An Advent Rant In 3 Verses

Verse 3 – Changing The Ordo Honors God

Verse 1 – the calendar; Verse 2 – people; Verse 3 – God!

In the largest sense, everything about our lives is a “season of preparation” in the here-and-now for arrival at our ultimate destination. We are aliens, traveling through a specific time and place, on our way to a place He has prepared for us where neither time nor our idea of space or place have any real meaning. Now it’s the day before the day before; soon we will be in the midst of all that we’ve been preparing for. How did that go? Are we really ready? Everything thought, bought and brought? Everything useless discarded, everything worthy and worthwhile kept?

The Day always seems like a giant ready-go-fire-set-aim, and it’s over! How would it be to start earlier, think more, go slower, and cram in some contemplation (there’s an interesting phrase!)? How would it be to feel ready, be ready, then take more time enjoying what we prepared for? How would that affect our relationships with each other, and most importantly our relationship with our Father? HE doesn’t need the time, but we do.

More time to prepare, more time to celebrate, more time to enjoy, more time to worship – how would that be? In the meantime,

Merry Christmas!

The Reed of God - Part 2 of 2

I ended my last post with an exhortation to "bear Christ into the world through our lives," and some examples from Caryll Houselander of what that looks like: patience in suffering; obedience, humility, and graciousness; using the gifts and fruits of the Spirit.

The next passage I will quote from her book further explores the theme of bearing Christ into the world: why we, as mere humans, must be the ones to bring him (in most cases); acting in an awareness of the impulses of God's love; and the joyful response to the bringing of Christ. (Note, however, David's sermon from last week: sometimes the response to Christ in the world is more tumultuous.)

By his own will Christ was dependent on Mary during Advent: He was absolutely helpless; He could go nowhere but where she chose to take Him; He could not speak; her breathing was His breath; His heart beat in the beating of her heart.

To-day Christ is dependent upon men. In the Host He is literally put into a man's hands. A man must carry him to the dying, must take Him into the prisons, workhouses, and hospitals, must carry Him in a tiny pyx over the heart onto the field of battle, must give Him to little children and "lay Him by" in His "leaflight" house of gold.

The modern world's feverish struggle for unbridled, often unlicensed, freedom is answered by the bound, enclosed helplessness and dependence of Christ - Christ in the womb, Christ in the Host, Christ in the tomb.

This dependence of Christ lays a great trust upon us. During this tender time of Advent we must carry Him in our hearts to wherever He wants to go.

None of us knows when the loveliest hour of our life is striking. It may be when we take Christ for the first time to that grey office in the city where we work, to the wretched lodging of that poor man who is an outcast, to the nursery of that pampered child, to that battleship, airfield, or camp.

There is one exquisite incident in Our Lady's Advent in which this is clearly seen: the Visitation.

"And Mary rising up in those days went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judah."

How lyrical that is, the opening sentence of St. Luke's description of the Visitation. We can feel the rush of warmth and kindness, the sudden urgency of love that sent that girl hurrying over the hills. "Those days" in which she rose on that impulse were the days in which Christ was being formed in her, the impulse was His impulse.

She greeted her cousin Elizabeth, and at the sound of her voice John quickened in his mother's womb and leapt for joy.

"I am come," said Christ, "that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly." Even before He was born His presence gave life.

With what piercing shoots of joy does this story of Christ unfold! First the conception of a child in a child's heart, and then this first salutation, an infant leaping for joy in his mother's womb, knowing the hidden Christ and leaping into life.

How did Elizabeth herself know what had happened to Our Lady? What made her realise that this little cousin who was so familiar to her was the mother of her God?

She knew it by the child within herself, by the quickening into life which was a leap of joy.

If Christ is growing in us, if we are at peace, recollected, because we know that however insignificant our life seems to be, from it He is forming Himself; if we go with eager wills, "in haste," to wherever our circumstances compel us, because we believe that He desires to be in that place, we shall find that we are driven more and more to act on the impulse of His love.

And the answer we shall get from others to those impulses will be an awakening into life, or the leap into joy of the already wakened life within them. They will know His presence, not by any special beauty or power shown by us, but in the way that the bud knows the presence of the light, by an unfolding of themselves, a putting forth of their own beauty.

It seems that this is Christ's favourite way of being recognised, that He prefers to be known, not by His own human features, but by the quickening of His own life in the heart, which is the response to His coming.

When John recognised Him, He was hidden in His mother's womb. After the Resurrection He was known, not by His familiar features, but by the love in Magdalene's heart, the fire in the hearts of the travellers to Emmaus, and the wound in His own heart handled by Thomas.

An Advent Rant in 3 Verses

Verse 2 – Changing The Ordo Honors People

Verse 1 was a consideration of the calendar: what we do now, how we got to that, how we might change it, and why that would be a good idea. Verse 2 is devoted to people: Christian people (the people of The Book) and not-yet-Christian people (the people of the pocketbook). During the sermon in Advent 1 (which I hope someday will become Christmas 1) a cartoon was used to illustrate a point. The cartoon showed two dogs walking together; one dog says to the other, “Let’s face it – money is really man’s best friend.” People of the Book look like People of the Pocketbook far too often in this regard, and this is more dramatically obvious during our Advent (their Christmas) than at any other time of year.

No matter how much or how little we allow ourselves to be drained by the commercial maelstrom, we don’t have to look too closely to see that when there’s no real Truth in your life, Advent/Christmas can be a tough time of year, regardless of available resources. We know where true joy lies (although a look at our checkbooks for December might suggest otherwise), but when the only happiness is found in HD, keeping one’s emotional and spiritual head above water can be a thankless and fruitless task. But because the Christian calendar is so out of sync with what is going on for those around us, it’s hard for us to make ourselves heard, or to really come along side people in a way that can be significantly helpful.

We do what we can, but we could do better. By placing Advent, our season of preparation, within the time when those we most wish to talk to are also involved in preparation, we can take advantage of natural opportunities to come alongside, to walk across the room, to make friends (perhaps for life), to be the hands and feet and voices that we were made to be, in an environment that says to people “We live here, too; we know what it’s like and how it feels; there’s something we want to share with you that's really important to us.” We have something of life-changing importance to say; God desires to use us to offer the only thing which will literally save lives. We know from experience that more often than not, people actually want to hear us, and want to receive what God has to offer. Realigning our calendar would be a small price to pay to join what the world around us is actually doing, be authentic about who we are and why we do what we do, and make more opportunities for the Lord to build His Kingdom.

Embracing Advent when preparation is going on all around us, giving ourselves time to really celebrate Christmas – what would that be like?

Next week – Changing the Ordo Honors God

Manger Wetter

As I mentioned in my earlier post (now polished and with a few additional thoughts from Simone Weil at my work web site), here is a link to the first chapter of Dan Russ's book, Flesh-and-Blood Jesus (Baker 2008), which helps us consider what we can learn by focusing on Jesus as a real human being, not just as God.

I think that the theme here can be particularly appropriate for our culture, which makes it so hard for us to admit we cannot do everything by ourselves. A taste:

So what does the helpless infant humanity of Jesus imply about our humanity?

First, Jesus, especially in infancy but not only as an infant, was weak and needy. He had to rely on Mary and Joseph, as well as other adults in his extended family, to feed, wipe, and hold him and, until a certain age, could only communicate that need by crying. To be weak and needy, powerless to manage some of life’s problems and challenges in one’s own strength is to be human—not a sin. We will discuss later other incidents when Jesus was weak and needy—after fasting in the desert, when seeking solitude to pray, and in the Garden of Gethsemane, to name a few. For now, let it suffice to say that our Lord was weak and needy, and yet without sin, which begs the question of how we can be the same.

Please do read the whole thing.

Third Sunday of Advent

I picked up a copy of a little Advent devotional calling Living in Hope, which is a compilation of some of the writings of Henri Nouwen. The one for today is titled "Choosing to Live in Hope" and is from Finding My Way Home: Pathways to Life and the Spirit.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13

"I have found it very important to try to let go of my wishes and instead to live in hope. When I choose to let go of my sometimes petty and superficial wishes and trust that my life is precious and meaningful in the eyes of God, something really new, something beyond my own expectations begins to happen for me.

"To wait with openness and trust in an enormously radical attitude toward life. It is choosing to hope that something is happening for us that is far beyond our own imaginings. It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life. It is living with the conviction that God molds us in love, holds us in tenderness, and moves us away from the sources of our fear."

It is something to remember at this time of year, as we wait with expectation for the coming of the Baby Jesus...that baby who is the pinnacle of God's plan for the redemption of the world! We can't do anything on our own, no matter how much we try to control it. To trust and to wait on Jesus is hard, but it is the only thing we can do.

As I mentioned before, I am awaiting the birth of my second child, due in just a couple of weeks. I can imagine some of what Mary, the mother of our Lord, went through as she and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem, on foot and on a four-legged animal. I am uncomfortable most of the time, and I don't know when I will go into labor. Everything is up in the air. Every time I feel an odd twinge, I wonder if something is right, or wrong. I am sure that she felt some of the same things. Discomfort, uncertainty, perhaps some fear.

Again, to quote Nouwen, "To wait with openness and trust is an enormously radical attitude toward life." Every day, several times a day, I have to pray that God will take my discomfort, my uncertainty, and my fear. And then I have to hope in Jesus. How much harder it was for Mary, who didn't really know the end result of the birth of her Son. And we know that she hoped. At least I know that Jesus is the hope that I have. And we have to let God have the control, of all aspects of our lives, our present and our future. Even if we have to 'Let Go and Let God' every day, several times a day.

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

posted for Tim Klein

A family tradition we started almost two decades ago is singing “the” Advent hymn, “O come, O come, Emmanuel” as we gather around the Advent wreath each evening. We started this to have a worship point in our devotions, and as another way to “tell the story” to our children in a memorable fashion. However, we only recently learned how this hymn, like many traditions, has a deep meaning rooted in our Anglican heritage, and back into early Christendom.

“O come, O come Emmanuel” (in Latin, Veni Emmanuel) is a lyrical paraphrase of the Great Advent “O Antiphons” sung at Evensong during the last week of Advent. The hymn, and the antiphons, “tell the story” by referring directly to Isaiah’s prophecy marking the forthcoming birth of the Messiah; and by using Scriptural titles (or “names”) for the Messiah.

The “O Antiphons” have been part of our liturgical tradition since the very early Church. The exact origin of the “O Antiphons” is not known, but they are recognized as early as 450, and fully present in liturgical celebrations by the eighth century. Each antiphon is one of Christ’s Latinate names as mentioned in Scripture. They are:

• December 17: O Sapientia (O Wisdom)


• December 18: O Adonai (O Adonai)


• December 19: O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse)


• December 20: O Clavis David (O Key of David)


• December 21: O Oriens (O Morning Star)


• December 22: O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations)


• December 23: O Emmanuel

Benedictine monks purposefully ordered these antiphons. Starting with the last “name” and taking the first letter of each one – Emmanuel, Rex, Oriens, Clavis, Radix, Adonai, Sapientia –the Latin words ero cras are formed, meaning, “Tomorrow, I will come.” Jesus, whose coming Christians prepare for in Advent and have addressed in these seven Messianic titles, responds to our worship, “Tomorrow, I will come.” The “O Antiphons” (and “O come”) intensify Advent preparation, and bring it to a joyful conclusion.

So, sing this ancient hymn with great joy – proclaiming Jesus the present Messiah of Israel, the King to the Gentiles, and the One who will come again to redeem His People.

The Reed of God - Part 1 of 2

Caryll Houselander's The Reed of God is one of my favorite books. An English Catholic writing in 1944, Houselander delves into the scripture and divine metaphor that surrounds Mary, teaching us to unite our will with God's as Mary did. Parts of Houselander's book center around the Annunciation, the Incarnation, and Advent.

The Feast of the Annunciation is March 25 - nine months before Christmas. But there is a sense in which Advent in particular celebrates the time when Mary was pregnant with Jesus, pondering the Annunciation and Incarnation, waiting for Christmas, and preparing to bring Christ into the world. But what a world! It is characterized by weakness, suffering, and mortality. Traditionally and symbolically, Christmas comes amid the cold of winter; and there is certainly more winter to come, though it is now lit with the fire of the Spirit and steeped in our eternal destiny of perfection.

Below I have copied a few long segments from The Reed of God that expand on these thoughts. I have condensed a few bits to improve the flow.

When Our Lady received the love of the Holy Spirit as the wedded love of her soul, she also received her dead son in her arms. The trust which accepted the utter sweetness of the Infant Jesus between her own hands, looking at her with her own eyes, accepted the stiff, unresponsive corpse that her hands embalmed. This was her son, but more, even more, God's Son. She trusted God, she understood on earth that which many mothers will only understand in heaven; she was able to see her boy killed, lying there bruised from head to foot, wounded and dead, and to believe the Father's cry: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

God asks for extreme courage in love; the Bride of the Spirit must respond with strength like His own strength.

She was consenting not only to give birth to Christ, not only to give life to Him, but to give Him death.

It must have been a season of joy, and she must have longed for his birth, but at the same time she knew that every step that she took, took her little son nearer to the grave.

Each work of her hands prepared his hands a little more for the nails; each breath that she drew counted one more to His last.

In giving life to Him she was giving Him death.

All other children born must inevitably die; death belongs to fallen nature; the mother's gift to the child is life.

But Christ is life; death did not belong to Him.

In fact, unless Mary would give Him death, He could not die.

Unless she would give Him the capacity for suffering, He could not suffer.

He could only feel cold and hunger and thirst if she gave Him her vulnerability to cold and hunger and thirst.

He could not know the indifference of friends or treachery or the bitterness of being betrayed unless she gave Him a human mind and a human heart.

This is what it meant to Mary to give human nature to God.

He was invulnerable; He asked her for a body to be wounded.

He was joy itself; He asked her to give Him tears.

He was God; He asked her to make Him man.

He asked for hands and feet to be nailed.

He asked for flesh to be scourged.

He asked for blood to be shed.

He asked for a heart to be broken.

The stable at Bethlehem was the first Calvary.

The wooden manger was the first Cross.

The swaddling bands were the first burial bands.

The Passion had begun.

Christ was man.

Mary was not indifferent to Christ's suffering, but there was something that she was deeply aware of which made her more than ready for it.

It was this: that little shivering mite in the manger was her own flesh and blood; her Advent work was done; she had formed Christ of her own life, in herself; and now that she had brought Him forth, she lived in Him.

Quite literally, her life was in Christ.

This is another of the things to be discovered in contemplating Our Lady. We ask Him to come and abide in us; we ask the Holy Spirit to form Him from our lives; we believe that He does do this.

If Christ is formed of our lives, it means that He will suffer in us. Or, more truly, we will suffer in Him.

It is very hard not to think of a kind of mystical Christ just beside us, or just in front of us, suffering with infinite patience and joy, being obedient, humble, persevering, fulfilling His Father's will.

It is really difficult to realise that if He is formed in our life we are not beside Him but in Him; and what He asks of us is to realise that it is actually in what we do that He wants to act and suffer.

For example, if you are conscripted, it is Christ Who is saying good-bye and leaving His home; Christ Who is marching on the endless route march. The blisters on the feet of the new recruit are bleeding on the feet of Christ.

Again, if you are an office worker and the person over you is trying, perhaps rather limited in intelligence, so that you imagine you have some kind of right to be irritable, well, it is not you at all that must be obedient and humble and gracious, it is Christ, Christ, Who said to the weak and timid civil servant, Pontius Pilate: "You would have no power over Me if it were not given to you from above."

It really needs to be practised to be understood. We need to say to ourselves a thousand times a day: Christ wants to do this," "Christ wants to suffer this."

And we shall thus come to realise that when we resent our circumstances or try to spare ourselves what we should undergo, we are being like Peter when he tried to dissuade Our Lord from the Passion.

There is one tremendous answer to the question which is reiterated to the point of utter weariness: "Why should I?"

It is another question: "Ought not Christ to suffer these things and so enter into His glory?"

We do not see the purpose of certain things; particularly such things as frustration.

Why was this child born half-witted?

Why did that young man die?

Why has that brilliant scholar been suddenly blinded?

Why does that sick old woman, who has outlived all who loved her, linger on in her misery?

But if we could realise the extraordinary humility and tenderness with which Christ approaches the human heart - if we understood the courtesy of God - we should not be scandalised by the grief of the world: not, indeed, that God has caused all these evils, or that He wills them, but that He has hallowed them.

Christ is both fully human and fully God. As Christians, we give our human life and death to Christ, who hallows and redeems them; and Christ sends us his Spirit to bear in us the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. Our reception of the Spirit mirrors Mary's that conceived Christ.

Now the union with the Holy Spirit means that the Spirit infuses His qualities into us. He sows us with wonderful seed, his gifts and fruits.

When we think about what they are, it becomes very obvious that it was not into the Garden of Eden that Christ would be born, not into a smooth happy world; when He was born again, in life after life, it would always be in order to live through the same things as He did the first time: fear, poverty, exile, work, publicity, temptation, pain, betrayal, and crucifixion.

It is obvious, too, that He intended to overcome all this in each person's life, not by doing away with it, but by transforming it; and to overcome death itself by dying.

It is clear, too - from the joy of the Magnificat - that Our Lady knew that her son's reassurance: "Fear not, for I have overcome the world" would echo through all the ages.

For she had opened the door to the Spirit and let the hearts of the coming Christ-bearers receive such gifts as fortitude, peace, patience, long-suffering, humility, and love.

Experience has taught us that war simplifies life. Every individual would experience some equivalent of the Passion even if there were no war; but war makes it visible and even simple, and shows us how the Passion of Christ can be each one's individual secret and at the same time something shared by the whole world.

It is a moment in which the world needs great draughts of supernatural life, needs the Spirit to be poured into it, as truly and as urgently as a wounded soldier drained of his bloods needs a blood transfusion.

Let us, then, receive the Spirit and the cross, and bear Christ into the world through our lives.