A Time of Refinement

One of the images of God in scripture is that of a refiner. For example, God says in the Book of Zechariah (13:8), “I will refine them as silver is refined.” The beginning of a new year is a good time to follow God’s example and refine our own understanding, assumptions, and intentions.

Our study of scripture shows how human understanding of what God desires of us has evolved. How many animals have been sacrificed throughout history as an offering to God? Yet in Isaiah 1:11, God says, "The multitude of your sacrifices—what are they to me? I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.” What does God ask of us instead? “Make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow” (Is 1:17).

The writer L.P. Hartley said, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” We need to be willing to examine our habits, practices, and customs, refining them to keep what has proved life giving and relinquishing what does not lead us to love God with our whole being and love our neighbor as ourselves.

Living in the midst of a pandemic this past year has been akin to being in the refiner’s fire—many of our past desires and practices have been burned away, revealing what is really of value: eating and celebrating with family and friends, expressing affection through touch, gathering to pray in places of worship and study in schools, tending personally to the needs of the ill and elderly, and mourning the dead with each other. Our painful period of refinement will bear fruit if we make these experiences a priority and change our lives accordingly instead of seeking to resume our former habits and patterns in the midst of a world that is being made new.

The Vulnerable Face of God

During the Christmas season we see a lot of icons, especially relating to Mary and Joseph traveling by donkey to Bethlehem and the infant Jesus lying in a manger. The word “icon” comes to us from the Greek word “eikenai,” meaning “to seem or to be like.” Another name for Jesus is Emmanuel, “God with us,” so in a sense Jesus is an icon of God, showing us what God is like.

It is interesting then, isn’t it, that the first quality we see of God in Jesus is vulnerability? While he was still in the womb, Jesus experienced along with his parents the vulnerability of travel — the threats of being waylaid by robbers or bad weather and the uncertainty of being able to find lodging. Then there was the vulnerability that accompanies birthing and the total helplessness of a newborn infant, followed by the vulnerability to the tyranny of a king who was determined to wipe out any potential rivals.

Perhaps one reason God chose to come to earth as an infant is so we can learn to recognize God’s presence in all people who are vulnerable in our world, especially those still in the womb, children, people who are fleeing from tyranny and violence, families living in poverty, and elders who have fragile bodies and minds. Are we willing to let those who carry God’s vulnerability within them suffer from want and fear? If not, we need to find a way to advocate for them through use of our time, treasure, or talent, and pray that someday someone will do the same for us when we are ill, in danger, or in our elder years.

God’s appearance as an infant reflects the wisdom that it is in vulnerability, rather than power, where we find solidarity with and compassion for each other. For example, our universal vulnerability to the COVID-19 virus crosses lines of power and privilege and unites us in our human fragility. May it also lead us into a new age of compassion so we too, like Jesus, can be icons of our compassionate God.

Hosanna In the Highest

I sit near the Advent wreath in our Choir Chapel, opposite the stained glass window that includes symbols of the prayer life of a Benedictine. I noticed that the swinging censer in the window is perfectly framed by two of the candles on the Advent wreath. How appropriate, to celebrate the birth of Emmanuel with joyful prayer and praise! In a breathtaking act of humility and love, God has come to earth as one of us, to experience our life, offer guidance and healing, and give us a share in his divinity; what could be more wonderful than that?

Then I noticed a station of the cross image on the other side of the wreath where Jesus has fallen under the weight of his cross. He experienced a painful consequence of being human when his message of love threatened the power of political and religious leaders and he was condemned to death.

For Jesus, as for all of us, birth and the cross are linked. The birth of a baby is generally greeted with celebration, but we all carry the cross of our flesh that inevitably leads to death. The good news we celebrate at Christmas is that God is with us in all of it—birth, death, everything in between, and everything to come after we are resurrected in Christ. Therefore, as we celebrate Christmas, it is right to meditate on the following prayer, known as Eucharistic prayer II:

“It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father, creator of the world and source of all life. For you never forsake the works of your wisdom, but by your providence are even now at work in our midst. With mighty hand and outstretched arm you led your people Israel through the desert. Now, as your Church makes her pilgrim journey in the world, you always accompany her by the power of the Holy Spirit and lead her along the paths of time to the eternal joy of your Kingdom, through Christ our Lord. And so, with the angels and saints, we, too, sing the hymn of your glory, as without end we acclaim:

“Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts.
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.”

Entertaining God's New Ideas

Thank goodness Mary of Nazareth didn’t have misocainea, or Jesus wouldn’t have been born!

“Misocainea” means “a hatred of new ideas” (from Greek “miso” [hate] + “cainea” [new]). And boy, did God have a new idea for Mary: she, a virgin, would give birth to God’s son, the long-awaited Messiah! Most young women would have disdain for such a proposition, and naturally so; pregnancy before marriage would bring shame on her and her family and disrupt her own plans to be wed and have a conventional family. Yet Mary was willing to entertain God’s idea and agreed to be God’s partner in bringing it to fruition. In doing so, she changed the course of human history.

Scripture offers the story of another person, Zachariah, who did have misocainea. When the angel Gabriel announced to Zachariah that his barren wife Elizabeth would bear a son, Zachariah doubted that this new idea was possible and asked for proof before he would believe what Gabriel had to say. As a result of his unwillingness to entertain this new idea, he became deaf and dumb until his child was born.

John Foley notes of Zachariah, “This kind of doubt should never have occurred to him. God's voice had already spoken love into his heart throughout his whole life…. His trust in God’s promise should have been the deepest meaning of his existence. In this sense, Zechariah was already deaf and mute when the Angel spoke to him! He could not receive the words (so was deaf), and therefore would not be able to tell his wife, Elizabeth (so was mute).”

People who hate new ideas (likely because they didn’t come up with these ideas themselves) are deaf to the possibilities God offers us. They reject the God who says with love, “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29: 11).

If we listen and incline the ear of our heart, as St. Benedict instructs, we will be familiar with God’s voice and trust the new ideas that God proposes. As in so many things, Mary is a model for us in this regard, and hearing her Annunciation story in Advent primes us to be alert for the annunciations of new ideas in our own lives.

Advent Remembrance

The writer of Psalm 25 begs God, “Do not remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions” and in the next breath pleads “In your gracious love remember me, because of your goodness, O Lord.” It appears that the psalmist is hoping that God will have selective amnesia!

“Amnesia” comes from the Greek word amnestia, which means “forgetfulness, oblivion, deliberate overlooking of past offenses.” As I learned in my Psalms class with Sr. Irene Nowell, when God remembers (makes present), then something happens. We don’t want God to remember our transgressions, for the something we fear will happen is that we will be cut off from the goodness of life with God. And what about when God remembers God loves us? Then a very big something happens, as when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

During Advent, we plead in the psalms and in music for God to remember us, which is rather ironic, for as God assures us in Isaiah 49:15, “Can a mother forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you.” No, it is we, not God, we are afflicted with amnesia; it is we who forget God, not God who forgets us. Advent is a time for us to wake up to the presence of God who is always with us. The baby Jesus who takes center stage in our Christmas creche reminds us of God-with-us, but after the creche is packed away, we need to ensure we don’t fall into a state of amnesia until Christmas rolls around again or until a crisis causes us to cry out, “God, remember me!”

In Our Advent Mist

The other day as I listened to a reading from Scripture, it sounded like the reader said “God is in our mist” instead of “God is in our midst.” As it turn out, both statements are true!

I believe that God is in our midst when we are living in a mist of uncertainty, fear, confusion, or grief. We can’t see clearly when we are in these states; as with trees on a foggy morning, we sense a presence but can’t quite make it out. In a sense, we are “misty eyed,” and when our eyes are no longer teary or clouded, we can see that God was there all along. As it says in Isaiah 41:10, “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you; I will uphold you with my righteous hand.” Further, Psalm 38:10 proclaims, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

Advent is a particularly misty season; we are aware that Christ has come, but we haven’t yet seen the fullness or clarity of Christ who is in our midst. Advent in the year 2020 is even foggier than normal because so many people in the world are dealing with the hardships and losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, when we can be present to others who are in a fog as God is present to us, the image of Christ starts coming into greater focus.

In Dickens’ story A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge said, “I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year.” To be Christ for one another in the mists of life is perhaps the best way to honor Christmas and keep it all the year.

 

Stretched By God

This year the Advent theme chosen by my former parish in St. Louis, St. Cronan Church, is “Stretched by God.” I have found it helpful to contemplate this concept.

In all our Advent scripture readings, we see people being stretched. John the Baptist is called out of his comfort zone as an ascetic in the desert to become a prophet who calls people to repentance and prepares the way for Jesus. When Zachariah, John’s father, is struck dumb before John’s birth, he is stretched beyond his limited understanding to trust in the mystery of God’s ways. Elizabeth and Mary have their very bodies stretched by pregnancy, and their identities are expanded to include the role of mother. Joseph is stretched by the call to look beyond the strictures of Jewish law when Mary is found to be pregnant before marriage, and he is asked to take on a new identity as a foster father.

In this year of the COVID-19 pandemic, alll of us have been stretched in ways we couldn’t have imagined. Forget about being clay—it feels more like we are Silly Putty as we reimagine the way we work, go to school, worship, shop, interact with people outside our immediate family, grieve and bury our dead, and celebrate holidays. Most of us resist being stretched to such an extent, but the poet Rainer Maria Rilke offers an interesting perspective in his book Letters to a Young Poet:

“Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don’t know that work they are accomplishing within you?”

The stretching we are experiencing is accomplishing a work within us that we aren’t able to see yet. We are called to trust that it will bear fruit as we become more creative, resilient, accustomed to living with less, experienced in new ways of prayer, and attentive to the needs of the people we live with. Living in a pandemic and letting God into your life are both a stretch, but resistance leads to suffering and loss of richness compared with the growth we experience when we flow with life’s realities and mysteries.

The Surprising Places Where God Dwells

I recently learned that our bodies include tiny pockets or gaps of empty space between cells that are called “synapses.” Synapses are the means by which nerve cells pass signals to other cells. The word “synapse” is from the Greek “synapsis,” meaning “conjunction,” or “to fasten together.”

I believe it is in our synapses, the empty spaces within each of us, where God dwells. From that vantage point, God facilitates communication, both among the cells of our body and among persons we encounter outside ourselves, thus helping us create relationships and community. Why would God do this? Jesus told us that God is in relationship with Christ and the Spirit within the Trinity, and I believe God wants us to have the experience of relationship as well. Jesus certainly affirmed this supposition when he said that the greatest commandments are to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. It’s all about relationship.

From a spiritual perspective, we can consider the importance of having empty spaces within us where God can dwell and facilitate our interactions. If those empty spaces make us uncomfortable and we attempt to fill them with “stuff,” we are effectively closing ourselves off from life—from being “fastened together” within ourselves, as well as with God and others.

In Advent, we are given a model of a person who was able to maintain space within herself through contemplation—Mary, who was quiet enough to sense God’s action within her and affirm that she wanted to be in relationship with Jesus, God’s son who was also to be her son. Mary has been given many titles over the years, but perhaps we should add another one to the list: Our Lady of the Synapse.

 

 

Looking Beyond Appearances

During the second week of Advent at Mount St. Scholastica, we chant the following invitatory at morning prayer:

A branch shall grow from the root of Jesse
The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him

In art, as in the stained glass windows in our choir chapel, the root of Jesse is usually depicted as a tree stump. I’m especially aware of tree stumps this year because I see so many of them on my daily walks, as we have had to cut down more than 30 dead trees on our grounds this fall.

It is sad to observe all these tree stumps when I consider the beauty of the trees that once stood there. Similarly, the people of Israel longed for the glory days of the son of Jesse, King David, who was a mighty warrior and provided an era of peace and prosperity for his people that was unmatched by his descendents.

Our tree stumps appear to be dead, just as Jesse’s line appeared to be weakened and decayed when his descendents failed to maintain the relationship with God that David enjoyed. However, a closer look shows that tree stumps are still connected through their roots to nearby trees, providing nutrients and adding stability to the soil. Similarly, Jesse’s line was not yet dead, for God raised Jesus from among Jesse’s descendents. Like David, Jesus had a special relationship with God, and the Spirit of the Lord rested upon him.

The second week of Advent gives us hope, then, that God can bring new life out of what appears to be dead, even the seemingly dead places within us. This new life comes from grafting ourselves onto the life of Christ, who invites us to feed from his rootedness in God and thus branch out into new life.

Be Here Now

Benedictines take a vow of stability, which is an especially handy practice during the first week of Advent, when we are encouraged to be watchful and alert. How does stability help us stay alert? Christine Valtners Paintner shed some light on this phenomenon when she said:

“Moving about from place to place can be a form of distraction…. We do this in our minds as well; even when the body is still, we let our minds carry us far back into the past or the future.”

Before I read this quote, I hadn’t connected mindfulness, or being present to the present moment, with stability. Yet being where we are includes body, mind, and spirit; when we are preoccupied with reliving hurtful or happy moments or anticipating dreaded or dreamed about events, we are not practicing stability —that is, we are not grounded where we are this very moment.

Now, what does that have to do with being watchful and alert? When our mind is elsewhere, we are not alert to what is happening now, so we can easily miss the ways God is currently present to us. As Jacob said in Genesis 28: 16 after awakening from a dream, “The Lord is here! He is in this place, and I didn’t know it!”

Sr. Imogene Baker, OSB, taught the value of stability when she said, “Be where you are and do what you’re doing!” Her advice can help us be watchful and alert for God’s coming not just during Advent but every day we awaken from sleep. Then we can join our ancestor Jacob in saying, “The Lord is here! He is in this place!” without needing to add, “And I didn’t know it!”

 

God In Our Mist

Several months ago, I took a walk on a foggy morning that seemingly transported me to another world. Landmarks I was accustomed to seeing had vanished and my perspective shifted as trees suddenly emerged from the gray shroud that enveloped the land. My senses were heightened by the shape shifting that was occurring along my path.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, this walk was preparing me for the season of Advent. As Jesus said in the Gospel reading for the first Sunday in Advent, “Be watchful! Be alert!” (Mk 13:33). Certainly, humans can’t be on high alert all the time or we would be nervous wrecks, like people on a perpetual caffeine high. However, walking in the fog reveals a gentler way of being alert, as Christine Valtner Paintner observes:

“…fog…is so much like life. We really can only see a few steps ahead of ourselves. All we can do is put one foot in front of another and pay attention to what is revealed in the mist before us.”

Jesus spoke about being prepared for the return of the “Lord of the House”; in our case, our challenge is to be alert to the presence of God who is already with us. Each day the mist parts for us and, if we are watchful, we can see God’s encouragement in the person who offers us a kind word, God’s compassion in the one who listens to us as we describe our struggles, or God’s delight when we contemplate a beautiful piece of art.

It’s not like we don’t have the foggiest notion of what to do. What Jesus asks is really quite simple: “What I say to you, I say to all: Watch!” (Mk 13:37). The challenge is in training ourselves to be watchful for God among us. It might help to post a note where we will see it in the morning; “Be watchful! Be alert!” Then, as we contemplate our day before retiring at night, we can make a point to consider, “How did I encounter God today?” This practice can help us stay attentive so we don’t miss our daily opportunities to light upon our God who is always present and yet—like a tree in fog—often inconspicuous.