In this crucifix in the reconciliation chapel at the Shrine in Knock, Ireland, I noticed the depiction of St.John the Beloved, reaching out his arm to comfort Mary, his new mother. It was a blessing to me at the time to consider my late wife, Amy, whose name means Beloved, reaching out to console me in my sorrow.
This would be a greeting card I could mail to a griever. O Tannen-- balm...
Joseph, our certain hope below,
Glory of earth and heaven,
Thou pillar of the world, to thee
Be praise immortal given.
Thou as salvation’s minister
God the Creator chose,
As foster-father of the Word,
As Mary’s spotless spouse.
Joyful thou sawest Him new-born
Of Whom the prophets sang,
Him in a manger didst adore
From Whom creation sprang.
Lord over lords and King of kings,
Ruler of sky and sea,
He Whom the heavens and earth obey,
Was subject unto thee.
Praise to the Three in One Who thee
Such signal honors lend,
And may thy merits be our aid
To joys that never end.
-Father Juan Escollar; translated by Father Edward Caswell (1814-1878)
From St. Basil’s Hymn Book compiled by the Basilian Fathers; 1925, Rogers Church Goods Co. In the Public Domain.
St. John of the Cross tells us that we do not truly know what it is we need, but Jesus knows. The soul properly disposed “does no more than represent its misery and pain to the Beloved … so that the beloved one may do what to him seems good.… The soul is more secured against self-love and self-seeking by indicating its necessity, instead of asking for that which it thinks is needed.” The Spiritual Canticle II.8.
The point is not simply to suppress our desire for things, as though desire was a weed in the garden. This is not at all what Catholic asceticism is about, in Advent or Lent or at any other time. God created all pleasures, and they are good, because He created them. The desire for pleasure, at its heart, is human and wholesome. The problem isn’t that pleasure is bad, but that we want it for selfish reasons. We become attached to the gratifications that are offered to us, and St. John of the Cross has a lot to say about the danger, not of desires, but of attachments. The disciplines he encourages are not meant to destroy desire but to teach us what desire is for.
In our overstimulated culture, we must struggle to avoid settling for meager comforts and cheap thrills, because our hearts are made for great things. To embrace this truth is hard, but profoundly liberating.- Spiritual Direction blog
May the intercession of the saints lead us to desire rightly, to long only for the only One who can satisfy our longings!
On this day in 1476 was born a girl named Lucy.
She would eventually become the prioress of a convent in Narni, where she received the stigmata.
St. Lucy of Narnia, pray for us!
What was the color of that Blossom bright?
White to begin with, immaculate white.
But what a wild flush on the flakes of it stood,
When the Rose ran in crimsonings down the Cross-wood.
In the Gardens of God, in the daylight divine
I shall worship the wounds with thee, Mother of mine.
-from the poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The great temptation of Advent, at least for me, is the petty sin of low horizons and little expectations — missing the moment to focus on the great sweep of the history of salvation and the glorious promise of heaven, held out to me in my baptism, and choosing instead to look ahead to the commemoration of Christmas.
And, of course, the great temptation of Christmas is nostalgia; to wallow in the thousand little seasonal customs of my own life and family, especially now I have a daughter just old enough to appreciate them.
For me, the great urge of nostalgia is to keep still, to stay home, to look back. But, of course, there is no keeping still, and there is no going back. We do not ever stop moving forward in time — and when you consider the orbit of our planet, the sweep of our solar system within the arc of the Milky Way, and that our galaxy is itself rocketing out into the ever expanding void, we never stop moving in space, either.
However much my desire is to stay home, the reality is my home, as a Christian, is not somewhere I can make or maintain for myself. And it is no fixed point on the map to which I can return.
My home, our home, is elsewhere, and we are all on pilgrimage toward it. The challenge, I suppose, is appreciating that reality and not allowing myself to give in to the illusion of a stationary life.
Advent is good for that.
The Pillar is right: our solar system is a vortex. I try to explain that this is the model for our liturgical cycle as well, since we are spiraling closer to Jesus each year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jHsq36_NTU
One of the most astute observations about the true meaning of the season I have ever read, Carl Olsen's substack article places my sorrow over the loss of my wife into its eschatological context. It is indeed What I Need Now:
We have been saved by the Lamb of God, but we still await the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Advent reminds us that this state of in-between is real and difficult, but also passing and temporary:
The Kingdom of God has been coming since the Last Supper and, in the Eucharist, it is in our midst. The kingdom will come in glory when Christ hands it over to his Father.” (CCC 2816; see 1405, 1682, 2861)
St. John Paul II, in Ecclesia de Eucharistia, his final encyclical, wrote at length about this tension, noting that the “Eucharist is a straining towards the goal, a foretaste of the fullness of joy promised by Christ (cf. John 15:11); it is in some way the anticipation of heaven…” (no. 18). He emphasized
Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life: they already possess it on earth, as the first-fruits of a future fullness which will embrace man in his totality. For in the Eucharist we also receive the pledge of our bodily resurrection at the end of the world: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (Jn 6:54). (no. 18)
The “eschatological tension kindled by the Eucharist,” he noted, “expresses and reinforces our communion with the Church in heaven” (no. 19; emphasis in the original). Foremost among those, of course, is the perfect disciple of our Lord: his blessed Mother, the ever-Virgin Mary, as well as the one who is least among these (cf. Matthew 11:11), his cousin John the Baptist.
The readings during Advent focus on both; they are exemplars in the Faith and true family who have gone before us. The Theotokos bore and loved the Word perfectly; the Baptizer decreased to the point of martyrdom. Their lives were not easy in the least. What we need now is to remember and accept—not with resignation but with supernatural resolve—that Advent is not about easy living, but about eternal life.
"It is sometimes asked whether poets are not more commonly found external to the Church than among her children; and it would not surprise us to find the question answered in the affirmative. Poetry is the refuge of those who have not the Catholic Church to flee to, and repose upon; for the Church herself is the most sacred and august of poets." -St. John Henry Newman, doctor of the church
While waiting for Advent and preparing for it as a catechist, I am drawn more and more deeply into my lifelong love of this season, now that I am in a season of grief. Advent longing and expectation express the surge from the heart of the mourner, tired of dwelling in this vale of tears and exile. More than at any other time in the year, the world comes alongside the griever in the Advent season and waits.
As one blogger describes it:
Advent, like grief, reminds us that the world is broken and we long for all to be made right. Advent invites us not to rush to the Nativity, but to cry out from the darkness. Advent reminds us of the promise, that we will be restored. The Lord is already at work in your grief, even if you don’t feel it yet. Being made new in the depths of your heart can take a very long time.
Grief is a reminder that this world is not our home. It brings an ardent longing for Heaven. After my son died, I didn’t know how to be here without him. Grief taught me to detach from the world and gave me an eternal perspective. Advent invites us to the same.
That call to be made new is echoed at this blog too:
Whenever we lean into loss to seek the ways God is calling us forward in faith, we testify to the work of God, who will make all things new.
In the stories of Advent, God shows up unexpectedly. God turns destruction into hope when the temple falls in Jerusalem (Mark 13). In the work of John the Baptist, God points to a reality greater than we could have imagined (Mark 1:7-8). When the psalmist and the prophets think that all is lost, God shows up. We see God showing up in Mary’s vulnerable strength and trust that God will fulfill God’s promises (Luke 1).
In our grief, what bigger promise do we seek than God showing up, with our loved ones in tow? As Christians, we do not grieve as people without hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). We grieve as people of hope—hope that God will fulfill God’s promises. With deft determination, we can seek the ways God fulfills God’s promise to turn our mourning into dancing (Psalm 30:11).
There are moments when the ache makes me desire to leave, but I turn with trust to follow the example of those who were witing for the Messiah, as Henri Nouwen describes them:
Those who are waiting are waiting very actively. They know that what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing. That’s the secret. The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun. Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it. A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is the moment.
A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her.
Wait for the Lord, whose day is near.
Some notes worth noting about the latest study:
"As for the top pastoral priorities of American priests, they are: youth and young adult ministry, family formation and marriage prep, and evangelization. Each of these was listed as a priority by 94 percent of respondents...
The American presbyterate is united in its support for the family, for young people, and for evangelization. It shares a broad commitment to the poor and to migrants. And it is equally eager to defend life from its beginning to natural end. None of this seems likely to change in the years to come. At the same time, a commitment to Eucharistic devotion and to traditional (if not Traditionalist) liturgy appears likely to grow."
One can't pray enough for the swift retirement of the liberal/boomers, whose data points speak for themselves.
"How long, O Lord, how long must we suffer this generation?"
section 14:
The poor are not there by chance or by blind and cruel fate. Nor, for most of them, Is poverty a choice. Yet, there are those who still presume to make this claim, thus revealing their own blindness and cruelty. Of course, among the poor there are also those who do not want to work … However, there are so many others – men and women – who nevertheless work from dawn to dusk, perhaps collecting scraps or the like, even though they know that their hard work will only help them to scrape by, but never really improve their lives. Nor can it be said that the poor are such because they do not ‘deserve’ otherwise, as maintained by the specious view of meritocracy that sees only the successful as ‘deserving’.
Read all of the Pope's exhortation here.
