Easter Sunday - 8 April, 2007

Easter Sunday

Christ is Risen

He is risen indeed

Alleluia

Easter Images

As I listened to the readings of the Easter Vigil last night, once again the great images swept over me: The Genesis creation story with God the worker delighting in the goodness of his handiwork; the great escape from Egypt (how difficult it is to get the Cecil B. DeMille images out of one’s head – an act of religious discipline in itself.) with its story of liberation and destruction; Isaiah, Baruch and Ezekiel redolent with God’s yearning for Israel – calling them to repentance, chivvying them, chastising them, God repenting even for doing this liked a hurt spouse and like a hurt and wronged spouse still desperately in love, taking them back and lavishing Israel with such love and gifts – water, light, wisdom, life.

Of all the great images, the one on water stood out for me, perhaps because we are in severe drought and everything around us in brown and if not dead, languishing. Even the beautiful baptismal font, usually tinkling with running water, in the Cathedral was turned off and only still water in the font. However, what really was at the heart of my attention to water was my experience last week.

A Water Story

My street has been undergoing resurfacing. On the day of the repairs we had noise, dust, machinery creating a busy chaos in our very small street. I gave up trying to do any work so went into the garden to try to drought-proof some of my precious plants. As the day wore on the work continued – my work and their work which was all very dirty. I went to wash my hands but there was no water in the tap. Agghhhh. The heavy machinery had broken a water pipe that had survived unscathed since it was put down in 1928!

The broken pipe would not be repaired for at least six hours. I had a medical appointment at 4.00 p.m. I was covered in compost, mulch and sweat. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was filthy and smelly. I could not get out of my street to shower at a friend’s place. I frantically searched electric jugs, freezer for ice, anything that may have water reserved – I had not a drop of water in the house.

Now, if this had been a camping trip on which I knew I would have to ration water, it would have been all part of the adventure. But here I was, in the middle of the city with all the facilities provided, and to some extent gratefully taken for granted.

So there I was - grubby, smelly, in dire straits for a clean up so I could keep my appointment.

My brain wave came when I realised that if the pipe had broken, there would be water flowing from it. So down I went with two buckets to the workmen to see whether I could beg some water. They were a cheery lot, rather proud of the fact that when the pipe was ruptured, the water spouted as high as the telegraph poles. However, all that was there now was an ever increasing muddy pond.

I told them of my plight and that I had hoped to be able to get some water. One of them took my buckets, with a “Don’t worry, love, I’ll get some for ya.” Off he disappeared.

On his return with two buckets brimming with water,he carried the full buckets to my house and offered to go and buy drinking water for me.

So, grateful for the generosity of these workmen, I cleaned myself very well in half a bucket of water and with water to spare for later.

Living Water in a Dry Land and Life Abundantly

So, listening to the great Easter texts with their imagery that tries to give voice to the pursuing, abiding, delivering love God has for us and our world, my water experience came to mind.

Water is both a fact and a metaphor for life and life is not some abstract thing. It is the most concrete, fundamental and mysterious ‘thing’. When Jesus proclaimed that he has come that we may ‘have life and have it abundantly’, he was not talking abstractions or metaphor. This is why water is such a good image – we can’t do without it.

The courtesy and generosity of the workmen in not only giving me what I needed, but more than I asked; the water that was more than enough to clean me; the wonderful feeling of being clean after being so grubby and the feeling of relief that I could go on with my life because I was now clean, came together to give me an intimation of how utterly generous God is in giving us Living Water and why water is such an image for new life, conversion and flourishing.

Jesus, Living Water

The resurrection of Jesus has so many layers, but one has stood out for me this Easter. Jesus, who in his fidelity and ministry gave so much life to people through healing, prayer, teaching, hope, challenge, revealed in his living humanity the God of his ancestors who we celebrated in the Easter vigil. And this bond of faithful life and love between Jesus, his God and his people could not be broken in death. When evil tried to do its worst by destroying that abundant life, it could not. Life, like a living fountain welled up.

If Jesus, the embodied human being is risen to a totally unimaginably new state of life, we are risen too, as is all creation. The resurrection does not take Jesus out of the network of creation, rather it brings something new into God’s creation. A new and abundant life has entered into material creation. This is why it is impossible to separate the material from the spiritual.

If, in the light of world disasters that preoccupy us today, this sounds like some unrealistic, neurotic escapism, perhaps it is because we have come to take it all for granted, as I did the fact that I would always have water on tap. It is very fashionable to be cynical today. In fact, it is almost a sign of intelligence. In closing our eyes to the possibility of life and affirming even the smallest endeavours for goodness, we miss seeing the abundance of life that is happening around us and in a real sense, close off the power of that risen life to be manifest. Cynicism is paralysing, often arises from despair. Jesus, risen from the dead is hope, is life in abundance – so abundant that it has no end and will, if we as co-creators with God allow it, transform this creation from glory to unimaginable glory.

The Women

The women who waited in darkness on Holy Saturday came to the tomb to do the loving thing of anointing Jesus’ body. Their response to the presence of the angels was ‘Terrified, they lowered their eyes.’ This is the response of awe and wonder before something Godly. They were enjoined, ‘Why look among the dead for someone who is alive?’.

The apostles, clinging to their despair did not believe the women. It all seemed too far fetched. They took for granted that nothing extraordinary could happen and their despair had a degree of security and comfort. Peter had to go and see for himself.

So, as we contemplate Resurrection, let’s not take for granted that the despair and cynical gloom that has a foothold will prevail; that nothing will change. Let us open our eyes to the signs of the Resurrection that are all around us. In Jesus’ living-dying-rising, God has wedded Godself to us irrevocably, abundantly and like water in drought refreshes and gives life – surprisingly.

Like the women, may we find all our tombs empty.

Like the women, may we be filled with awe – and go and tell.

Holy Saturday 7 April, 2007

Holy Saturday

The cross stands empty

In a world grown silent….

These words from the Divine Office for today are so evocative.

Holy Saturday – we pause, we wait. The death has happened. He has gone from this world, from his disciples, his friends, his enemies. He is no more, just as all he stood for seems lost and dead.

So we pause, waiting in bewilderment for the loss and confusion to make some sense.

Today we sit with the disciples – uncertain, confused, bereft. It is easy for us because we know the outcome, the ‘happy ending’. The disciples had no real sense of the resurrection, just a vague promise in their tradition about the death of a just person having a deeper resonance.

From the adulation of Palm Sunday to the intimacy of the Last Supper, to the few, mainly women who remained at the place of execution, the core of those who trusted in Him dwindled down. In the darkness of their shattered hopes and love for their friend and rabbi, Jesus, they stayed in the darkness, confusion, grief and loss of this person who had given them hope, dignity and who embodies their God of Israel.

It is recorded in the Gospels that a few were able to do the loving things even in that darkness – Joseph of Arimathea gave him a tomb for decent burial, the women prepared to anoint his body in a ritual of love, respect and reverence.

Evil in the guise of political and religious expediency and status quo carried on as usual. For them, all was well now. They had achieved their end.

Holy Saturdays

We all face our own Holy Saturdays, when what has given us hope, delight, meaning, happiness disappears. Anything has the ability to evoke such a time – past trauma, illness, death, loss of a beloved or just that grey, misty, taste-less loss of meaning and drive that catapults us into this terrible darkness. What makes it even more bewildering and painful, is that the rest of the world, like Jesus’ opponents and the ephemeral crowds of Palm Sunday just go on about their business and ordinary life swirls around us.

How do we cope with our own Holy Saturdays? Will we, like Jesus’ opponents dismiss the darkness and carry on ‘business as usual’? Or perhaps like the adulating crowds and some of Jesus’ disciples, disappear in fear or hopelessness or disgust?

However, the alternative is like the women and faithful ones, wait, abide, do the loving things that are possible at that moment and tend the dead body of our hopes in respect for what is past, in the shear darkness of faith – faith in the unknown future that is hidden in God.

We will only experience the full power of Jesus’ resurrection, as the faithful women did, when we embrace the loss of what we have known in the Good Fridays and Holy Saturdays of our lives, when we too wait for the appropriate time for the power of the Resurrection to manifest. We do this by reverently laying to rest the body of our past hopes, loves and securities and wait in dark faith for what the future will be. This is both active and passive – we do what is possible at the appropriate time, like the women who could not anoint Jesus’ body on the Sabbath – they had to wait until the time was right; but we also wait with attentive, aware active-passivity without trying to ‘make things right’ or return to old certainties.

The women’s and other disciples’ encounter with the risen Jesus was so shocking, surprising and unexpected – even his appearance was changed – that all their prior expectations of how God would act were swept aside. They could not have imagined Easter Sunday on Holy Saturday.

So, in the Holy Saturdays of our lives let us wait with trusting, expectant faith for Jesus’ risen life to make sense of our darkness – not to pretend that it never happened, that our loss was not real, or indeed even a loss, but to allow the void to be surprisingly filled with life.

So, today in the silence and emptiness of Holy Saturday, let us wait at the tomb of Jesus and the tomb of our own losses, let us wait in reverence, gratitude and awe that we know how the Story ends. The trouble with knowing how the Story ends, is thinking we know how the Story ends, well let us pray to be surprised.

Palm Sunday: Repentance and the Last Things.

Repentance and the Last Things.

Some unsavoury words from the Pope

Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed the Catholic teaching on sin and the existence of hell in a homily given on his visit to a Roman church, Sta. Felicita, on the fifth Sunday of Lent. Responses to this homily have been interesting to say the least. Traditionalists have lauded the restatement of these beliefs while to some liberal minded Catholics this was a retrograde and disturbing homily out of step with contemporary theology. The main issue seems to be about hell.

Biblical and historical images of hell as a ‘place’ of fire, brimstone, suffering (somehow physical) are engraved in our culture, art and imagery. We forget that they are only metaphors; attempts to express a belief in language and imagery of the time. The strange thing is that imagery and metaphor become concrete. Take a different example, no one believes literally that ‘my love is like a red, red rose, newly sprung in June’. We know it is metaphor, yet somehow we take the religious imagery of another time and culture as ‘real’. It gets in the way.

In his homily the Pope reaffirmed the reality of sin, judgment, hell and acknowledged that these were ‘not spoken about much in our time’. Amongst some theologians these are almost dirty words, so much is the contemporary emphasis on God’s accepting love and the influence of an individualistic society. It is as if a sense of sin has been replaced with a quasi-psychologised sense of inadequacy.

Benedict posed his statements about hell, sin and eternity in the context of God’s desire for our redemption. He said, ‘Christ came to tell us that he desires all of us in heaven and that hell, which isn’t spoken about much in our time, exists and is eternal for those who close their hearts to his love.’ On sin, he said, ‘if he (God) hates sin, it’s because he loves each person infinitely.’

Hell from God’s perspective

Perhaps this contentious homily is an opportunity to express this belief from a different perspective.

I don’t believe God ‘sends’ us to hell, nor is hell is a state in which God rejects the person. I believe that it is the exact opposite.

The Biblical images of God are not images of a dispassionate, detached, unfeeling being sitting up in his air-conditioned heaven like some remote quizmaster ticking off what we get right and what we get wrong. The God of the Judeo-Christian tradition is passionate and passionately in love and involved with people and all creation.

Let’s look at our human experience of love. When one spouse is unfaithful to the other, the ‘wronged’ person is powerless to prevent their spouse from being unfaithful to and rejecting the love bond they have committed themselves to in their marriage. A parent is powerless to prevent their child going down the path of drug use or criminality.

In both examples, no matter how much the spouse or parent offers the possibility of support, encouragement, forgiveness and abiding love, unless the other turns from the path they have set themselves upon they are unable to ‘receive’ that forgiving, rebuilding, reconciling love. Over a time of many small infidelities, they have taken a path that leads to isolation and turning in on oneself and an inability to understand the consequences of their rejection on others. A genuine sense of community is lost.

So the one who offers the abiding, forgiving love in a sense is powerless because they can’t force the other to change. Until the wanderer spouse or child wants to return, it is in a very real sense that they are closed off from receiving that love. The love offered may never be rescinded. It may abide until death, always offering, waiting, longing, suffering, desiring the beloved wander to return.

To use another image, it is not unlike our current drought damaged soil that becomes unable to receive and absorb the water. Without soil care, the water just runs off.

If this is the heart of our human experience of love at its most abiding and forgiving, it is also a reflection of how God loves us – after all, we are the image and likeness of God.

When we choose to keep wandering and not turn to the love offered, we sit in darkness and the shadow of death – the very place Jesus would shine God’s light (cf. Lk 1:79 – the Benedictus).

Think of the unfaithful spouse, the broken child who, through many choices has ignored the love offered and remains shut out from that warmth. In the end, they choose the ego-isolation, loneliness and destruction of the relationship. And love is powerless – except to suffer and abide in hope, always ready to run out to meet the beloved as did the prodigal son’s father.

If we see hell, sin and repentance in this context, God is the one who suffers and grieves for the loss of the beloved but always waits, always offers, constantly seeks. In the end, given the non-coercive nature of love, there must be a ‘state’ that allows us to wander our own way from God and life and communion with those who love us.

However, in the really real end, God knows our hearts and perhaps eternally seeks us, even after we have made the rejection and as enough rain will make the dry impermeable soil permeable again, perhaps God’s persistence will turn the most closed of hearts. This is the God of Jesus.

A Sense of Sin

The Pope spoke about God hating sin ‘because he loves each person infinitely’. Sin gets in the way of returning love for love. In the Gospel of the day in which the Pope’s homily was set, Jesus says to the woman taken in adultery, ‘Go, sin no more.’ Jesus did not say, ‘There, there dear, it doesn’t matter.’ What we do does matter. It has consequences. In admonishing her to change her behaviour, Jesus both acknowledges the reality of her acts as well as the reality of forgiveness and change.

Profound sin does not ‘just happen’, neither does profound virtue. Both of them happen as a result of many, many acts, thoughts and directions over a lifetime that directs our love – either to self-in-isolation or self-in-communion. It is a lifetime journey in which both exist within us. Over time, one grows stronger.

A healthy sense of sin is a sense that the communion is violated to a greater or lesser degree, love is betrayed. It takes on a sense of responsibility for one’s actions rather than trying to justify them through some quasi-psychological inadequacy or by blaming someone else (from mother to the government) for one’s actions. (I am not talking here of genuine psychological or psychiatric issues.)

A healthy sense of sin a gift from God. It enables us to actually see our behaviour, thoughts and ideas in the context of our relationship with God and with our creation community. It is as if the unfaithful spouse can at long last see how his/her behaviour is destroying something good or when the wayward child stops, sees their destructive way and turns to family for help and a new start. Sin is inseparable from responsibility for one’s behaviour and repentance for the hurt and pain given.

Repentance – a Joyful Gift

Repentance is a great Lenten gift. It is about recognising this passionate, abiding love which is always there, seeing the ‘footprints’ of that love in every moment of our lives and in returning to our true home. It is recognising that we are indeed people who wander off in our own directions, that in big or small ways put selfishness before wholeness i.e. self-in-isolation or self-in-communion with all creation and God.

When a disloyal spouse returns to committed love, or a drug-clean child returns to family, the sign of repentance is gratitude (we used to call it reparation) that desires to give back to the one who has stood by in abiding love.

Repentance is about celebrating, rejoicing and starting again. That the love bond is again reciprocal and strong. It is about profoundly realising the consequences of our behaviour and gratefully and joyfully returning to the one who has shown us, helps us change, forgives and offers absolutely new life.

The Last Things

Traditionally the Church has taught that the last things for a person are death, judgment, heaven, hell. However, I do not believe these just happen when we die. They happen now with every judgment, choice and act we make. Heaven, that is communion, is now and hell, that is isolation is now. Repentance is that honest look we give ourselves and return to communion with God and all things. So repentance, like the prodigal son’s return is tearful, joyful and life giving for both the son and his father.

Holy Week, this most profound, solemn and joyful celebration of the liturgical year is upon us. Let’s repent of whatever turns us away from living consciously and reverently in the community of creation in God (hell) and turn with trust to the God of Jesus for healing, forgiveness and direction (heaven). Thus we die (death) to what drives us to isolation and live to what drives us to communion. In this way we allow the judgment of God to be active – Genesis (read in the Easter Vigil) has the great refrain, ‘God saw all that he had made, and God saw that it was very good.’ This asks us to grow in maturity and honest communion.

Some Questions

Is there a hell? Well, yes - a state in which love is continually rejected and the person turns in on themselves is profound isolation. The freedom of love cannot coerce.

What’s it like? Don’t know. All images are metaphor for the loneliness and pain of someone turned in upon themselves to the extent that divine, abiding love can no longer ‘permeate’ because the person can no longer turn outward to communion.

Is it eternal? This is difficult because of the whole idea of what is eternity. However, it would be fearfully difficult not to be changed by love continually offered. Eternity is a long time for God to ‘non-coercively pursue’ the lost beloved.

Finally, does God worry about hell? You bet. The whole Gospel delights in the sinner returning to life. In the end, I think it is God who grieves and suffers over someone in such a state of exclusion far more than we could imagine.

Easter

As we celebrate Holy Week and Easter, may we rejoice in the life-death-resurrection of Jesus in whom this passionate, abiding attachment of God to us is not just revealed, but shouted about – loudly and passionately.

PS

In The Last Battle, the last of the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis tells a superb story of the difference between heaven and hell. The difference, in this story is that the people in hell can’t see the beauty and abundance with which they are surrounded.

Second Sunday of Lent:: Fasting? Is it still ‘in’?

Second Sunday of Lent: Fasting? Is it still ‘in’?

What’s the point of it all?

Recently I asked a few people what were they were ‘doing for Lent’; what were they ‘giving up’. Some rattled off the usual Project Compassion, some just looked bewildered as if I had asked something quite odd – particularly the ‘giving up’ bit.

I realised that we don’t seem to talk too much about it these days. Time was when fasting and abstinence during Lent and the traditional ashes of Ash Wednesday were part of a Catholic identity. (I did see some ashen foreheads in the shopping centre on Ash Wednesday.) Things have changed. There is nothing wrong with that, but the responses of my friends got me thinking about the traditional disciplines of Lent, particularly that of fasting.

Before I launch into my reflections, it is important to remember that the word ‘discipline’ is related to ‘disciple’ and really means ‘to listen’.

For many years I could not satisfy myself with any rationale for fasting and voluntarily depriving myself of food. After all, I was not a glutton, I worked hard for God. Metaphorical fasting, yes. Fasting of the harsh, destructive word, fasting by giving of my material goods and wealth to others. It seemed to me, to be more enlightened to actually do something useful, rather than just deprive myself of food. After all, getting the shakes with hunger did not seem very productive and fish on Friday was probably more expensive than eating meat and well, really, not much of a sacrifice anyway.

All in all, there seemed to be no point, really. I also had a sneaking suspicion that the contemporary Church also had an ambiguous attitude to it. Days of fast and abstinence were reduced in the post-Vatican II church; we were encouraged to give to Project Compassion and to do something ‘extra’ rather than fast. All these things are important. However, in reality how often have they dwindled down to tokenism. How many of us have ‘topped up’ the Project Compassion box at the end of Lent because we forgot all about it?

The irony of all this is that we actually live in a society obsessed with fasting, but we call it dieting. Obesity has become the secular sin and we seem to be creating so much ambivalence and guilt around food that anyone with insight should hear warning bells ringing in their minds. Yet self-deprivation, even mild delaying gratification is not encouraged. Very mixed messages.

Fasting and the Scriptures

Fasting has good Biblical credentials. Israel was exhorted to fasting, repentance and acts of justice by the prophets. Jonah was miffed with God because pagan Nineveh repented with fasting, sackcloth and ashes – including the animals. Jesus did it; he recommended it to his disciples if they were to be effective in their ministry.

Biblical fasting is about depriving oneself of food. Real, physical, hold in the hand, chewable, sustaining food. Like all things human it is open for us to experience it as a moment of transcendence or abuse. (We all know of the saints who lived on a lettuce leaf – but that’s for another blog) The prophets were well aware of our human propensities. That is why fasting is always in the context of how we live with each other. Fasting, like all spiritual disciplines must be congruent with charity, compassion, social justice. All disciplines are subject to Love. It must also be undertaken with intentionality rather than as a thing of rote. Throughout the whole of Scripture this is clear.

So, why fast? Why deprive myself of perfectly good food for some intangible reason?

Food is more than food:

Eating is one of our deepest human drives for survival. At its most basic level it is about my individual survival. No food – I die. Stories of people sharing food in dire situations so that others might live, stir and inspire us.

Food, however, has other spiritual and psychological dimensions. The Jewish people understood this – to share food was a sacred trust. Giving food to another is giving life to another. Think of the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath of Sidon (1 Kings 17:7f). Elijah asked her to give him her last bit of food for herself and her son. What an act of trust this woman had? In a drought induced famine, it seems foolhardy, to say the least. This woman, a widow and a gentile understood the power and reverence of giving food to another.

When a society loses this sense of sharing food as self-less survival, of generosity of life and of community, it is culturally poorer in so many ways. It becomes too easy to return to ‘selfish survival’.

Well then, what is the point?

Food, whether we are conscious of it or not, is so much more than physical survival and nourishment.

The rational reasons for or against are important because we are rational people, but we are also people of spirit and heart and fasting, like all things of heart and undertaken in faith, touches the very core of our life with God, our relationship with all God’s creation and our therefore our self-identity.

To return to my ambivalence about physical fasting. Like most of our spiritual disciplines, it has to be actually done in order to be understood fully. We admire and are inspired by the heroic self-giving of people and can only marvel at what such self-giving may take. But sometimes we find the small self-giving moments of love and respect between people of little account, because, from the outside, they don’t seem to take much human effort. However those small self-giving moments happen because of a lifetime of loving self-discipline, a lifetime of learning respect, of learning we belong to each other. Fasting is like that. Whether fasting in small things or grand fasts, it teaches us to step away from our isolated ego to the Self that finds relationship in all things.

Fasting undertaken prayerfully, without fuss, in conscious awareness of the presence of God and all creation, is saying ‘no’ to my individualistic ego survival. It touches that essential human drive to survive and asks, ‘How do I survive?’. Is my survival over against others, at the cost of others or is it with others? To experience this, fasting does not have to be epic. Giving up a small thing – legitimate, enjoyable and rewarding – done with love, respect and generosity of heart, opens us to the same experience.

My fasting this Lent is not life-threatening on the physical level, but each time I put my hand out for the food I have chosen to forego, each time I fantasise about eating it, I am reminded that God has created us in an intimate community with each other. How fortunate am I that I can deprive myself and not face desperate survival as too many of my sisters and brothers face in the world. So, the Project Compassion box gets filled.

Each time I put my hand out for the food I have chosen to forego, I am aware of the mystery of God who has given us to each other and that is terrifying and beautiful. It asks things of me. So, I spend more time praying for those who have asked me and I try to hold back my intolerance.

Each time I put my hand out for the food I have chosen to forego I remember that the ultimate ‘fasting’ is Jesus’ self-giving that came to the cross and ultimately to his Resurrection. His life as promise. So, I am enlivened with hope.

Each time I put my hand out for the food I have chosen to forego I laugh at myself for my fears about allowing God’s commitment to me and all things to change how I ‘survive’, live and use my gifts.

And God laughs back, delighted.

Christmas - 25 December, 2006

Should we Celebrate Christmas?

I have noticed lately with all the discussion in the media whether we should celebrate Christmas in a multi-cultural society. Some suggest that Christmas was originally the Roman Saturnalia and therefore ‘hi-jacked’ by the Christians. Some commentators given the impression that they believe it is some sort of devious plot by ‘the Church’ – whoever they may be.

Mid-Winter Festivals

For a start, Saturnalia was only one of a very, very long line of mid-winter solstice feasts celebrated through many ages and many cultures. The mid-winter festival reveals the deep human intuition that sought reassurance and hope in the depths of the winter struggle for physical survival. Human beings, being such meaning-making creatures then associated physical survival with survival of spirit. In the long, cold (probably damp) darkness of winter they reaffirmed the light – physical and spiritual. The intuition of the early Christian communities in celebrating the birth of Christ with such a festival is most appropriate.

The Birth of Christmas

Perhaps the story goes a little like this. As their pagan neighbours celebrated their mid-winter festivals, the Christians for whom Christ was the Risen Lord, ‘the Light who has come into the world’, began to celebrate the moment when that Light was born. In recalling Jesus’ birth, they also celebrated and looked to a time when that Light would be fulfilled in Eternity.

So, the feast of the Nativity spread to other cultures of the Roman empire where Christians lived and over time this celebration became a fixed feast. Remember, the earliest and most important Christian feast has always been the Resurrection, Christmas, as a feast of the universal church came relatively late.

Actual Date or Meaning?

Was it the actual date of Jesus’ birth? Who know, and it doesn’t matter. There is a deeper truth here, a truth that the human ability to find meaning in life’s and nature’s events honours. A truth that celebrates the ancient struggle of darkness and light; despair and hope.

This is reflected in the reading for Midnight Eucharist. Isaiah (9:1-7) proclaims that The people that walked in darkness has seen a great light; on those who live in a land a deep shadow a light has shone. The letter to Titus (2:11-14) joyfully cries out that God’s grace has been revealed, and it has made salvation possible for the whole human race… Those early Christian communities saw in their sacred texts that Jesus was the light that shone in the darkness. The age-old mystery of the turning of the seasons became the symbol of the Light of God entering creation.

The Language of God

This is God ‘speaking’ in our human language, the language of symbol, meaning and hope, above all, the language of a human life.

John Duns Scotus (late 13^th century Franciscan theologian) proposed that Jesus’ birth was essential to God’s creation and intended from all eternity. Jesus, God incarnate is the crown and glory of creation and his birth brings God’s creating and revelatory love to fruition. For Scotus, something totally new has entered creation, affirming that this world and human life with all its ambiguity is embraced in God’s Trinitarian love. God has committed Godself to us, not just through creation but now through the Incarnation of the Word-made-flesh. In Christ, the Triune God is here in the pulsing heart of creation.

So, in the birth of Jesus we see creation, ourselves, in all our glory and possibility. He is God clothed in living, breathing human flesh. Jesus is the language God speaks.

Particularity

Such is the humility and the wonder of God that, in order to reveal the beauty of Divinity and the beauty of humanity, he chose particularity. This means a particular person, in an historical time and place. Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, a person - conceived, gestated, born, growing up, living and dying – just as each one of us does. He took the full human journey – no shortcuts, no easy escapes.

St. Clare of Assisi called Jesus the ‘mirror of eternity’. He is also the mirror of humanity. In his human life we believe he reveals the nature of God, but he also reveals the nature of us. He shows us how to be human.

Feast of Beginnings and Endings

In this feast we celebrate beginnings and endings. The beginning of Jesus’ journey to maturity, identity and self-understanding – all the sort of growing up we have to do.

We celebrate an ending. An ending to our self-deluding illusions that dominant power, ego-centric power is all that matters. If Jesus, God-with-us, is the crown of creation and the full revelation of the nature of God, then he reveals how creation ‘works’. It works through solidarity-in-love, through abiding commitment to all that brings creation to the fullness of peace.

We are, and always have been caught up in the dance of the Trinity.

The Crib

Today as you look at the crib and read the Gospel story, for a moment strip it of all the ‘miraculous’. It is a family, ordinary, pushed around by the Roman emperor, struggling to care for each other in the most crucial moment of their lives, knowing they are entrusted with something most precious and mysterious, in the disruption of their lives living in faith that God’s way will prevail – even if they don’t know how.

Then, add in the angels, the shepherds, the light, the star, the Magi and the Angels’ song. These tell us about the inner reality of what is happening at this birth. Than an overwhelming, joyous mystery is happening – for all of us – and is hidden in this glorious moment.

May the tenderness, joy and awe of God-with-us fill your hearts.

The ‘O Antiphons’ Part II - 22 December, 2006

The ‘O Antiphons’ Part Two

Well, Advent is drawing to a close and the feast of Christmas is only a few days away.

The more I though about the great Antiphons of my last posting, I though how they drew all the themes of Advent together. Most certainly they evoke the sense of longing for fulfilment and hope for a future where love and justice will reign. In this way they cry out for, what Christians call the Second Coming, or Parousia which is at the very heart of the Advent and Christmas liturgy.

These Antiphons also teach us about another advent of Christ – the coming of Christ into our lives each day. It is the petition part of the antiphons that call for God to act now. The petitions are:

Teach us the way of prudence

Redeem us

Save us

Deliver us from the chains of prison who sit in darkness and the shadow of death

Enlighten those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death

Save the poor one whom you fashion out of clay

Save us

Implicit in our very longing for Christ, is our deep sense of neediness, not just for each one of us individually, but particularly for us as the human race, in fact for all creation. We have a solidarity in incompleteness and neediness and it is from this sense of unity, that we call on God to act in our world now.

However, for all the pain and incompletion we see in our world, we do not call despairingly, we call with hope because God does teach, save, enlighten, redeem here and now. The sweep of the history of Israel taught this and for us we seen in the Incarnation God’s reaffirmation of that creative, redeeming love that evokes the great cry of the O Antiphons. The fulfilment of the Parousia will only come when we co-operate.

I call to mind an old movie, Oh God. George Burns played God and when he was asked why he didn’t do something about the suffering and evil in the world, he replied that he had given the world to us. I think this is a profound piece of theology. God takes our part in co-creating with God very, very seriously. Our loving and just deeds are the coming of God in Christ here and now, and while God takes our co-operation seriously, we are never abandoned to strive alone. God gives us the power choose, to work, to show compassion. We are co-creators with God.

The very fact that we have the insight to cry for redemption, deliverance, teaching and all those needs implies that somewhere in our hearts we know that destruction is not the norm for creation (no matter what the current world may appear to be) and that the wholeness sought will come. After all, “Would a father give his child a stone when he asks for bread”. God puts the cry into our hearts so we may know that through us God will do it.

However, the shocking thing is that it is precisely though our human agency that all God’s gifts will be given. We are given to each other to be the face of God for each other, so perhaps we can turn then to the titles of the great Antiphons and see our own faces mirrored in them – O Wisdom; O Lord and Ruler and so on so we become Emmanuel, God with us, to each other and to all creation.

The ‘O Antiphons’ 17 December, 2006

The ‘O Antiphons’

The Liturgy

Today, 17^th December the liturgy begins a new phase of Advent, known as the Octave before Christmas. This period is characterised by the seven great ‘O Antiphons’ that derive their name from the first invocation of the Latin text.These antiphons will be sung or recited in the divine office of the Roman breviary over the next seven evenings at the singing of the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). They are also used at the gospel acclamation during the Eucharist for each of these days.

History

We are not sure when these texts were first introduced into the liturgy, however there is reference to them by Boethius (ca. 480-524) and they were well established in the liturgy by the Middle Ages. Over the centuries there have been variations in the text and number of the antiphons, but these seven seen to have been constant. The Benedictine monasteries, in particular kept alive the tradition of reciting these texts.

Literature

These short verses are gems of literature and have been the source of some of our most beautiful music and art. The texts of these antiphons are a distillation of seven images and titles from the Old Testament which were interpreted by the early Christian community as prefiguring Christ.

An echo of the antiphons is found in the eighteenth century hymn, Come, O Come Emmanuel.

Scripture

Those first followers of Jesus of Nazareth used their familiar heritage, i.e. the Jewish Scriptures and Apocrypha to understand who Jesus was, so they came to see him as the fulfilment of all the longings and hopes of their own Jewish ancestors. Over centuries of meditation on the mystery of Jesus, the Church, the believing community at prayer, distilled their belief in the Incarnation and Redemption into these seven texts. In doing this, they also expressed their longing for the fulfilment of God’s promises.

The individual Biblical origins of each text are too numerous to list here, however, they are steeped in the texts of Isaiah.

Advent Longing

These texts increase the sense in the Advent liturgy of longing for the coming of the Messiah, a longing that will bring about the final fulfilment of the Parousia. It is as if, in the words of St. Paul that ‘All creation is groaning in the act of giving birth..’. The whole sweep of creation and history is given voice.

The sequence of the titles of Christ in these antiphons is important because they begin with the very heart of the Trinity before creation in invoking O Wisdom, to God’s covenant at Sinai with the chosen people (O Adonai), to God’s promising a just ruler (O Root of Jesse; O Key of David) to God’s promise to all people.

So, the antiphons follow the sweep of salvation history and keep alive our hope for God’s action now in our world, our lives. They evoke that painful, joyful, hopeful longing of lovers for each other.

The Structure

The antiphons follow the traditional liturgical structure of an invocation which highlights one of the titles of the Messiah, followed by praise and then a petition.

It has been suggested by Professor Robert Greenberg of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music that the Benedictines deliberately arranged the order of the antiphons so that, reading the first letter of each from the last to the first gave the Latin, ero cras which means Tomorrow, I will come.

The Antiphons

The following are the antiphons with some biblical references for each text. They are by no means exhaustive.

O Sapientia (17 December)
O Wisdom, you come for the from the mouth of the Most High. You fill the universe and hold all things together in a strong yet gentle manner. O come to teach us the way of truth.

Over time, Wisdom became another name for God as well as a human attribute. Divine Wisdom (a feminine noun in both Hebrew and Greek) was God’s creating force and creation is not a once and for all event, God’s creating power never ends. Read the Book of Wisdom, a late text that, in many ways is a highly developed theology of Divine Wisdom.

Proverbs 8:22f Wisdom speaks: The Lord begot me, the firstborn of his ways, the forerunner of his prodigies of long ago; From of old I was poured forth, at the first, before the earth….When he established the heavens I was there, when he marked out the vault over the face of the deep….Then I was beside him as his child and I was his delight day by day, playing before him all the while, playing on the surface of his earth; and I found delight in the children of men.

Cf. Eccl 24:5; Sirach 24:30; Isaiah 11:2-3; 28:29; 40:14

O Adonai (18 December)
O Adonai and leader of Israel, you appeared to Moses in a burning bush and you gave him the Law on Sinai. O come and save us with your mighty power.

Adonai is a Hebrew title for God. It means The Lord. The Jewish people still do no use the name of God. Adonai suggests the Lawgiver. (cf. Exodus 3; 6:13; 20) We must not see the Law in our western terms as a set of rules. The Law for the Jewish people is about God’s relationship with them, it is the way to walk in this world, not some punishable set of rules. The Law is God’s great gift of self revelation to Israel and in turn, Israel’s response to God.

But He shall judge the poor with justice, and decide aright for the afflicted of the land….Justice shall be the band around his waist, and faithfulness the belt upon his hips (Is 11:4-5)

And he shall rule over the House of Israel (Matt 2:6)

Cf. Jer 32:21; Isaiah 33:22)

O Radix Jesse (19 December)
O Stock of Jesse, you stand as a signal for the nations; kings fall silent before you whom the peoples acclaim. O come to deliver us, and do not delay.

You only have to look at the great stained glass windows of the medieval cathedrals such as Chartres to understand how this image fell into Christian consciousness. It is the family tree of Jesus that echoes in the genealogies of Luke and Matthew. The genealogies of Jesus establish his human and divine credentials – and there are some interesting women in those lists.

A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom (Isaiah 11:1)

Cf. Isaiah 11:4-5; 33:22; 52:15; Habakkuk 2:3; Micah 5:1; Luke 3:23-38; Matt: 1:1017

O Clavis David (20 December)
O Key of David and sceptre of Israel, what you open no one else can close again; what you close no one can open. O come to lead the captive from prison; free those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

David came to epitomise the good ruler for Israel, particularly when they looked back over a history of kings who ranged from wise to wicked. David, for all his human frailty, or perhaps because of it, remained faithful to God. He committed appalling deeds, including murder, yet he profoundly repented; he brought the Arc of the Covenant (the ‘dwelling place’ of God) to Jerusalem and against all kingly dignity, danced before it; he lived his call to kingship with passion and through it all, tried to rule with justice for the people. Through all his human complexity, he knew himself to be chosen by God. He epitomised the faithful, just ruler and God promised the perfect leader would come through his descendants.

I will place the key of the House of David on his shoulder; when he opens, no one will shut, when he shuts, no one will open (Isaiah 22:22)

His dominion is vast and forever peaceful, from David’s throne, and over his kingdom, which he confirms and sustains by judgment and justice, both now and forever (Isaiah 9:1)

Cf. Revelation 3:7; Psalm 107:10

O Oriens (21 December)
O rising Sun, you are the splendour of Eternal Light and sun of justice. O come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

For a traditional society such as Israel, imagine how the darkness of night could be full of danger from preying animals to preying humans. This applied whether people lived in villages or in the towns. Dawn brought safety. Also, lamplight was not all that clear, so dawn and light came to symbolise safety, enlightenment, a new beginning.

Think of nights you have spent sleepless because of some anxiety, and remember how it felt when the night gave way to the dawn. The problem may not have gone away, but there is usually a sense relief or hope.

‘Dayspring’; ‘Light’ became a title for God who will visit his people ‘like the dawn’

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone (Isaiah 9:1)

Cf. Malachi 3:20; Habakkuk 3:4; Psalm 107; Luke 1:78

O Rex Gentium (22 December)
O King whom all the peoples desire, you are the cornerstone which makes all one, O come and save us whom you made from clay.

The history of Israel is also the history of the evolution of its self-understanding and its mission. At first the Gentiles (or the Nations) were seen as hostile. God’s habitation was in Israel. God did not inhabit among the gentiles. It took centuries of living through prosperity and adversity; political power and exile for Israel to understand that it was called, not to be some holy enclave where God dwelt, but to be the place where all would see God. A sacrament of God’s presence, if you wish. It was during exile from their homeland that the Israelites came to know that God was beyond a particular place, God was indeed God of all peoples. That God desires the love of all people, not just Israel.

This was a momentous shift in theology. Read the Book of Job who is a holy gentile who God calls his friend; read the Book of Jonah, that great comedy. Jonah, a good Jew is sent by God to warn the people of Nineveh (gentiles) to repent. Much to Jonah’s annoyance they do and God blesses them. Jonah finds this very difficult and remonstrates with God for saving these gentiles. God replies, ‘And should I not be concerned over Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons, who cannot distinguish their right hand from their left, not to mention the many cattle?’

He shall judge between the nations, and impose terms on the nations. They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. Isaiah 2:4

For a child is born to us, a son is given us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. His name is Wonder-Counsellor, Mighty God, Father Forever, Prince of Peace Isaiah9:5

Cf. Haggai 2:8; Gen 2:7; Ephesians 2:20

O Emmanuel
O Emmanuel, you are our king and judge, the One whom the peoples await and their Saviour. O come and save us, Lord, our God.

Of all the titles, this is probably the most familiar. In Israel, names have meaning. Names signify who a person is and often names change when that person’s mission or reality changes, for example Abram became Abraham and Jesus called Simon bar Jonah Peter, the rock.

Emmanuel is a symbolic name. It signifies who God is and who we are - God-with-us. This is the profound theological insight into God’s relationship with Israel, that through all its history – the good and the bad – God is with Israel and Israel is with God.

This Old Testament title takes on a deeper meaning as the early Christian community sought to understand who Jesus was. In his birth, life, death and resurrection, he is God-with-us. They came to see that in Jesus God has deepened that relationship so profoundly that they could now say that in Jesus they saw God incarnate, God enfleshed.

The Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel. Isaiah 7:14

Cf. Isaiah 8:8; Gen 49:10; Isaiah 33:2.

So, as the expectation of Advent increases, may each of you find the deepest desires of your hearts awakened and nourished by Emmanuel – God-with-us; God irrevocably committed to us. In the great liturgical cry of the very early church -Maranatha – Come, Lord Jesus.

On Christmas Trees and Carols - 16 December, 2006.

On Christmas Trees and Carols

The Christmas Tree

I have a Christmas tree. After many years without one, I now have a Christmas tree - not a plastic one, not a chopped down one, but a real, living tree.

My childhood memories of Christmas include the Christmas tree. We always had an Australian native tree and I can still smell its fragrance, so typical of the Australian bush, and see the exquisite glass tree decorations. I also remember that it seemed to attract mosquitoes in their hoards. But that’s part of a tropical Christmas anyway.

Over the years I went through my ‘intellectually liberated’ phase and denigrated the Christmas tree as commercialisation and after all, just a pagan import and a left-over from the Victorian era. Also it was a product of northern hemisphere celebrations, so what did it have to say for us in Australia. What a sour, desiccated and one dimensional view I had.

The Christmas tree is all that but there is another side that it celebrates. All good things are open to exploitation but that does not discount their power and goodness. I still feel strongly that we need to find Australian symbols (and validate those we already have) to enrich our celebration of these great feasts, that is why I went out and bought myself a Christmas tree.

The wonder of it is that it is a Daintree Pine. To quote the nursery tag, it is ‘a rare native pine from World Heritage forests of Far North Queensland. Fossil records show the Daintree Pine dates back to the Gondwana period’. For me, it symbolises this very ancient land that is now Australia. As Gondwana travelled the globe and eventually broke up into the land masses we now know, this pine was growing. It survived climate changes of cataclysmic proportions, geological upheavals and the arrival of human beings.

For me, it is a fitting symbol of what we celebrate during this liturgical season – enduring hope.

It is fitting that our Christian symbols are symbols that are found across many cultures and religions, because that’s the nature of symbols. Symbols are a language that speaks to the deepest longings, hopes and aspirations of humans. Because of this, they have the power to speak in different times and places. They break open new meanings as our consciousness changes. They have the power to synthesise many facets of meaning. (Symbol comes from the Greek sym – ballon which means to throw/bring together.)

So my evergreen Daintree Christmas tree links this celebration of Christmas – God’s commitment to all creation through Incarnation – with earth’s earliest times of creation; with cultures where the tree meant survival (literally) and symbolised the link between heaven and earth; life and hope.

As a Christian symbol it draws all that together in Jesus, the Branch of the tree of Jesse – the One who brings new life and hope always renewed. The evergreen tree (a deciduous tree has another meaning) says that life continues even in the harshest to times, just as God’s creating, loving presence abides even in our harsh times, that when we keep grounded in the soil of our deep purpose in God, we remain green and flourishing.

On Christmas Carols

This week I attended the Festival of Carols and Readings at the Cathedral. It was a feast of contemporary and traditional carols and Scripture readings. We in the congregation, got to sing the familiar carols which we did with great gusto.

I was reminded of one parish I attended some years ago in which the music co-ordinator decided to abolish all traditional Christmas carols because they were ‘theologically incorrect’. I have to tell you that midnight Mass was far from festive.

As we sang, listened, prayed and remembered, I began thinking about how important repetition and the familiar are for us human beings. We live in a society that idolises that which is new – as soon as you buy a new computer it seems to be out of date. This is not necessarily bad. Our ability to change is absolutely integral to maturity, both individually and as a species. However, we also need the familiar, and repetition is part of that familiarity. It is an important part of a spiritual discipline.

On a psychological level, we are constantly telling ourselves about ourselves. It’s called self-talk. That may be positive or negative given the situation or our background.

The spiritual discipline of repetition may be learning texts from the Scripture, learning prayers, learning short phrases or traditions like the Rosary or the Jesus Prayer. Its aim is to change our consciousness, to give us resources of mind and heart upon which to draw in daily life in order to uplift our spirits, be patient with annoyances, focus on what is important and so on.

However, it has another function. The familiar had the ability to open us to newness. Boredom has the power to bring insight. I remember reading in G.K. Chesterton’s Napoleon of Notting Hill to the effect that if you see something ninety-nine times, on the hundredth time you are in danger of seeing it for the first time. That’s what happens when that which is familiar has gone through the process of being learned to the extent that we don’t ‘see’ it anymore; through the boredom threshold; to a moment of ‘Ah!’ Seeing it filled with new meaning.

So, as we sang our familiar carols – words we sing every year, with images that have accrued to this festival over two millennia – I saw that what was seen as just another baby being born was, in truth shattering Mystery enveloped in the Ordinary, that always the Ordinary is pregnant with God - and that is why angels do sing on high and wise people follow a star.

Second Sunday of Advent

Second Sunday of Advent

Some of the words that keep returning during Advent: Arise! Come! Prepare! Repent! Rejoice! They return like a refrain evoking a sense of urgency, longing, active waiting. For me, they give the ‘flavour’ of Advent.

In our Eucharistic celebrations we don’t use the antiphons for the day these days as we usually sing a hymn. However, the antiphons for both the Eucharist and the Divine Office are worth looking at as they capture the sense of the celebration. Today’s entrance antiphon is, People of Zion, the Lord will come to save all nations, and your hearts will exult to hear his majestic voice; and the communion antiphon – Rise up, Jerusalem, stand on the heights, and see the joy that is coming to you from God. They give exultant voice to the scripture readings for today.

Repentance For The Forgiveness Of Sins

John the Baptist calls us to repentance for the forgiveness of sins and the text is reinforced with Isaiah’s call to listen to the voice in the wilderness – prepare the way for the Lord.

So often we think of repentance as a hard, painful, dare I say grim act and it is such a big word that perhaps we think that only big sinners need do it. The truth is, we all need repentance – for things we have done and things we have not done. We all need a change of heart to allow ourselves to mature and leave behind those acts and attitudes that give us false security and false ego strengths.

Repentance is very different from our contemporary idea of ‘guilt feelings’. Guilt may be appropriate or inappropriate, for example I may feel a vague sense of guilt because I tramp garden through the house because when I was a child my parents told me to wipe my feet before I came into the house. As I am the only person who cleans my house, that is rather childish and I need to deal with it. However, if I were living with others whose living space was littered with my garden-encrusted shoes, I would need to look at my lack of care for other people’s comfort and change my ways, that is, repent and perhaps look at deeper issues of lack of responsibility and care for others. A bit like what we are doing to our environment, really. Genuine repentance breaks the cycle of self-absorption and opens us to change and communion.

In genuine repentance for our misdeeds there will be pain and even at times, tears for the harm we have caused to ourselves and others. However, to stop there is not Christian. Repentance and forgiveness go hand in hand. Therefore while we will suffer when we recognise the harm and pain we have caused, that suffering is at its very heart, a deep sense of joy, hope and renewal.

God’s Integrity; God’s Salvation.

John the Baptist calls his hearers to repentance for forgiveness and it is this act that makes the pathways straight for God to come rushing in. It is as the communion antiphon proclaims - Rise up… and see the joy that is coming to you from God. It is as if God is always waiting for us to clear the rubble from the pathway. God so loves our freedom that God will not force – inspire, urge, hover but never compel.

Yet, it is God’s gift. If we cry out ‘Come’ to God, it is God who also cries out to us ‘Come’ because God’s desire is for us - People of Zion, the Lord will come to save all nations, and your hearts will exult to hear his majestic voice. God’s desire and longing is to save us, draw us and delight us.

The first reading from Baruch 5:1-9 today asks, shouts, proclaims, excitedly urges us to: take off your dress of sorrow and distress, put on the beauty of the glory of God for ever, wrap the cloak of the integrity of God around you……since God means to show your splendour to every nation under heaven….. This is God’s will and longing for us.

Grandiose? Intemperate metaphor? Well, only look around, it hasn’t happened yet? No, it is we who cannot see; we who underrate our own dignity and God’s abounding longing for us.

A New Name

In the Scriptures when someone is given a new name, it signifies a new reality for that person. Names have profound significance. So, now God calls Jerusalem ‘Peace through integrity, and honour through devotedness’. God’s integrity and devotedness or our integrity and devotedness? Who knows? Probably both as one without the other is incomplete. And there’s the rub – the beauty and the glory that God has bestowed on us asks us to live our lives with the same integrity and devotedness as God lives for us.

Is it hard? Too right it is, at times it will be anything from mildly uncomfortable (e.g. what we buy and where we shop) to giving up all we think we hold dear (security, reputation, a pet perception).

Is it joyful? Too right it is, after all, the new name is ‘Peace through integrity, and honour through devotedness’

So, I wish for you that you arise, come, prepare, repent and rejoice!

First Sunday of Advent

Advent:

Advent is my favourite liturgical season. I know Easter is THE season, but Advent encourages me in a way Lent is never able to. Liturgical heresy! I love the Scripture readings, the antiphons and many of the hymns. They create a sense of joyful hope.

Expectation:
If the feasts of November remind us about endings, Advent contemplates beginnings. It is a time of waiting – not passive and powerless – but waiting with expectation. Rather like parents awaiting the birth of their child. There is joyful expectation, active preparation and a modicum of terror at the responsibility of nurturing the child.

It is the nature of Christian faith that we live in the ‘in between time’. God is revealed in Christ, yet is to be fully revealed; redemption has been given, yet is to be fully apprehended; Christ is risen, yet the full body of Christ, the church, is yet to rise; the promises are fulfilled, but are yet to be fulfilled. We live in this time where the Spirit is given yet we still ‘wait in joyful hope for the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ’. It is precisely this ‘in between-ness’ that draws us towards the fulfilment of the End – the Parousia - and draws us into Christ and matures us into Christ.

In this ‘in between time’ it is our God inspired actions that will bring about the final fulfilment. St. Francis of Assisi wrote that we are mothers of Christ when we bring him to birth in our lives through our good works. So, like parents awaiting the birth of their child, Advent is a metaphor for our whole lives. We await the birth, we give birth and like every desired and loved birth, it is an act of hope in the goodness of the future.

The Two-Fold Coming Of Christ:
So the two images of birth and the fulfilment of the End, come together in the liturgy of this season. Advent-Christmas-Epiphany celebrates the birth of Jesus and celebrates his second coming.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote, ‘We preach not one coming only of Christ, but a second also, far more glorious than the first. The first revealed the meaning of his patient endurance; the second brings with it the crown of the divine kingdom….. In his first coming he was wrapped in swaddling clothes in the manger. In his second coming he is clothed with light as with a garment…..It is not enough for us, then, to be content with his first coming; we must wait in hope for his second coming; we must wait in hope of his second coming. What we said at his first coming, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”, we shall repeat at his last coming. Running out with the angels to meet the Master we shall cry out with adoration, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”’

As we prepare to celebrate Jesus born into our human condition, born one of us we do so with the knowledge that already we share in his resurrection condition and that one day, at the End, all creation will fully share in that resurrection. That the hope that is part of human birth will be fulfilled when all creation’s destiny is revealed.

However, Advent also reminds us that like good parents, we must nurture and protect the life entrusted to our care. This life is nothing more nor less than the mystery of Christ – Emmanuel, God-with-us. We are the mothers of Christ…..

Many Comings:
While the liturgy of Advent focuses of the great two-fold coming of Christ, in our daily lives we can celebrate many times Christ comes to us as we are attentive to those graced moments when he is offering us his love. Those moments may be heavily disguised with hassles, anguish or nuisances or they may be moments of friendship, insight, goodness. Grace means gift. They are moments of grace in which Christ ‘grows’ in us and we in him. They also ask us to prepare the way of the Lord through our compassion, justice, attentiveness and graceful giving and receiving.

So, for us, the waiting of Advent is that of the parent awaiting the birth. We wait in joy and hope; responsibility and courage and above all, we wait in love.

I wish you a blessed Advent. May each of you ‘wait in joyful hope’.

November

November.

For me, the months of each year almost have colour and texture, marked by the seasons, the anniversaries and events. As each month comes along I savour its ‘texture’ created by its meaning and feel.

So, here we are almost at the end of November. For me, November is a month of endings and the hint, the suggestion of beginnings. Our academic year ends, the calendar year is drawing to a close, we are on the brink of the holiday season, the cooler weather of late winter and spring is passing into the heat of summer and it is the end of the Church’s liturgical year.

So, I always have a sense of stories ending and new ones not yet begun - in happy times, almost a nostalgia for the year that is passing so quickly and in difficult times the hope that next year will be better.

The November Liturgy
All Saints and the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed

The Liturgy for November echoes these feelings for me. We begin with the feast of All Saints and its sister feast the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed. And of course, not to be outdone, Franciscans have their own celebration of All Saints of the Franciscan Order and the Commemoration of all Deceased Franciscans and their Benefactors.

These are such joyous feasts. They tell us of our own ending and who we are in our deepest truth. All Saints reminds us that our destiny is to rejoice with the community of all creation in the dance of the Trinity. The fulfilment of creation is not destruction, but life abundantly.

This is not escapism from the sometimes grim reality of human existence. We are here and now in the Communion of Saints. Whatever we do now, how we live now, how we allow ourselves, in our secret, hidden hearts to become more and more the face of Christ here and now, changes the whole network of creation in which we live. Heaven begins here. All Saints begins here.

That is why All Souls is inseparable from All Saints. We pray for those who have died. We pray that they will be drawn into the full glory of their destiny. Purgatory seems to be a fairly unpopular subject these days. However, I think Purgatory is an important theological intuition. I don’t see it as a place, as inflicted punishment, as somehow peeking around the door into heaven but not allowed in like some family pet shut out from family festivities.

Purgatory is about growing up. It is about continuing to ‘put on Christ’ which we have not completed before our death. In that moment after death when we see and experience the unveiled love with which God loves us, and has always loved us, we know ourselves. For most of us, that encounter will carry the pain of knowing how distracted our own love has been, how we have compromised our loving, how much forgiving we need to do. That’s the pain of Purgatory – the pain of knowing in our newly recognised soul that we have not yet grown up, we have not yet matured into that steadfast reciprocal love that is Christ’s love in us, for us and always given to us.

In that moment of recognition, I thing there is also joy because God never gives up on us. We now have the chance to learn to love as we were created to love – honestly, tenderly, fiercely, actively, reverently.

So, perhaps the beloved dead are more deeply involved in our lives here and now than we could imagine. In the Communion of Saints they are continuing to mature into Christ by their prayer and influence for us. And somehow, in that hopeful mystery of God, our prayer for them helps them heal and grow.

If there is one thing these two feasts shout out to me, it is that we live in a web of life with all creation in God. This means everything we do and are influences the whole and God has given us to each other and to creation in that web.

Perhaps we need to think of heaven, not as a static place of sugary sweet happiness out there somewhere, rather, just as we grow in our capacity to love as we become mature and less self-centered, so heaven is that unveiled existence where we transform into greater, larger, deeper, richer capacity to love and be in truth because that blindness which has stood in the way has been healed and the greater our capacity the deeper our entry into the mystery of the loving God who holds all things in being.

The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Two other feasts in November have something to say about all this. The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary is like the overture to an opera. Here in this small girl-child we have the hint of the great drama we will abide in during December.

For each us, like Mary, from our conception we are chosen and called. Once born into this web of life, we will never, ever cease to be. We will leave our mark upon reality whether we are conscious of this or not.

Christ the King

Finally at the end of November (this year, at any rate) we celebrate the feast of Christ the King. The readings for the feast teach us what Christ’s kingship is. Before Pilate, the powerful secular authority of the Roman occupying force, the gospel has Jesus affirming the heart of who he is. Before his crucifixion he affirms “Yes, I am a king. I was born for this, I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice.” (Jn. 18:37) Love and truth cost. If it is so for Jesus, why should it be different for us?

Let Endings End

So, with the few days that are left, let us stay with the endings. Perhaps we may find moments to make endings of things that clutter our hearts. We are fortunate that God allows us to constantly “begin again”. If we are able to stay with our own endings and with the endings of the November liturgy, Advent (whether a personal or liturgical Advent) will come upon us with its promise of hope.

Thee God I come from To Thee go. All day long I like a fountain flow, From Thy hand out, Swayed about Motelike In Thy mighty glow.
(G.M. Hopkins)