Celebrating Christmas in hope

Incarnation is not yet resurrection. Flesh in Jesus, as in us, is human flesh, vulnerable, weak, and incomplete. Christmas celebrates Christ's birth into this reality, not his removal of it. The Lord redeems limit, evil, sin and sorrow. They are not abolished. There is a definite difference.

For this reason we can celebrate Christ's birth without in anyway denying or trivializing the darkness in our world and the very real struggle we can experience in our lives and within our Church. Christmas is a call to celebrate while still in struggle.

The incarnate God is called Emmanuel,  God-is-with-us. That fact does not mean immediate festive joy. Reality has its harshness and Christmas does not ask us to make-believe.

The incarnation does not promise us heaven on earth. It promises heaven in heaven.

Here, on earth, it promises us something else – God's presence in our lives. This presence redeems because it is the grace of God-with-us that empowers us to keep on choosing the light, to not lose heart,  and to walk on together in hope.

Advent - Making Room for Love

Diadochus of Photice was a fifth century bishop and mystic. In one of his sermons he said: "The measure of a person’s love for God depends upon how deeply aware that person is of God’s love for him or her.”

D0 you want to love the Lord more? Do you want this Advent-Christmastide period to be a time of  renewal in Christian discipleship? Then let God love you more!

In Advent we speak of making space within so that the Lord can find a welcome, an openness, and thus he "rebirths" in us. What forms that space, that welcome is the experience of a love that frees us to trust, to let go, to surrender.

Angela of Foligno, the Franciscan saint,  wife and mother, felt Christ say to her one day: "You create the capacity and I will make myself a torrent within you" - a torrent of light and love and joy. Our love for God will always be a response to a love eternally present.

The key is to let that love stretch the heart and increase our capacity for God's self-giving.

Then the gift of divine love can grow and the depth of our response can expand.

God loves all his lovers first.

Mary's Total Yes to Pure Gift

I want to share with you a reflection from Richard Rohr, OFM, on the giftedness in Mary's life.

"Mary is the archetype, the personification of the one who represents and sums up the entire mystery of received salvation. In her Immacualte Conception, before she had done anything right or wrong, she is chosen.

Look at the free election at the Annunciation; there is no mention of merit or worthiness. The Annunciation story is the crescendo point to Scripture’s theme of total grace and gift. Did you ever notice that Mary does not say she’s 'not worthy'? She only asks for clarification: 'How can this happen? I am a virgin'. She never asks if, whether, or why! That is quite extraordinary and reveals her ego-lessness. Mary becomes the archetype of perfect receptivity. It takes the entire Bible to work up to one perfect vessel that knows how to say an unquestioning yes to an utterly free gift

'Mary, do not be afraid, you have won God’s favour,' declares the angel Gabriel. The word favour doesn’t say anything about the recipient. Favour says something about the one who is doing the favouring. So it’s really not an evaluation of Mary. It’s saying something about God’s election of Mary. She is one who is the absolutely perfect receiver and refuses to play the 'Lord, I am not worthy' card that had become normative in most biblical theophanies. She simply states, 'Let it be done unto me.'

 She lets God do all the giving. Her job is to receive such perfect giving.

God does not love you because you are good; God loves you because God is good. God does not love you because you are good; you are good because God loves you."

Why Praise God?

When did you last dance before the Lord?

St Francis used to dance through the woods singing God’s praises. He understood that we adore, praise and thank God because he is more than worthy of it all. But that quality of prayer is also a wonderful blessing for us.

Adoration, praise and thanksgiving lifts us up into the wonder of who God is, of the vastness of his goodness, the depth of his purposes at work in the world and in our lives. Praise of God opens my eyes, gives me a wider, cosmic vision, and deepens my faith in God.

What you feed your mind with comes out in feelings, emotions and actions. In prayers of praise and adoration we feed your mind with the reality of God.

Old lies have a way of creeping back. The lies we can speak to ourselves are very powerful. Do you recognise any of these thoughts?
Nothing can change. 
This situation is hopeless.
What’s the use?
I can’t go on! 
God does not care.

Those are lies and we need the light of God to expose them as false. When I enter God’s presence in a spirit of adoring praise, his light scatters the darkness of those falsehoods.

I know that I need to speak the truth to myself daily – the truth of God’s greatness and goodness. I need to celebrate that truth in prayers of praise and thanksgiving. I need to live in that truth so that I am not overcome by fear and discouragement.

Earthenware Vessels

Our Christian life is such a paradox.

On the one hand, at times so painfully aware of our failures and sin. On the other hand, already, in our union with the Lord, sharers in his fullness.

Paul expresses this fundamental paradox in an enduring image: “We are only earthenware jars that hold this treasure.”  We seem so ordinary, made of the dust of the earth, and our bodies will return one day to that dust. And yet, and yet, this human vessel is breathed into by God, filled with his life. We have been bestowed with a divine wealth and beauty we have not even begun to understand.

St Francis understood that holding in delicate balance the full truth of who we are is the way to live Spirit-filled, Spirit-guided lives. This means acknowledging I am an earthenware vessel with nothing to boast of, but also rejoicing that I carry a precious treasure, everything has already been given to me in Christ.

In my experience many don’t get that balance right. The most common fault is to be so aware of failings, sins, and mistakes - just how cracked, chipped, and broken the vessel is - that there is no recognition of, no delight in the splendour that is ours by the gift of God.

False Humility!

  

True humility is an attractive quality that adds beauty to the Christian life. But how it is misunderstood! So much of what passes for humility is often just low self-esteem, a turning from our God-given gifts.

It is not Christian humility when we despise what God has created good, and has made his beloved.

It is not Christian humility when we reject ourselves as useless, unchangeable, unlovable.

It is not Christian humility when we ignore all that Christ has done for us, gained for us, shared with us.

Yes, indeed, we are called to live honestly before the Lord, and not to try to hide from self and God our fragility and brokenness. But we are also asked to celebrate our God-given greatness and potential.

Look upon yourself as God looks on you – with generous, patient love.

Treat yourself as God treats you – with gentle compassion.

Speak to yourself as God speaks to the you – with words of hope and encouragement, words that speak of daily new beginnings, of possibilities, words that reveal vast interior spaces filled with grace and light.

Beware of false humility!

The Love That Heals Our Shame

Recently I have being accompanying a person who is struggling with terrible shame; the past is a ball and chain dragged behind him. He finds it so hard to accept God's pardon and to pardon himself. Until he can, he remains unfree.

My prayer is that he will hear deeply in his heart the words the Lord spoke to the woman caught in adultery: "I do not condemn you; go and do not sin again."

The solution to sin in our lives is not to beat ourselves with the stick of harsh self-condemnation, not to burden ourselves with an ever-stricter moral code, not to try to summon a fierce will power to bring about change.

The Gospel solution to sin is to know God and the power of his love. Divine love, accepted and received deep within, heals the wound of shame and self-rejection. Then we are free enough to love in return. His love experienced and let loose in our lives brings about our transformation.

Until we grasp this we do not really understand the Gospel.  We can know the law of God by heart, but not know the heart of God. As you read this you may be particularly burdened by sin, by a sense of failure, by discouragement. God already loves you as much as an infinite God can possibly love, and that will never change.

Christians in Africa have a beautiful song:  “Come to me brother, come to me sister, there is no condemnation in my heart.”  It is Christ who sings this to us. Then we in our turn, having received his mercy and forgiven yourselves, must sing it to our brothers and sisters. “Come to me, there is no condemnation in my heart!”