us also after believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” (Acts 11:17)

as retold by Tanja Cilia

It was a cool, crisp, spring morning in Jericho; a beautiful town that lay in the valley of the River Jordan, right between the river and the hills. There was a smell of baking in the air as the women made bread for breakfast, and everyone else was yawning, stretching, and getting out of bed.

“I’m so excited!” said Zacchaeus to himself. He knew that on that very special day, Jesus, the person they called The Prophet of Nazareth, was going to pass through his town on His way to Jerusalem. “He must be a special person, to have so many followers leave everything and follow him!”

Zacchaeus, whose name means “pure, clean, just, and righteous,” was very, very short. He realized that in order to be able to see Jesus, he had to leave his house early; otherwise with people standing in front of him would block his view. So he had some breakfast and put on his best clothes, an expensive cloak and new leather sandals. Zacchaeus was a rich man, so he could afford the best of everything. He had the best house in the street and ate the best food that money could buy. But Zacchaeus did not have many friends. This is because he worked for the Romans, and the Jews did not like either the Romans or the people who worked for them.

Jericho was a very important town, because anyone who wanted to go to the Big City had to pass through it. So people like Zacchaeus, who worked for the Romans, made a lot of money.    They were called publicans. They collected the tax from everyone who used the toll gates and the people who lived in Jericho, but they also asked for more money than they were supposed to, and kept it for themselves. Zacchaeus loved his money, and the more he collected, the better he felt. Sometimes he minded that his fellow Jews did not really like him, but at other times he was not worried at all — just as long as he had money to buy all the things he wanted.

Like everybody else, he had heard about Jesus the Galilean, and what a good man He was. But there was something else that made him curious. He had heard that Matthew, one of the disciples of Jesus, was a publican like himself. He wondered how it was possible for a rich man to be a disciple of someone who didn’t even have a house of his own, and who owned only the clothes on his back. “How could a publican live without money, and lots of it?” he wondered.

He kept asking himself questions like this as he huffed and puffed and bustled his way towards the main road, where Jesus was going to pass.

“Oh! Bother!” he exclaimed, as he saw the crowds that had already gathered.  Even though he was an important man – or so he thought – nobody would be willing to give up his position at the edge of the street to let him stand in front. And Zacchaeus knew that he was too short to catch a glimpse of Jesus from the back of the crowd, even if he stood on tip-toes. He did not want to ask people who lived along the main roads for permission to look out of their windows – he was sure they would not let him do so. His heart filled with sadness, he nearly returned home. But then he thought of something.

“I have a brilliant idea!” he exclaimed, as he struck his forehead. “I know what I’ll do; I will climb a tree and see Him from there. I will see what all the fuss is about! So the short man bunched up his robe and his cloak, not even minding that he was creasing the expensive fabric. He started climbing up a sycamore tree and the people looked at him and laughed, passing silly comments about him. Now the sycamore tree is a big tree, and at the time it was a very important tree because the poor people used to gather its fruit and eat it. Some people even used to boil the leaves and eat them like we would eat lettuce or cabbages. Poor Zacchaeus! He snagged his clothes on the branches of the tree as he climbed, and scratched his arms and legs on the twigs as he struggled to find a comfortable perch.

“He’s coming!” exclaimed Zacchaeus, when he heard an excited babble of voices and saw people’s heads turning. And indeed, Jesus and His followers were walking slowly along the street, talking amongst themselves. Although he had never seen Him before, Zacchaeus could immediately make out which one of them was Jesus. Although He was dressed in a simple robe like all the others, He had regal dignity and bearing, like a King.

Suddenly Zacchaeus wanted to reach out and touch Jesus, and to follow him like all the others were doing. But that would mean giving up all his money and his lovely house and all his things, and Zacchaeus did not want to do that. His mind and his heart were telling him different things, and he was feeling so mixed up!

Jesus reached the sycamore tree where Zacchaeus was hiding between the branches. He stopped.  “What’s happening?” people began asking one another. “Is the Master tired? Does he want to sit down? Does he want a drink of water? Shall we fetch him something to eat?”

Jesus stood right beneath the branch where Zacchaeus was, and looked up. He said “Zacchaeus, come down! I want to eat at your house today!”

Zacchaeus gulped, and nearly fell out of the tree in his excitement. “He knows my name! How can this be?” he wondered, and almost slid down the branches in his hurry to get closer to Jesus.

Some of the people were angry when this happened, because they thought that Jesus should not go into the house of someone who worked for the Romans. They muttered nasty things about Zacchaeus, and said that he did not deserve to have Jesus as his guest. They all thought he was a bad man because he stole money from others. Many other people grumbled because they thought they deserved to have Jesus in their house more than Zacchaeus did. But Jesus did not judge, accuse or criticize Zacchaeus. He just invited himself over for lunch.

Zacchaeus felt special. He had been singled out by Jesus from the hundreds of people present.  He bustled along the street, holding his head up high with Jesus by his side. But he had heard the grumblings of his neighbors and a new thought came to him. Suddenly, Zacchaeus was sure of what he had to do. He turned to Jesus, and in front of all the people, he said to Him “Lord, right now I am promising you that I am going to give half of my belongings to the poor. But that’s not all. If I have cheated anyone by taking more taxes that I ought to have done, I will give them back four times as much as I took extra from them. I promise you this, Jesus.”

Jesus smiled calmly as the crowd fell silent, and said “Salvation has come into this house today, because Zacchaeus is also a son of Abraham. And because the Son of Man came to look for the lost, and to save them.”

Fleur and Lee are twins, who live, of course, in the lovely, tiny hamlet of Fleur de Lys in Malta, that tiny island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.

This year, Advent is a special time for them, because their Nanna Kitty let them have the set of clay figurines that used to belong to Nannu Paul when he was a kid.

But, what’s so special about a box full of tiny old statues, you may ask. Ah! But these are the ones that are traditionally used in Malta and other European countries during Christmastide, to decorate their presepju (grotto). This particular set was made from clay, and then painstakingly painted, by a famous artist, so long ago.

The twins’ dad helped them make the grotto for the models. They got an oblong of three-ply wood from the carpenter’s workshop around the corner, and set to work. Before, the grottos used to be made from sackcloth; these days, since sacks are usually made of nylon, it is easier to use thick brown paper. This is slightly moistened and crumpled, and then, placed on the plywood so that it meets one of the long sides and the two shorter ones, leaving a slight space in the front. Then, it is pressed down to form some “caverns” with the largest one in the centre. In a basin, in the time-honoured way, dad had mixed some Elmer’s glue, sand, plaster of Paris and water. They took turns at “painting” this over the construction, taking care to see that the mixture covered everything.

They took it out on the roof, but out of the direct sunlight, to dry. Some people cover the finished grotto with varnish, but Fleur said it looked more natural without, so they left it like that. Le had spent a lot of time cutting up bits of dried grass, hay, and straw for the “floors” of the caves, and he sprinkled them on when the glue mixture was still tacky.

The grotto was finally ready! It was beautiful now, go figure when the statuettes depicting the Biblical personages completed the picture.

On the Saturday before the First Sunday of Advent, the doorbell rang, and the children ran to the door. Imagine their faces when they saw it was a neighbour, asking whether they had a lemon, so that she could grate a bit of the peel into her chocolate squares! The doorbell rang again – and this time, it was the postman, delivering some books for the twins’ mother.

But the third time the doorbell rang, it really was Nanna Kitty – and in her hands she had a large mysterious box, wrapped in a tartan tablecloth. Carefully, very carefully, she walked towards the kitchen. While Mom prepared some coffee and sandwiches, Nanna undid the ribbon and spread open the tablecloth.

A smell of dry straw came out of the box, and, one by one, the twins and Nanna took out the fragile figurines.

There were shepherds and sheep, farmers and their animals, all in exquisite detail. There were angels with translucent wings. There were the Magi on their camels and their servants, and a number of extra camels too. There were men and women and children dressed in traditional Maltese clothing, a baker with a tray of bread, and a woman with a bowl of maize, and some chickens. There were the ox and the donkey, both in a kneeling position.

But best of all, inside another, smaller box, were the beautiful statues of Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus, holding His right hand up as if in blessing, and lying in a manger.

By this time, Fleur and Lee and uttered Oh! and Ah! at least a thousand times. Their fingers were itching to put the “tiny people” in the grotto, which Dad had placed in a prominent place in the family room. But first, they cleared up the loose hay, and folded the tablecloth, placing it inside the box.

The adults drank their coffee, and Mom squeezed some tangerines and oranges for Fleur and Lee.

The children each got a large bowl from the cupboard and shared the statuettes between them, so that they wouldn’t have to take several trips too and from the kitchen. But when lee put out his hands for Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar, Nanna Kitty said “Not those please!” She then explained that it was a part of the observance involved placing the Magi and their entourage as far away from the grotto as possible, and then, each Sunday, moving them a little towards the main cavern. By the time Epiphany comes around, they are there, presenting their gold, frankincense and myrrh to Baby Jesus… although as we know, the story didn’t really happen that way.

What a fine morning this was. The children couldn’t wait for Sunday, to move the camel-caravan a few inches along the sideboard, towards the Crib Scene.

Nanna Kitty cried with happiness, to see the joy her gift had brought Fleur and Lee. She was glad to see that the Christmas Story was coming alive in the family room of her daughter’s family, just as it was in thousands of homes in Malta.