Say Yes to God in Advent

As did the Mother, as did the Child.

...We are living in urgent times, where illusions are swirling all about, making it difficult to discern what is true and what is not. We are distracted by a thousand things, especially in this season — and our attention is being spun toward the promptings of every sort of gadget, gizmo and noisemaker.

What happens when we are constantly spun? We become dizzy and cannot see things with directness and clarity.

Directness and clarity are at an absolute premium, these days, and I think I am not alone in wondering if we maintain our willingness to be spun and distracted at our own peril...

The Holy Family

on Facebook:

Merry Christmas!

The song for the day:

Beauty

These are awesome.

Hark!

O, Holy Night!

Breathless was the air over Bethlehem. Black and bare
Were the fields; hard as granite the clods;
Hedges stiff with ice; the sedge in the vice
Of the pool, like pointed iron rods.
And the deathly stillness spread from Bethlehem. It was shed
Wider each moment on the land;
Through rampart and wall into camp and into hall
Stole the hush; all tongues were at a stand.
At the Procurator's feast the jocular freedman ceased
His story, and gaped. All were glum
Travellers at their beer in a tavern turned to hear
The landlord; their oracle was dumb.
But the silence flowed forth to the islands and the North
And smoothed the unquiet river bars
And levelled out the waves from their revelling and paved
The sea with cold reflected stars.
Where the Caesar on Palatine sat at ease to sign,
Without anger, signatures of death,
There stole into his room and on his soul a gloom,
And his pen faltered, and his breath.
Then to Carthage and the Gauls, past Parthia and the Falls
Of Nile and Mount Amara it crept;
The romp and war of beast in swamp and jungle ceased,
The forest grew still as though it slept.
So it ran about the girth of the planet. From the Earth
A signal, a warning, went out
And away behind the air. Her neighbours were aware
Of change. They were troubled with a doubt.

Salamanders in the Sun that brandish as they run
Tails like the Americas in size
Were stunned by it and dazed; wondering, they gazed
Up at Earth, misgiving in their eyes.
In Houses and Signs Ousiarchs divine
Grew pale and questioned what it meant;
Great Galactal lords stood back to back with swords
Half-drawn, awaiting the event,
And a whisper among them passed, 'Is this perhaps the last
Of our story and the glories of our crown?
--The entropy worked out?--The central redoubt
Abandoned? The world-spring running down?
Then they could speak no more. Weakness overbore
Even them. They were as flies in a web,
In their lethargy stone-dumb. The death had almost come;
The tide lay motionless at ebb.

Like a stab at that moment, over Crab and Bowman,
Over Maiden and Lion, came the shock
Of returning life, the start and burning pang at heart,
Setting Galaxies to tingle and rock;
And the Lords dared to breathe, and swords were sheathed
And a rustling, a relaxing began,
With a rumour and noise of the resuming of joys,
On the nerves of the universe it ran.
Then pulsing into space with delicate, dulcet pace
Came a music, infinitely small
And clear. But it swelled and drew nearer and held
All worlds in the sharpness of its call.
And now divinely deep, and louder, with the sweep
and quiver of inebriating sound,
The vibrant dithyramb shook Libra and the Ram,
The brains of Aquarius spun round;
Such a note as neither Throne nor Potentate had known
Since the Word first founded the abyss,
But this time it was changed in a mystery, estranged,
A paradox, an ambiguous bliss.
Heaven danced to it and burned. Such answer was returned
To the hush, the Favete, the fear
That Earth had sent out; revel, mirth and shout
Descended to her, sphere below sphere.
Saturn laughed and lost his latter age's frost,
His beard, Niagara-like, unfroze;
Monsters in the Sun rejoiced; the Inconstant One,
The unwedded Moon, forgot her woes.
A shiver of re-birth and deliverance on the Earth
went gliding. Her bonds were released.
Into broken light a breeze rippled and woke the seas,
In the forest it startled every beast.
Capripods fell to dance from Taproban to France,
Leprechauns from Down to Labrador,
In his green Asian dell the Phoenix from his shell
Burst forth and was the Phoenix once more.

So death lay in arrest. But at Bethlehem the bless'd
Nothing greater could be heard
Than a dry wind in the thorn, the cry of the One new-born,
And cattle in stall as they stirred.

~C.S. Lewis, Poems, "The Turn of the Tide", (1st published November 1 in Punch, 1948)

Joseph on Joseph

in preparation for the big day:

...In the Bible passage, the ancient prophecy is fulfilled and the Son of God is made man in the womb of a virgin. St. Joseph, upset at finding that Mary is with child, decides to quietly leave her.

But an angel comes to him in a dream and tells him not to fear, to take Mary as his wife and to name the child "Emmanuel," or "God is with us," because he "shall save his people from their sins."

Joseph then abandons the thought of leaving Mary, said the Pope, "because now his eyes see the work of God in her."

St. Joseph is "certain of doing the right thing," obeys the angel's command, and stays with her. In following the directives of God, said the Pope, he joins the ranks of the humble and faithful servants, like the angels, prophets, martyrs and apostles.

Joseph "announces the portents of the Lord, giving testimony to the virginity of Mary, the gratuitous actions of God and protecting the earthly life of the Messiah," he said.

"Thus, we venerate the 'legal father' of Jesus, because in him the new man is outlined, one who looks with trust and courage to the future, who does not seek his own project but entrusts himself totally to the infinite mercy of He who makes the prophecies true and opens up the time of salvation."

Pope Benedict entrusted all of the Church's priests and bishops to St. Joseph, the universal patron of the Church. He exhorted clergy to bring themselves ever closer to the person of Jesus, to "present quietly Christ’s words and actions each day to the faithful and to the whole world..."

"This is the Purpose of Christmas"

our deification:

...Too often we look at Heaven as just a really great earth: we eat whatever we want, we hang out with whoever we want and we never get sick or hurt. But Heaven is less about what we do and more about what we become. When we enter into Heaven we are transformed into a new creation: while keeping our human nature we participate in the divine nature. In the scandalous words of St. Athanasius, we “become God” – we are deified.

We of course must be careful not to confuse the Christian doctrine of deification with Eastern conceptions which confuse divinity and humanity. But we must also not minimize the great transformation that will take place: we become by grace what God is by nature, all while retaining our human nature and individuality. It might seem impossible to see how this could happen, but we have a model already: Jesus Christ, who is true God and true man. By his incarnation he showed us the path which unites divinity and humanity. In his bountiful love he gives us as a gift what he has by right.

The full name of this blog is “Divine Life: Why We Were Created”. Our deification – being made like God – is the very reason we were created by God; it is the final goal for each and every one of us. The plans God has in store for those who love Him are so much more than just simple happiness and contentment. They include becoming like Him and having our human natures transformed so that they participate in the very divine life of God. This is what we celebrate at this time of year – this is the purpose of Christmas.

Christmas Carols and Crying Babes

The horrors that attend the coming of Christ:

...What doesn't get noticed as often is how much fear and Christmas go together. The best Christmas stories are rooted in fear and, at their very best, even a sort of terror. The original story, of course, contains not only the heartwarming icon of the Holy Family in the stable, but also Joseph's confusion and fear over the Holy Pregnancy. That terror, whether you read it as Joseph's doubts about Mary or (as Jerome did) as Joseph's doubts about himself, is not the stuff of a Kodak moment.

It is, after all, about a man contemplating dumping his completely vulnerable wife in deep fear and doubt. It requires nothing less than an angelic visitation to keep the Blessed Virgin from facing the abandonment and rejection that her Holy Child will one day face in full strength. The story passes from annunciation, through near catastrophe, to happy resolution as Joseph takes up his role as "son of David" and takes his place as father and guardian of the Christ.

That's not the last time we will see that pattern of joy, fear, and happy resolution. The tale of the escape of Jesus, even more, is a tale that passes with alarming swiftness from joy to terror to happy resolution. Your average Best Christmas Pageant Ever doesn't tend to include a scene where a bunch of kids in plastic armor march on stage and then begin to methodically dismember a clutch of baby dolls. But that's an integral part of the original Christmas story. It's also the basis of the most heartbreaking of all Christmas carols:

Herod, the king, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight,
All children young to slay.

It is from this horror that the Holy Family flees and finds safety in Egypt. The Christ, at the beginning of His mission as well as at the end, is delivered from death and the dragon that would devour him and the Woman. The Church remembers this element of terror in the Gospel story by immediately following the birth of Christ with feasts that celebrate not only the Slaughter of the Innocents, but the murder of St. Stephen, the first martyr; the murder of St. Thomas a Becket, and the first white martyr; and St. John, who had to endure the murder of his brother James, the first apostle to be martyred. All these stand as reminders that the point of the gospel is that Christ has come to break the power of the kingdom of the final earthly fear: death.

In the same way, the art about Christmas contains an element of fear as well...

...That, in the end, is the point of the Christmas story all along. It is expressed in the beautiful legend that the cradle was made from the same tree as the wood of the cross. The Evangelists see everything -- including the birth of Jesus -- as related to the ultimate truth about Him: that He is born to die and rise for us. The passion and resurrection of Jesus are imprinted on every aspect of reality, from the miracles He performs to the stories He tells to the very circumstances of His birth.

So the Eucharistic Lord is laid in a manger in Bethlehem -- that is, a feed box in the House of Bread, because it is His destiny to be the Bread of Life broken for us. He is lost for three days and found at the Temple, because He will be lost for three days in the grave and then the Temple of His body will be found alive again. The darkness and fear of the hellish dragon who seeks to devour Him as a child is the same darkness and fear that will swallow Him completely on the cross -- and perish when He destroys darkness and fear in the Resurrection.

It is why He is heralded by a star in the darkness of a fearful night -- for hell is real, and our fears of it are justified. But the baby was, after all, born to save us from the fires of hell.

"Mary is an essential 'dimension' of the Gospel itself"

From one of the great Russian Orthodox theologians of the past century (he's got some fascinating stuff on sacramentality):

...if nothing else  were revealed in the Gospel than the mere fact of Mary's existence, i.e., that Christ, God and man, had a mother and that her name was Mary, it would have enough for the Church to love her, to think of her relationship with her Son, and to draw theological contemplations from this revelation.  Thus, there is no need for additional or special revelations; Mary is a self-evident and essential "dimension" of the Gospel itself.--Alexander Schmemann, "On Mariology in Orthodoxy", Celebration of Faith.

Antichrist: The End

From Bl. Cardinal Newman's pen, the fourth and last sermon:

We have been so accustomed to hear of the persecutions of the Church, both from the New Testament and from the history of Christianity, that it is much if we have not at length come to regard the account of them as words of course, to speak of them without understanding what we say, and to receive no practical benefit from having been told of them; much less are we likely to take them for what they really are, a characteristic mark of Christ’s Church. They are not indeed the necessary lot of the Church, but at least one of her appropriate badges; so that, on the whole, looking at the course of history, you might set down persecutions as one of the peculiarities by which you recognize her.

And the Lord seems to intimate how becoming, how natural persecution is to the Church, by placing it among His Beatitudes. “Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven;” giving it the same high and honorable rank in the assemblage of evangelical graces, which the Sabbath holds among the Ten Commandments,- I mean, as a sort of sign and token of His followers, and, as such, placed in the moral code, though in itself external to it.

He seems to show us this in another way, viz., by intimating to us the fact that in persecution the Church begins and in persecution she ends. He left her in persecution, and He will find her in persecution. He recognizes her as His own,-He framed, and He will claim her,-as a persecuted Church, bearing His Cross. And that awful relic of which He gave her, and which she is found possessed of at the end, she cannot have lost by the way...

Christ, Incarnate

forever:

...All other social teachings fall under the shadow cast by the dignity of the human person. Not only that, but all other social actions gain their legitimacy from how well they affirm the dignity of the human person.

There are two major reasons why this is true.

But first, here’s a little riddle from catechism class that will help us uncover the reason:  What are the only man-made things in heaven?  Take your time. Puzzle it out. We can wait…

Answer: The nail prints on the hands and feet of Jesus, and the scar in his side.
Why?

Jesus still has a human body. The omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent almighty Savior of the World still has a human body, albeit a glorified one.

The post-resurrection Gospel accounts verify its amazing properties: walking through walls, startling appearances and disappearances (Cf. Luke 24: 31, 36-43, John 20:19-20). Most famously Jesus appeared to Thomas and the apostles, permitting Thomas to probe the nail prints to assuage his doubt. (Cf. John 20:24-29.)

The Word become flesh (Cf. John 1:14). The Son of God incarnate is both God and man.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, par.469 and 470:

The Church thus confesses that Jesus is inseparably true God and true man. He is truly the Son of God who, without ceasing to be God and Lord, became a man and our brother…

The Son of God. . . worked with human hands; he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin.

Even now, that mystical Body is united with the Trinity. The body of Jesus was not some kind of disposable earthly transport vehicle. No. Jesus completely united himself to humanity in a permanent way...

The Resurrection of the Dead

And the life in the world to come:

...St Paul writes to the Philippians of the glory that our currently lowly bodies will one day enjoy:

He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified Body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself. (Phil 3:19)

I once spoke with an older woman who wasn’t all that pleased to hear that her body was going to rise and be joined again to her soul: “Oh, Father, you don’t mean this old decrepit body?! If this body has to rise I am hoping for an improved model!”

Yes! I think most of us can relate to the need that our current lowly bodies will be improved. And they will surely be. Notice how the passage above says, that these lowly, often weak, diseased, and often over-weight bodies will be changed and reflect the glory of the resurrected body of Jesus. Yes, this old general issue clunker that I’m currently experiencing is going to be upgraded to a luxury model. We’re headed for first class...

For Advent

A classic line, courtesy of the Manninos:

One has to go through the repentance preached by John the Baptist, to prepare for the coming of Jesus at Christmas.

The New Eve

and the old:

...here is a lovely story about how things get moved along by the Holy Spirit:

A Trappistine nun, Abbess Columba Guare of Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey, who composes the texts for the Abbey’s Christmas cards, wrote this lovely poem, wherein the Virgin Mary addresses Eve with hope and gladness:

O Eve!
My mother, my daughter, life-giving Eve,
Do not be ashamed, do not grieve.
The former things have passed away,
Our God has brought us to a New Day.
See, I am with Child,
Through whom all will be reconciled.
O Eve! My sister, my friend,
We will rejoice together
Forever
Life without end.
— Sr. Columba Guare copyright© 2005 Sisters of the Mississippi Abbey

The poem reflects the crayon and colored-pencil drawing by another nun, Sr. Grace Remington... It’s a marvelous image – a profound gift of a card.
Writing in First Things, Fr. Richard Neuhaus quoted the poem for this piece, where it was seen by the composer Frank LaRocca who, in an email, relates:

“From the first time I read it, I knew I would set this text to music. 18 months later, in June of ’07, I did. It was premiered in Scotland in December 2007, and I had the great honor of sitting next to Sr. Columba just a few weeks ago when it was performed by a women’s choir at Clarke College in Dubuque.”

Here is the Glasgow performace. Give it a second to load, then hit “play” – it’s quite lovely and prayerful, and full of joy...

I second that. The song is beautiful, and the whole thing is a profound and beautiful meditation for the season.

The Incarnation and the Eucharist

are closely tied.  The antiquity of the Eucharistic faith of the Church can be seen in the common faith in the Eucharist of the East and the West, as well as people's lived experiences of the Real Presence.

A Meditation on The Jewish God

in this time when Mary would be great with child:

...Christians are solemnly enjoined not to speak of the Jews as an accursed or rejected race, as if Holy Scripture had mandated one to do so. In fact, to so vilify the Jews amounts to an act of dishonor against Almighty God himself, for whom the Children of the Covenant are to remain forever a sacrament of his fidelity; the deepest, most abiding pledge that God's promised word, once given, will never be withdrawn. Here the conciliar text cites the Apostle Paul, kinsman by race to this people for whom he would gladly have suffered-yes, even unto final separation from Christ!--were the Father only to ask it. Paul's insistence on the truth of Israel's continuing proximity to God is unambiguous. It was God, he said, who called Israel to be his own, and "the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable" (Rom 11:29). [10] In other words, if God chose the Jews, a scandalous choice in its particularity of this people and not another, why would he, having thus chosen, ever revoke his word, the clearest and dearest sign of his eternal solicitude toward this People of the Promise?

The glory of Israel is neither ethnic nor racial but fundamentally religious: for two millennia all the revelations of God were entrusted to it. Can such a thing be said of any other people in the history of the world? And not just the words of God were handed over to Israel; the unheard-of enfleshment of God's very Word took place within Israel, within the womb of the Jewish maiden Mary. No other people can say that from the loins of its very life there once sprang into human being the Eternal Word and Son of the Father. "In this alone", says Daniélou,

there is a greatness that staggers our imagination and reason. All other earthly greatness is passing. The great empires of antiquity have sunk into oblivion; their monuments--attempts to defy time--are merely tombstones of bygone civilizations. The great powers of today will decline in their turn, but Jesus Christ will live eternally and will be eternally Jewish by race, thereby conferring a unique, eternal privilege on Israel...

In Advent, Confess

in order to prepare the way for the Child:

...As Scripture says: Christ the Lord is the breath of life to us, and the hidden nature of this spiritual coming is shown in the continuation of the same text: Under his shadow we shall live among the nations.

For this reason, even if you are too sick to go very far to meet the Lord, it is appropriate for you to respond to the great physician’s visit by making an effort at least to raise your head and lift yourself up a little to greet him on his arrival.

The road pointed out to you is not a long one; you do not have to cross the seas or pierce the clouds or climb mountains to meet your God.

Enter into your own soul and you will find him, for his word is near you; it is on your lips and in your heart.

Go down deep into your heart until you are stirred to compunction; make your confession, and so at least turn your back on a conscience so defiled as to be unworthy of entertaining the author of purity...

Advent and Antichrist

Here's the fourth of Bl. Cardinal Newman's sermons on the Antichrist:

The Angel thus interprets to St John the vision of the Great Harlot, the enchantress, who seduced the inhabitants of the earth. He says, “The woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.” The city spoken of in these words is evidently Rome, which was then the seat of empire all over the earth,-which was supreme even in Judea. We hear of the Romans all through the Gospels and Acts. Our Savior was born when His mother the Blessed Virgin, and Joseph, were brought up to Bethlehem to be taxed by the Roman governor. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. St Paul was at various times protected by the circumstance of his being a Roman citizen; and on the other hand, when he was seized and imprisoned, it was by the Roman governors, and at last he was sent to Rome itself, to the emperor and eventually martyred there, together with St Peter. Thus the sovereignty of Rome, at the time when Christ and His Apostles preached and wrote, which is a matter of historical notoriety, is forced on our notice in the New Testament itself. It is undeniably meant by the Angel when he speaks of ‘the great city which reigneth over the earth.”

The connection of Rome with the reign and exploits of Antichrist, is so often brought before us in the controversies of this day, that it may be well, after what I have already had occasion to say on the subject of the last enemy of the Church, to consider now what Scripture prophecy says concerning Rome; which I shall attempt to do, as before, with the guidance of the early Fathers...

On the Coming of Christ

by St. Gregory Nazienzen:

The very Son of God, older than the ages,

the invisible, the incomprehensible, the incorporeal,

the beginning of beginning, the light of light,

the fountain of life and immortality,

the image of the archetype, the immovable seal,

the perfect likeness, the definition and word of the Father:

He it is who comes to his own image and takes our nature for the good of our nature, and unites himself to an intelligent soul for the good of my soul, to purify like by like.

He takes to himself all that is human, except for sin.

He was conceived by the Virgin Mary, who had been first prepared in soul and body by the Spirit.

His coming to birth had to be treated with honor, virginity had to receive new honor...

Mary, Woman of Advent

from himself:

...Benedict XVI continued: "Everyone of us, therefore, especially in this season in which we prepare for Christmas, can ask himself: What am I waiting for?

"For what, in this moment of my life, does my heart long?"

He added: "And this same question can be posed at the level of the family, of the community, of the nation.

"What are we waiting for, together? What unifies our aspirations, what do they have in common?"

Pointing to the example of Mary, the Pope acknowledged that "in her heart the longing for the Savior was so great, her faith and hope were so ardent, that he was able to find in her a worthy mother."

He added, "After all, God himself had prepared her before all time."

"There is a mysterious correspondence between the waiting for God and the waiting for Mary," the Pope affirmed, "the creature 'full of grace,' totally transparent to the plan of love of the Most High."

He concluded, "Let us learn from her, the woman of Advent, to live with a new spirit in our daily gestures, with the sentiment of a profound expectation that only the coming of God can fulfill."