ABSTRACT
This essay examines Willis’s Christmas stories “Miracle” and “Epiphany” for the ways that they articulate that tension between humanity and the miracles of the season. Both stories contend with critical moments in the liturgical season and both feature church members actively participating in the rites and routines of their churches while also being thrust into more direct roles in the story of Christ’s birth. To that end, this essay focuses on theologies of incarnation and the gaze, as both stories continually ask their characters and their readers to reinterpret what it means to see the body of Christ. Recognition of the embodiedness of Christ has real consequences for Willis’s characters, in that they must attend to human bodily needs even as they seek and search for the Christ child. Participating in incarnate compassion requires recognition and carework that can be seen more fully by examining the stories through a perspective that acknowledges divine miracles mediated through human bodies whose eyes seek to see and whose hands hope to help.
