Christmas Eve - Dec 24, 2015

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
Christmas Eve – Thursday, December 24, 2015

Isaiah 9:2-7 
Titus 2:11-14 
Luke 2:1-14(15-20)

Adoration of the Shepherds - Guido Reni (Italian Baroque painter 1575 – 1642)

O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us we prayCast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell.O come to us, Our Lord Emmanuel.
(from the hymn O Little Town of Bethlehem, written by Episcopal priest Phillips Brooks)

Emmanuel. God among us. God around us. God within us.

Tonight, we celebrate the nearness of God in remembering the birth of his only begotten son, Jesus of Nazareth. It is an amazing event that marks the beginning of a great Christian mystery; the Incarnation. God takes on a human destiny to manifest God’s deep engagement with humanity and to make us understand divinity in a new light. And this starts with the birth of a baby named Jesus.

Jesus is source of all there was, is and is to come. Jesus is the Word that brought forth creation. Jesus is the Messiah. And eventually, he will also be the One crucified, risen from the dead and exalted to God in heaven. And later still he shall come again in glory to judge both the living and the dead.

Jesus is all of that and more. And yet in the stillness of that night, he came to us in the vulnerable and lovely form of a baby. The fullness of God chose to be made flesh in the particulars of a little baby born to parents of modest means in a backwater of the Roman Empire. The embodiment of God in human flesh is amazing enough. God had no need to highlight it by choosing an important, famous or rich person to do it. 

On the contrary, the nativity story as it is told to us by the evangelist Luke shows clearly how God loves the humble, the simple and even the marginalized.

Mary and Joseph come from a small village in Galilee. Joseph is a craftsman not a wealthy merchant or landowner. They are not important or prominent people.

God chooses to come to us in the precarity of a temporary dwelling for Mary and Joseph, a simple Bethlehem building shared with animals. 

And God chooses to announce the glory of the incarnation to simple shepherds, a reviled group in the society of their time. Shepherds were regarded as dishonorable because they were not home at night to protect their family. And they were considered of dubious morality since they let their flocks graze regardless of property boundaries.

Yet it is to these lowliest of lowlies that God chooses to announce the birth of the Savior. Angels and shepherds are celebrating together. Heaven and earth are rejoicing in wonderment. 

The birth of Jesus Christ shows us the humility of our God and God’s solidarity with all of humanity. God cares for the poor and simple. God’s glory is found among them. Let us not forget that when our Christmas celebrations recede into fond memories of great food and gift-giving.

*****

But the advent of Jesus, the arrival of Christ does not limit itself to an historical event in occupied Palestine twenty centuries ago. 

The very good news of tonight is that the advent of Jesus is a continuing event that happens in each one of us as we continue our journey with God and towards God. 

As announced, the advent of Jesus will happen again when he will manifest himself to us at a time unknown, when we will all, living and dead, be transformed by self-knowledge, deep acceptance of our reality and a more total embrace with God. 

This is to happen at some time in the future. We do not know when. We don’t need to know when. Good and bad will be fully revealed and Jesus will again be with us in the flesh.  It is a promise our God has made to us and it is coming.

And then, there is now, the in-between time. The time of already and not yet. Jesus has already lived, died and risen from the dead in our historical time.  And Jesus has not yet returned to us in glory.

This in-between time is where we live and love and die. And Christ himself promised to be with us in that in-between time. In Matthew’s account of Jesus’ post-resurrection meeting with the disciples, he tells them: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:20b).

So how is Jesus here with us today, now, in this very instant and in this very place? It is not only in the representation of baby Jesus in the creche; although that is a lovely way of making visible and tangible a presence which otherwise often eludes us.

There are four ways in which we may experience Emmanuel, God among us, tonight.

One is to look around you. Please give a friendly glance to your neighbors. They may be strangers, they may be friends or loved ones; no matter. Each one of them is a manifestation of the Divine in your life. You may not readily see it, but in our daily dealings with one another, we are invited into Christ among us.

Two, if it feels good, close your eyes for a few moments and focus on your inner being. The life within you, is also a manifestation of God among us. If you take time for prayer or meditation on a regular basis, you know that a sense of the divine can be glimpsed there at times. 

And if you’ve done prayer or meditation often enough, you know that the Divine presence is at work within us whether we glimpse it or not. God is never absent from you. Even if you don’t feel present to God; God is there anyway, closer to you than your very breath.

Three, God wants to give godself to you through the sacrament of creation. Nothing that the Creator initiated is absent from the grace of God. The material world also manifests aspects of the divine Love. Even the work of humanity’s hands participates of this divine momentum towards revealing what Teilhard de Chardin referred to as the Cosmic Christ.

So Jesus - God - is with us here today, manifested in each other, in ourselves and in both the ordinariness and awesomeness of creation.

And last but not least, Jesus gave his life that we may receive mercy, life abundant and love overflowing. It may be hard to imagine when we celebrate baby Jesus’ coming to us in human flesh tonight. But at the end of his historical presence amongst us, Jesus gave us a visible sign of his ongoing flowing grace for us in life and beyond death. 

And this visible sign, this sacrament is the Eucharist, the bread and wine that we will soon get to share as Jesus’ flesh and blood. When we come forward for the Eucharist, we reinforce our willingness to be part of Christ in the world. When we receive the consecrated bread and wine we incorporate Christ into us and us into Christ. Christ is receiving you into his cosmic body.

*****

Tonight, let us rejoice on God’s generosity in sharing his Son.  For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life (John 3:16).

And let us remember that Jesus is with us always to the end of times. Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors! (Luke 2:14)

Merry Christmas!

Advent 4 C - Dec 20, 2015

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Peter Rostron, OHC
Advent 4 C - Sunday, December 20, 2015

Micah 5:2-5a
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)

The Visitation

I’ve been struck over the past three weeks by the severity of some of the readings we’ve heard here at the monastery during Matins and the Eucharist. It’s been like an ongoing one-two punch for me: the prophets at church and then Donald Trump in the news. John the Baptist warned about trees being cut down and thrown into the fire. Jesus spoke of distress among nations and of people fainting from fear and foreboding for what is coming upon the world. Isaiah told of a voice, crying out in the wilderness. A voice, as I imagined it, that was filled with urgency and yearning and anguish. There was, in particular, one reading, from the prophet Amos, that grabbed my attention. I’ll share a bit of it with you.

“Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light; as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear; or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall, and was bitten by a snake...I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.”

Amos spoke this message almost 3000 years ago, so it can’t possibly apply to us, can it? But I’m increasingly afraid that it does.

I look around, and I see a world filled with material excess and enticing advertisements and numbing distractions. Distractions that help us avoid looking at all the real pain and suffering and injustice that exists. A world, as Amos described, that we have filled with festivals and solemn assemblies and the noise of songs. I have been lamenting, also, how much our perceptions, our desires, and our choices can be so heavily influenced by superficial, appealing packaging, by what looks good on TV or online or on the shelf at the store. How much our opinions and beliefs can be so heavily influenced by the attractively packaged words of a newspaper, a blog, or a captivating politician. Our society seems fueled by a desire for quick, easy, off-the-shelf, feel-good solutions and entertainments. What we like, how we behave, what we wear, what we buy, what we believe - is too often the product of a bombardment of seductive advertising and images. We are at risk of our selves becoming defined purely by outside inputs and losing our own inner, grounded, holy selves. The world seems to be on very shaky ground these days.

There was an interesting opinion piece in the Washington Post a few weeks ago by Anne Applebaum in which she talked about the terrible damage done to democratic debate and civilized discussion by our reliance on the Internet for news and our immersion in various forms of social media. She wrote, “Nevermind that Donald Trump’s claim that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheered the collapse of the World Trade Center is false; it is now possible to live in a virtual reality where Trump’s lies are acclaimed as the hidden truth that the mainstream media have concealed from the masses. The long-term impact of such disinformation is profound: it creates cynicism and apathy. Eventually it means nobody believes anything. People aren’t bothered by Trump’s lies or Vladimir Putins’ lies or the Islamic State’s lies because they don’t believe anything they read anymore. It’s impossible to know what’s true.” Shaky ground, indeed.

But finally, I find some relief upon hearing today’s gospel, welcoming Mary into my Advent experience. After a steady stream of harsh words from the prophets, I at last feel some hope and solid truth in Mary. Her world, like ours, was fraught and dangerous, and she was faced with an unsettling and risky decision, as we often are. She could have played it safe and stuck to the social script of the time, conforming to her role as Joseph’s young betrothed, and simply said “No” to God. “Maybe someone else would be a better choice, God.” Or, “Maybe later, God, after Joseph and I have gotten married and settled down.” But, she said “Yes.” She chose to trust in God, to turn herself completely over to God’s truth, to not succumb to fear, to step, in faith, into the unknown.

And just after making this great decision, she spent three long months visiting with her cousin, Elizabeth. To connect deeply, not just exchange text messages. To share her joy, no doubt, but also to share her anxiety. To find comfort with a friend and to have the companionship of a woman who also was pregnant. Imagine those two together. Both had very good reasons to be anxious and fearful. Mary had been visited by an angel, Gabriel, as had Elizabeth’s husband, Zechariah, who told them of surprising things that were about to happen, and to not be afraid. Right! I suspect both Mary and Elizabeth were quite afraid. Mary, wondering how her husband Joseph might react, what might happen to their planned marriage, what could happen to her if she ended up an unwed young woman with child. And, what this child might bring. And Elizabeth, barren and older in years, suddenly and unexpectedly pregnant, who had been in seclusion for five months with a husband who had been struck mute. Yet, they had each other - and more. The Holy Spirit was with them, having come upon Mary and through Mary to Elizabeth and to her child, John, who leaped in her womb. In a way, I can see this as a beginning of the church: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit present where two or three have gathered together. What an amazing scene, an amazing focal point of God’s power there in that small house with Mary and Elizabeth and Jesus and John.

And there is in that scene great hope for us, today, too. We, as they, live in troubled times. The prophets had repeatedly warned Mary’s ancestors, the people Israel, of their sinful ways, as they continued to turn away from the Lord. They would return, and God would forgive, but it happened again and again. And our situation seems no better. Mary and Elizabeth lived under the weight of imperial domination, and we have our own, 21st-century version of forces with great wealth and power oppressing many of us. Amos’s words do ring true today. But, in the midst of the mess, across time, sits Mary. Through her, God became human to save us. Through her, we have Christ with us, within us. Even so, with Mary as our inspiration we still have to say “Yes.” Like Mary and Elizabeth, we must join together and offer each other our mutual love and support and comfort. Like Jesus, we must be free of the seductions and false securities of the world and do the hard work of living out God’s will for us. We must reach out to the tax collectors and prostitutes and Pharisees, the citizens and prisoners being mistreated by our criminal justice system, the immigrants being vilified by our leaders, the foreign peoples being killed and maimed by our bombs, our own friends and neighbors being left without adequate food or shelter or health care.

Ultimately, I believe humanity will encounter the day of the Lord. We will celebrate Christmas in just a few days, but Jesus’s birth is ongoing. He is being born within us, and God’s kingdom is coming, slowly but surely, in God’s time. It may be, as Amos said, that the day of the Lord will be darkness, not light, but that is because it won’t be - it is not now - easy. As we heard just this morning in the Revelation to John, birth pangs can be agony. There is evil in the world, and it won’t go quietly; it is systemic evil. We are called to feed the poor and visit the prisoner, but we must go further and work to eliminate poverty and create true “justice.” In the Magnificat, Mary says God has done great things for her, God’s lowly servant. And that, in his mercy, God will do good things for all who are hungry and lowly, forever, in fulfillment of his promise to the entire family of Abraham. Which means us. Even Amos, after all his harsh words, concluded, Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream. So, let us say “Yes” and know that after the darkness, there will be light. And know that Mary is our companion in the birthing of Christ.