"…We Need a Little Christmas Right This Very Minute..."

 

 

 “How many things have we become used to in the course of the years, of the weeks, and months so that we stand un-shocked, unstirred and inwardly unmoved? Christmas is a time when we ought to be shaken and brought to a realization of ourselves.” So wrote Alfred Delp, a Jesuit priest, awaiting execution for being accused a traitor by the Nazis in 1945. Then, the great question is whether we awake from our sleep and complacency? Luke 2:41-52

The tragic events of the last several months make it clear that we are unable to muddle through alone. It’s no secret that we find it necessary to turn to one another. Isn’t this what God wants for us? In many ways we, like the virgin, nurture our fertile soil as we absorb our pain and suffering and that of those around us, and give birth to Christ as we share his love with one another.

Henri Nouwen writes that Elizabeth and Mary, as models for the Christian community, were filled with hope. Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled but fulfilled according to His will and not according to our wishes. The Christian community is the place where we keep that hope alive among us. He tells us that we need to wait together like Elizabeth and Mary to be present to one another; to keep each other at home spiritually so that when the Word comes it can become flesh and have a whole new life in us.

Perhaps the words of David Steindl-Rast make it possible to understand how what began in Bethlehem two thousand years ago can apply with today’s recent tragic events: “By focusing our human efforts on cultivating tender connections and caring relationships we can give birth to a world conceived by the Holy GhostLuke 2:41-52

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One Solitary Life

He was born in an obscure village
The child of a peasant woman
He grew up in another obscure village
Where he worked in a carpenter shop
Until he was thirty

He never wrote a book
He never held an office
He never went to college
He never visited a big city
He never travelled more than two hundred miles
From the place where he was born
He did none of the things
Usually associated with greatness
He had no credentials but himself

When He was only thirty three
His friends ran away
One of them denied him
He was turned over to his enemies
And went through the mockery of a trial
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves
While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing
The only property he had on earth
When he was dead
He was laid in a borrowed grave
Through the pity of a friend

Nineteen centuries have come and gone
And today Jesus is the central figure of the human race
And the leader of mankind's progress
All the armies that have ever marched
All the navies that have ever sailed
All the parliaments that have ever sat
All the kings that ever reigned put together
Have not affected the life of mankind on earth
As powerfully as that one solitary life

Dr James Allan Francis in “The Real Jesus and Other Sermons” © 1926

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let it Be Done Unto Me According to Your Will

In our Gospel Mary accepts God's will for us as a model for all time (Luke 1:26-38). Yet, with her words "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Mary reminds us that we too share in the birth of Christ as the Word speaks to us; when we open our hearts and listen; when we let go of the world around us and surrender to him. He speaks not merely through our senses...or in words or sounds. But rather his Word becomes a palpable presence within us. Then we too join Mary in his birth...as the Word becomes our flesh, and we celebrate the birth of love and become bearers of his light to be lived and shared as Jesus did.

Perhaps the words of Bernard of Clairvaux say it best:

Let it be done unto me according to your word. Let it be to me according to your word concerning the Word, Let the Word that was in the beginning with God become flesh from my flesh. Let the Word, I pray, be to me, not as a word spoken only to pass away, but conceived and clothed in flesh, not in the air, that he may remain with us. Let him be, not only to be heard with the ears, but to be seen with the eyes, touched with the hands and borne on the shoulders. Let the Word be to me, not as a word written and silent, but the incarnate and living. That is not traced with dead signs upon dead parchment but livingly impressed in human form upon my caste womb; not by the tracing of a pen of lifeless reed, but by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Let it thus be to me, as was never done to anyone before me, nor after me shall be done

Annunciation Dialogue, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)

Our Time in the Desert

Adversity can play a key role in honing our ability to hear what is beyond the usual scope of our ordinary consciousness. Facing stressful challenges outside the norm of our usual experience can heighten our awareness of events that otherwise would go unnoticed.

“Samuel Johnson put it “Depend upon it sir, when a man knows he is about to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” It is precisely for such clarity and insight that people seek out desert experiences such as solitary retreats, in which we step away from many of the usual supports of life, family, friends, familiar surroundings and routine, in order to be open to God’s call.

Unlike John-the-Baptist in Luke 3:1-6, we don’t always get a chance to choose our desert times and places. They sometimes are provided for us in the form of illness, change in employment, failures in relationships, death of a loved one and even, natural disasters. These deserts all hold new possibilities for hearing the word of God at ever deepening levels.

 In past months much of our focus has been on the upset in our church community and how so many feel disenfranchised. Our Bible Study and Men’s Group have referred to having our “spiritual nerves” more sensitized and “closer to the top”.

We, God knows, didn’t choose this but the environment around us shifted as the surge and its deluge paradoxically created our desert and the opportunity to let our spiritual ears tune in to God’s voice, through our displaced neighbors.
In Jesus name we pray.

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