Jesus Is Coming

Once I got a Christmas card from a friend with a decorative stamp on the back of the envelope that said, “Jesus is coming. Look busy!”

Being busy as we anticipate our celebration of the birth of Jesus isn’t a problem for most of us, as the days before Christmas are filled with cooking and baking, house cleaning, decorating, buying and wrapping gifts, organizing or attending holiday get-togethers and events, and practices for the choir or other liturgical ministries. There’s no need to look busy, because we are busy!

I have yet to see a stamp that says, “Jesus is coming. Be still!” It’s not that Christ doesn’t appear to busy people — it’s just that people who are still are more likely to notice Christ’s presence. In stillness, we observe the random acts of kindness that occur around us every day. In stillness, we see Christ’s manifestation in the sunset or in an evergreen tree. In stillness, we hear God say, “Do not be afraid; I am with you.”

Jesus himself was often busy during his years of public ministry with the demands of healing and preaching. Serving others necessarily entails a certain amount of busyness. However, the gospels tell us that Jesus also frequently withdrew to a quiet place to be still and totally present to the Father, who guided and sustained him.

Jesus is coming. Let us celebrate, both in the bustle of our communal life with others and in the stillness of our heart where we hear God whisper our name — “Beloved.” 

Heartening Acts of Kindness

The woman who cuts my hair doesn’t talk much while she works, so my attention tends to drift to the conversations going on between other stylists and their customers. Yesterday, across the room, a fashionable stylist with a mass of red ringlets cascading down her back was chatting with the elderly woman whose hair she was cutting when the woman’s husband arrived to pick her up. He was a bit stooped, had a lined face, and was dressed in well-worn jeans — perhaps a retired farmer or mechanic, I speculated.

Interestingly, the stylist called him over and gave him instructions about how to curl his wife’s hair; he obediently picked up the curling iron and followed her directions to curl over or under in the front and on the sides. The woman joked with her husband, “I would have had her cut the sides shorter, but you say I have big ears!” When it came time to leave and the woman struggled to transfer from the hairdresser’s chair to a wheelchair, I realized she was nearly blind. “I’d rather lose my hearing than my sight,” the stylist commented. “I would too,” the woman replied, “but you learn to live with the hand you’re dealt.”

It was heartening to see the kindness of the stylist, who took extra time to give the woman’s husband a lesson in curling hair, along with his willingness to take on a task that was outside his skill set for the sake of his wife and the blind woman’s acceptance of her limitation. Although the news is mostly filled with stories of rancor, we are surrounded every day by examples of thoughtfulness, devotion, and acceptance. When we follow the Advent admonition to open our eyes to see and our ears to hear, it becomes clear that the kingdom of God is indeed growing into fullness in our very midst. Behold!

The Challenge and Peace of Commitment

The Annunciation by Henry Tanner

In his homily today on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, Fr. Meinrad Miller pointed out that perhaps the most important line in the story about the Angel Gabriel’s appearance to Mary is the last one: “Then the angel departed from her.”

Often it is easy to say “yes” to a life-changing request when an angel is standing before you, or your beloved proposes marriage, or you receive a job offer, or you think you’ve found the perfect monastic community. Mary’s joy overflowed when she visited her cousin Elizabeth, and she praised God with a full heart. However, after the joyful “yes” came a life of hardship — judgment by neighbors, fear of being rejected by the man to whom she was betrothed, living for a time as a refugee, having her adolescent son go missing, worrying about his safety during his years of ministry, and suffering at the foot of his cross. Saying “yes” to a commitment, admirable as it is, does not guarantee that the road ahead will be smooth.

And yet. There is a peace that comes with identifying and living out our calling, our vocation, despite the hardships that inevitably accompany it. We all know people who never seem to find their calling (or resist it). Although their freedom from the demands of commitment may seem enviable at times, their restlessness is not something we would ever wish for.

Just as God prepared the way for Mary to be the mother of his Son, God prepares the way for us to recognize and respond to our call to serve others through our own unique aptitude and capabilities. When we listen, the spirit of discernment will be with us, and we will find the companionship we need to help us live out our commitments. May God’s grace be with us all!

The Charity God Pours Into Our Heart

Jesus appeared to have been very observant; his eyes were open to what other people failed to notice or appreciate. An example is when he called attention to a widow who contributed two small copper coins to the temple treasury. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything —all she had to live on” (Mk 12: 43-44).

The widow’s action tells us several things about her. First, it was important to her to offer what she had to God, even though it was not valuable in the world’s eyes. Second, in giving all she had to live on, she was expressing confidence in God’s care and abundance.

Most of us do not experience financial poverty, but we all have an inner poverty of some kind. Perhaps we lack self-confidence, attentiveness, trust, resiliency, or patience. Can we muster what little self-confidence we have to be of service to God or use the last drop of our patience to help someone who asks a favor of us? Can we trust that, as St. John of the Cross says, “Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love”?

In his book Letters from the Desert, Carlo Carretto said, “ I, a little creature … have been called to be transformed into God by sharing [God’s] life. And what transforms me is the charity which [God] pours into my heart. Love transforms me slowly into God.”

Our inner poverty teaches us that we cannot always be self-reliant. However, like the poor widow, we can always draw on the strength, compassion, and charity that Christ pours into our hearts, and then we ourselves will experience God’s abundant love and care.

God's Delight In Us

Many of us have never been told that God delights in us — our personality quirks, our creative use of our talents and aptitudes, our exploration and enjoyment of the world, and our expressions of compassion and kindness. Instead, the image of God that has been instilled in us is that of a demanding and critical judge, which makes us fearful of doing anything that would lead to failure. The irony is that God is not disappointed by our failures; rather, God is saddened when we let fear keep us from uniquely reflecting the creative, loving, joyful God in whose image we were made.

It is important for us to be confident that God delights in us, for as St. Albert the Great said, “The greater and more persistent your confidence in God, the more abundantly you will receive all that you ask.” When we trust that God will support our imaginings, efforts, and explorations, we can dream big and confidently ask for what we need.

Sometimes our fear is not about whether we will fail; instead, it is about the sacrifices we know we will have to make to be the person we are called to be. Persons who thrive as teachers, social workers, and aides in nursing homes, for example, know they will make much less money than they would in other professions. I have found a fulfilling life as a Benedictine sister, but that has required giving up a good measure of autonomy and solitude time and the adoption of a simpler lifestyle. For me, at least, the sacrifice necessary to gain more and more experience of God’s blessing, presence, and care is well worth it.

Ultimately, we need to dare to expand our imagination regarding God’s delight in us. As St. Paul says, “Eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, nor has it entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2: 9). Let us move confidently in the direction of our dream of sharing fullness of life with God and all that God has created!

 

Joining In God's Great Flow of Mercy

Photo by Suzanne Fitzmaurice, OSB

On November 11, 1863 — 160 years ago — seven Benedictine sisters who became the founders of Mount St. Scholastica arrived in Atchison, Kansas. My great-great-grandfather, Lambert Halling, who was employed by the monks of St. Benedict’s Abbey as a carpenter, met them at the ferry with his co-worker, James Kennedy, and escorted them to their newly built convent. Not all people in this frontier town welcomed Catholics, however, and the wharfmaster had heard of threats to burn down the house if Catholic sisters took up residence. Therefore, these two carpenters paced in front of the building until morning, lanterns in hand, to ward off potential intruders.

At a compline prayer service on November 10 commemorating this event, we heard this reading from Sirach: 

Now bless the God of all
    who everywhere does great things,
    who raises us up from our birth
    and deals mercifully with us.
May God give us gladness in our hearts,
   and may there be peace in our time,
    in Israel as in times past.

May God grant us his mercy,

    and may God rescue us in our lifetime.

In 1863, my great-great-grandfather listened to the call to protect this small band of vulnerable sisters; he happened to be present at a time of need and he responded, and in doing so, he became an agent of God’s mercy.

Like him and so many others, we who are present today when others are in need can join in God’s great flow of mercy. We can stand up for those in our own time who are misunderstood or oppressed. We can provide spiritual and physical sustenance for those who need food and housing and for those who are hungry to know God. And in extending God’s mercy to others, we come to see how God deals mercifully with each of us in our own time of need, our own time of brokenness, our own times when we need rescue. In being agents of God’s mercy by serving others, we learn gratitude and humility. And so may we extend God’s light to others, that God may give us gladness in our hearts and peace in our times.

Whatsoever You Do

Yesterday at Morning Prayer, our reading from Chapter 52 of the Rule of St. Benedict said, “When the Work of God [i.e., communal prayer] is finished, all should leave in deepest silence and show reverence to God so that anyone who may wish to pray alone is not disturbed by the insensitivity of another.”

It is interesting that St. Benedict links reverence to God and sensitivity to the needs of others. When we remember that God’s Spirit dwells in all persons (“Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?” [1 Corinthians 3:16]), then reverencing God becomes very practical. It entails simple acts of thoughtfulness, consideration, and kindness.

In her book Preferring Christ, Norvene Vest comments that “this ‘humdrum’ and ‘external’ matter of everyday thoughtfulness for one another is where Benedict locates ‘spiritual’ progress.”

We may be accustomed to charting our spiritual progress through quantifiers such as the number of retreats we attend, our faithfulness in attending Mass, and the amount of our charitable giving — all laudable activities, to be sure. However, for St. Benedict, seeing Christ in others and responding to them through humdrum acts of service such as doing household chores, leaving the last piece of cake for someone else, and taking care of others when they are sick is the highest form of reverence for God. St. Benedict takes seriously the words “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me,” and invites us to do the same.