In the name of the one God, who is Lover, Beloved, and Love Overflowing. Amen.
Three years ago, on Christmas Eve, my grandmother died. I remember so clearly the upward tilt of her face as if she were lying in anticipation. Her mouth gaped open, and her breath was ragged. Her entire being in that moment was need, wanting, and expectation. I held her soft hand in mine. I matched my breathing to hers, and I tried to make my whole being a kind of waiting, like hers was in that moment. I yearned and labored, with her, as much as I could, for the release that was not only death—though it was certainly that—but that was also birth. In those last moments of her life, she was both the Holy Mother whose name she shared, groaning in labor pains; and also the promised child, coming into the world.
That moment of waiting, yearning, and laboring with my grandmother is forever fused for me with the coming of the Messiah at Christmas. And that moment, poignant and sad and even joyful in its way, adds color, depth, and meaning to this most holy festival. Because this is the truth our faith and my life have taught me: that in the midst of life we are in death, and that in the midst of death, we are in life.
In the midst of the deepest darkness, when hope seems furthest, and the night as long as it could be, when despair beckons and sorrow threatens, that is the moment God comes to us, comes to us as a little human child, powerless, defenseless, threatened, and exiled. And also lovely, trusting, and tender, and beautiful. Comes to us, in weakness and love and vulnerability to save and deliver us from the world we have created.
Leonard Cohen writes,
“I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere.”
I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere.
Why should our salvation look like a refugee baby, born far from home, defenseless and crowded in among the animals, surrounded, not by beautiful greenery and poinsettias, like our lovely crèche, but by the stink and mess of a stable?
God comes to us in this guise of vulnerability and need to show us how to be free. To show us that to be filled with the whole presence of God, as Jesus was, is to be perfectly, fully human, which is also to say perfectly, fully in need of tenderness, care, and love and perfectly, fully built for trust and mutuality and union. Like a little child.
Thomas Merton writes of the true self that
“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives […]. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. […] It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. […] I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.” {1}
It is this nothingness, this absolute poverty that the Christ child models for us at Christmas. God, it would seem, is not particularly interested in great acts of power, in the destruction of empires and the humiliation of those people with whom we disagree. Nor, it would seem, is God interested in our becoming those invulnerable, perfectly put together people we think we would be if only we got rid of our pain, our shame, and those parts of us we find least acceptable.
Perhaps what we see as darkness, is really, in God’s sight, the other side of light. Perhaps sorrow and joy are most truly themselves when joined together. As if the pairing of these seeming opposites reveals their deeper unity, reveals that love must be shattered to be known everywhere, reveals that our poverty is God’s glory, reveals that God must be human for humanity to be freed from its enslavement to power and greed.
For, if we could become again like that little child Jesus, crying for his mother’s milk, if we could become all need once more, like my grandmother on her deathbed, stripped of all politeness, then we could cry out to God for the mercy that is ever flowing around us, that embraces and sustains us in every moment of every day. Then our poverty and our indigence would no longer seem to us shameful or ugly, but rather the very source of our total dependence on God. And in the revelation of our true faces in the pure light of our poverty, God’s mercy would shine in and through us like a blazing sun to light and warm this hurting world.
God greets us, moment by moment, from the other side of sorrow and despair with a love so vast and shattered it can reach us everywhere. We have only to cry out in our need, to grab hold of the Divine Mother and nurse and be fed. And to revel in the love and glory of a God who would becomes human to show us how to be free.
Amen.
{1} Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
Advent 4 C - Sunday, December 16, 2018
Our lesson today recounts the Visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth. It makes both of them prophetesses of the great things God will bring about. Those great things will come in the life, death and resurrection of a little boy who is growing in the womb of Mary.
Mary’s prophecy comes in the shape of the Magnificat. This new testament canticle features prominently in every office of Vespers we sing here a the monastery. This song of Mary is a constant reminder of the work of God in the world, and therefore our mission in the world.
The Magnificat is of course a song of praise to the glory of God. But it is also a revolutionary song and a socioeconomic manifesto. By its sheer repetition in our monastic life, we can come to neglect those aspects of the Magnificat. A conscious re-appraisal of this gem is in order.
*****
But first, let’s look at the circumstances of the Magnificat. The Song of Mary is uttered by an out-of-wedlock pregnant teenager. For this prophecy of what God is about, God chose a poor servant girl from a provincial backwater of the empire, with dark skin and dark brown eyes and dark hair to be the mother of Jesus.
And she sings her song of praise in answer to an older cousin’s greeting. A cousin who was hitherto considered barren and whose husband priest is dumbstruck into a temporary silence of the patriarchy.
Mary and Elizabeth are two marginal people in their society. And yet it is they who are announcing the world-changing coming of God’s justice, to be born in a brown-skinned little baby.
In God’s choice of her prophetesses, God has already marked a preferential option for the poor; poor in power, poor in resources, poor in status.
*****
Mary starts by glorifying God. She expresses her awe for God’s being and her joy at God’s doings. Her whole being is engaged in this rejoicing. "My soul magnifies the Lord, an my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior!" We can’t help but be uplifted by her devotion and join her in singing that God is awesome!
Next, Mary expresses her amazement at God choosing a lowly servant for God’s mission. God didn’t choose a queen; God didn’t choose a millionaire; God didn’t chose a celebrated bride with status. She chose a poor servant girl from the backwaters.
Mary acknowledges her exaltation. God has chosen her to be the mother the Savior. All generations will count her blessed.
Then Mary spends most of her song describing the way God is in general. This general character of God accounts for why she has treated her the way she has in her lowliness and thus leads her to rejoice and magnify the Mighty One.
And this character portrait of God paints a great reversal of fortune.
*****
Mary sings what God is really like. God is not the least impressed by any of our pride, power, or opulence. She has mercy on those who are in awe of God. God favors those who humble themselves. She cares for those who turn from the ego boosting accumulation of wealth to the lowliness of self-denial for the sake of others.
Listen to the five important verbs in this part of the Magnificat. Mary tells us that God regards or respects the poor, exalts the poor, feeds the poor, helps the poor, remembers the poor.
Those verbs are in the past tense in the Magnificat but they need to be in the future tense in our lives. God has done a lot of this already. But as the hands and feet of God in the world, we need to continue the mission. We need to undertake being lovers of the poor for God’s sake.
*****
The Song of Mary is a revolutionary bombshell because it turns the values of this world upside down. The poor are important, not so much the rich and mighty. Mary is announcing what her Son will be about.
Do you remember what Jesus said in his first sermon in the gospel of Luke? A first sermon reveals what is important to a person. In his first sermon in Luke, Jesus chose to read from Isaiah and said,
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
And Jesus added:
‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’
You see, prisons have always been filled with poor people, and that is true today. Do a sociological study of our prisons and you will find our prisons filled with poor people. In his first sermon, Jesus is passionately concerned about poor people, and poor people are often found in prison or fighting wars for the rich.
Do you remember the beatitudes in Luke? Do you remember the first beatitude in Luke, his first blessing? Jesus said,
‘Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.’
The poor get the kingdom of God. They understand their utter need of God. And they receive the kingdom.
We know that rich people don’t need God very much, because rich people are usually busy living life to the fullest and don’t have time for God.
*****
But Luke’s motif of God’s reversal of fortunes is not intended to raise violent resistance or to drive the wealthy and powerful to despair.
Hopefully, the well-off feel exhorted to deal with their wealth in a way that brings them into a positive relation with the poor in order to partake in the same promised salvation.
God’s revolution is not a violent one but it announces an entirely different way of being stewards of the Earth. What would the laws governing our economy look like if they were written with the Magnificat in mind?
How can we support those kinds of socioeconomic transformation in our lives? Do we vote for people who stand for that kind of society? Do we spend our resources (time, money and prayer) in a way that supports the poor?
The Magnificat announces a revolutionary Jesus. Come Lord Jesus, come!
Amen.
Br. Josép Reinaldo Martínez-Cubero, OHC
Advent 3 C - Sunday, December 16, 2018
Today is the Third Sunday of Advent, traditionally called Gaudete Sunday or Rejoice Sunday. The name is taken from today’s second lesson from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice” The reading from the prophet Zephaniah also calls for shouts of joy: “Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!” And in the lectionary, for today, there is also a canticle (not included in this liturgy) with the words of the prophet Isaiah calling people to sing praises and ring out their joy, for the great one in the midst of them is the Holy One of Israel.
But, ah, today we also have our gospel lesson with John the Grouch Baptist. "You brood of vipers!" he shouts. "Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance." According to the Gospel of Luke, great crowds streamed into the desert to get yelled at by John. Why? Well, a clue in the gospel passage is the question they ask at the conclusion of John’s sermon. "What should we do?" That's not a question people ask when things are going well. It's the question we might ask when we've come to the end of our rope, or when what we have thought to be wisdom has failed. It's what we ask when we are desperate. "What should we do?"
What did the crowds think such a character as John, ascetic, rough, dressed in camel’s hair, an appearance that bespeaks the margins, would say in answer to their question? Abandon your homes and families? Dwell in the desert? Start a revolution? Oh, no. The answer he gave is much more radical than that. To the tax collectors, he said, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." To the soldiers: "Don't extort money by threats or false accusations; be satisfied with your wages." In other words, he tells them to go home. He points them to the very places in which they already live, and work, and suggests that these places are precisely where God calls them to be, and where God is at work in them, and through them.
So the message for us is to stop escaping, and insisting God is somewhere else. God is present. God is here, amid our imperfections and failings, blessing our efforts to reflect God’s love, and claiming us as God’s own, even when we fall short. John calls us to inhabit the stuff of our lives as deeply and as generously as we can. Our Messiah is closer than we think. We are to inhabit our lives, no matter how plain or obscure or unglamorous or difficult. And why? Well, because the holy ground that matters most is the ground beneath our feet.
Holiness is not the ethereal and mysterious thing we tend to make it. If we're willing to look closely, if we're willing to believe that nothing in our lives is too mundane or secular for God, then we'll understand that all the possibilities for salvation we need are embedded in the lives God has already given us. We don't have to look "out there." The reign of God is here, within and among us. God meets us where we are, accepts us as we are, and makes good use of us to care for (NOT take care of) those around us. John, in this gospel lesson, challenges us to right relationship not only with God, but also with our neighbors because, really, that is the only way to be in right relationship with God. So bearing fruits worthy of repentance has to do with how we are living out God’s love with each other.
John concludes his sermon in the wilderness with a harrowing description of the coming Messiah: "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." The Gospel writer calls John's exhortation "good news." My first reaction to that was: “Say what??” How is the portrait of a Messiah who judges, sorts, and burns us good news? After much pondering, I decided to look up the word “judgment” in the dictionary. I was shocked, and enlightened. Synonyms for “judgment” include discernment, acuity, and perception. We can think of judging something as seeing it clearly, or knowing it as it truly is.
Perhaps John is saying that the Messiah who is coming really sees us, and knows us at our very core. Perhaps the winnowing fork is an instrument of love, wielded by the One who discerns in us rich harvests still hidden by chaff. It is by surrendering to God every part of our lives that we consent to God to separate all that is destructive from all that is good, beautiful, and priceless in us. Perhaps this Messiah who is coming to save us is actually coming from within us. All we have to do is take responsibility for our actions and our lives.
To conclude, I’ll share an interesting thing I learned recently. John the Baptist is the patron saint of spiritual joy. That’s right, John the Grouch Baptist. It makes sense. He was still in his mother’s womb when he first leapt at the presence of Mary and Jesus. When it came time for him to “decrease” and for Jesus to “increase,” he did so willingly, saying, “…my joy has been fulfilled.” Clearly, John understood something unyielding about joy. Joy is not just happiness, but as my Spiritual Director reminded me recently, joy needs sadness, and heartbreak to be complete. Joy will cost us. We are to bear fruits worthy of repentance, yes, bear fruits, as in bring them forth, but also, bear them, as in carry them, shoulder them, endure them. Gaudete! ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+
