One Solitary Life

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...

Done Unto Me According to Your Will

In our Gospel Mary accepts God's will for us as a model for all time (Luke 1:39-45) 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)

Can we become today's John The Baptist

In recent weeks our world news and our discussions have focused on natural disasters, displaced refugees and the passing of President George Herbert Walker Bush. Sadly, the incessant noise of advertisements, beating the drum for Christmas sales, with the hollow promise of joy if you buy any given product, prevent our ability to process and certainly run counter to our mood…all is not calm, all is not bright.

Father Alfred Delp, a Jesuit priest writes of another turbulent time in our history. Not unlike today’s world, we need a blessed Advent, a transformation, a time to “put things back where the Lord God put them.” The following is an adaptation of a piece he wrote in a Nazi prison camp, shortly before he was hanged in 1945:

May the Advent figure of John, the relentless envoy and prophet in God’s name, be no stranger in our wilderness of ruins. (Luke 3:10-18) For how shall we hear unless someone cries out above the tumult and destruction and delusion? Not for an hour can life dispense with these John the Baptist characters, these original individuals, struck by the lightening of mission and vocation. Theirs is the great comfort known only to those who have paced out the inmost and furthermost boundaries of existence. They cry for blessing and salvation. They summon us to the opportunity of warding off - by the greater power of the converted heart - the shifting desert that will pounce upon us and bury us. 

The horror of these times would be unendurable unless we kept being cheered and upright again by the promises spoken….The first thing we must do if we want to be alive is to believe in the golden seed of God that the angels have scattered and still offer to open hearts. The second thing is to walk through the gray days oneself as an announcing messenger. So many need their courage strengthened; so many are in despair and in need of consolation; there is so much harshness that needs a gentle hand and an illuminating word, so much loneliness crying out for a word of release, so much loss and pain in search of inner meaning. God’s messengers know of the blessing that the Lord has cast like a seed into these hours of history. Understanding this world in the light of Advent means to endure in faith, waiting for the fertility of the silent earth, the abundance of the coming harvest. Not because we put our trust in the earth, but because we have heard God’s message and have met one of God’s announcing angels ourselves. 

“The Blessed Woman…” She is the most comforting of all the Advent figures. Advent’s holiest consolation is that the angel’s annunciation met with a ready heart. The Word became flesh in a motherly heart and grew out far beyond itself into the world of God/humanity. (Blessed Art Thou Among Women)

That God became a mother’s son; that there could be a woman walking the earth whose womb was consecrated to be the holy temple and tabernacle of God – that is actually earth’s perfection and the fulfillment of its expectations. (Be it Done Unto Me According to Thy Word)
So many kinds of Advent consolation stream from the mysterious figure of the Blessed Expectant Mary. The woman has conceived the child, sheltered it beneath her heart, and given birth to the Son. Advent is the promise denoting the new order of things, of life, of our existence. 

Advent comes in these three figures. This is not meant as an idyllic miniature painting, but as a challenge. My real concern is not with beautiful words, but with the truth. Let us kneel, therefore, and ask for the three-fold blessing of Advent and its three-fold inspiration. Let us ask for clear eyes that are able to see God’s messengers of annunciation; for awakened hearts with the wisdom to hear the words of promise. Let us ask for faith in the motherly consecration of life as shown in the figure of the Blessed Woman of Nazareth. Let us be patient and wait, wait with Advent readiness for the moment when it pleases God to appear in our night too, as the fruit and mystery of this time. And let us ask for the opening and willingness to hear God’s warning messengers and to conquer life’s wilderness through repentant hearts. (Watch for the Light, The Shaking Reality of Advent,”pp.90-91)

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 month much of our focus has been centered on the devastating forest fires in California. To date 19,000 homes were destroyed and approximately 100 people have been reported dead. And two days ago we woke to the news of the massive earthquake that hit Alaska, causing extensive damage and loss of life. In recent weeks our Scripture Study discussions and Men’s Group have referred to having had our “spiritual nerves” more sensitized and “closer to the top of our skin.”

We, God knows, didn’t choose these cosmic events. Richard Rohr tells us that there may not be an external Designer and a micro-managing God working from the outside, but neither is the world devoid of His divinity. God’s divinity is so intimately present in the world, in us and through us, that the world can be regarded as an incarnate expression of the Trinity, especially in times of tribulation. The selfless dedication of emergency responders and ordinary people to provide shelter and comfort reminds us that God is intimately involved in our lives all the time. (adapted from Richard Rohr, A Spring Within Us “Reframing Our Cosmology”)