Again, Awake

The Christian monk Thomas Merton wrote, "The spiritual life is first of all a matter of keeping awake."

 

And yet in the Gospel for this Sunday, the Fourth Sunday of Advent, it is when Joseph is asleep that the Angel is able to speak to him. (See HERE Matthew 1:18-24) Sometimes we must let our rational mind rest (as in sleep or in contemplation) for answers to our life quandaries to emerge.

 

But even in this Sunday’s story of Joseph and his dreams, it does say "When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him..."

 

Merton is correct and almost every spiritual tradition says that the spiritual life is a matter of waking up, of being alert to the ways God comes to us; to awake to wonder and the deeper meanings of life. Listen to one such spiritual teacher:

 

　

"Each year [at Advent], God asks us to shed one more coat of unawareness, one more dream state and come alive to the vision of God’s plan for each of us and the world-at-large.

 

"The older we get, the harder this is to do. As children we had a sense of wonder. Our eyes were wide open and drinking in the fascinating gifts we beheld…Our thirsty souls could not have enough of the wonders of creation.

 

"Then, somehow, we grew too old to dream. We tired of the abundance of the world, or at least grew weary of keeping up with the feast of life, and stepped away from the banquet of life.

 

"The natural gift of wonder God gave us as children was meant to be kept alive.…Instead we let wonder go to sleep. We entered the typical dream state of most humans.

 

"Why else does Jesus tell us today, ‘Stay awake!’…Advent says, ‘Wake up and realize the gifts of love you have received.’

 

"…Psychology says, ‘Let go.’ Spirituality says, ‘Wake up.’ In both cases there is a withdrawal from the busyness of daily life (our dream state) and a waking up to the subconscious and spiritual depths of ourselves."

 

(Rev. Alfred McBrideO. Praem., "Gift of Wonder," THE PRIEST, Oct. ‘87, p.26)

 

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Advent Joy

 

 

This coming Sunday is called Gaudete Sunday which translated means "Rejoice Sunday."

 

Mary Greets Elizabeth in the Film "Nativity"

Advent (the Coming of the Lord) should bring us joy. Today, on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Dec. 12), the Gospel Reading proclaims the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth and how John the Baptist leaped in his mother’s womb with joy when Mary greeted Elizabeth. Elizabeth blesses Mary and Mary in turn praises God, saying, ""My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior." (Luke 1:46-47)

 

Pope Francis releases a dove given to him

Pope Francis is a wonderful model of joy in Christ and in his first homily preached: "And this is the first word that I want to tell you: 'Joy!' Do not be men and women of sadness: a Christian can never be sad! Never give way to discouragement!

 

 "Ours is not a joy that comes from having many possessions, but it comes from having encountered a Person, Jesus, who is among us. It comes from knowing that with him we are never alone, even at difficult moments, even when our life’s journey comes up against problems and obstacles that seem insurmountable, and there are so many of them! This is the moment when the enemy comes, when the devil, often times dressed as an angel, comes and insidiously tells us his word. Don't listen to him!

 

 "Follow Jesus! We accompany, we follow Jesus, but above all we know that he accompanies us and carries us on his shoulders. This is our joy; this is the hope that we must bring to this world of ours."

 

(Excerpt from Pope Francis’ first homily, Palm Sunday, March 24, 2013)

 

I want to pray for more joy. I pray for you to have joy also. "Rejoice. For the Lord is near!" (See Philippians 4:4-7 HERE) From my Celtic roots comes a prayer litany that includes joy:

 

God to enfold me,

God to surround me,

God in my speaking,

God in my thinking.

 

God in my sleeping,

God in my waking,

God in my watching,

God in my hoping.

 

God in my life,

God in my lips,

God in my soul,

God in my heart.

 

God in my rising

God in my longing,

God in my hoping,

God in my joys.

 

 

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Advent Slowing Down



I read yesterday a small Advent meditation/prayer:

 

"Dear Jesus . . . It happens every year. I think that this will be the year

that I have a reflective Advent.

 

I look forward to Sunday and this new season, Jesus. But all around me

are the signs rushing me to Christmas and some kind of celebration

that equates spending with love.

 

I need your help. I want to slow my world down. This year, more than ever,

I need Advent, these weeks of reflection and longing for hope in the darkness.

 

Jesus, this year, help me to have that longing. Help me to feel it in my heart

and be aware of the hunger and thirst in my own soul. I know it is about you, Jesus.

You are not missing from my life, but I might be missing the awareness

of all of the places you are present there.

 

Be with me, my dear Friend. Guide me in these weeks to what you

want to show me this Advent. Help me to be vulnerable enough to ask you

to lead me to the place of my own weakness, the very place

where I will find you the most deeply embedded in my heart,

loving me without limits."

 

From Creighton University Collaborative Ministries:

 

 

I have always liked Christmas. Last year I shared about the Christmas of my childhood [See Entry]. It is those past Christmases of our childhood that embed in our hearts a lifelong love for Christmas.

 

I worry about Christmas sometimes. The business world depends upon Christmas for revenue. If we simplified Christmas too much it would wreck the economy; but are we responsible to maintain the addiction of business to Christmas spending? I have nothing against gift-giving and decorating and festivity, as long as it doesn’t create personal debt.

 

I worry also about the hectic pace that surrounds the weeks before Christmas. There’s a lot of pressure upon people and families to "get everything done" before Christmas that we think or have been told must be done. The hectic pace and all the Christmas Shopping Push threatens to drown out any sense of Advent with its more reflective mood.

 

The meditation that begins this entry speaks of my own longing to slow down. I could long for this slowing down at almost any time or season in my year! I suppose most people feel busy almost all the time, like I do.

 

One year I was rushing around doing shopping and errands before Christmas. I had given myself too many things to do in too short a time and as I changed lanes in the busy traffic in front of the mall, I ran into the car in front of me. It wasn’t serious but it meant waiting a long time for the traffic police to come and to get my ticket of shame. Not only had I slowed down my schedule, but also the schedule of the woman whose car I bumped.

 

That taught me a lesson: I needed to slow down. As I said, I love Christmas. I resolved that if while doing the things to get ready for Christmas, I wasn’t enjoying myself because of stress or hurry, I needed to slow down and retrieve the joy.

 

Advent is a great time for me to heed that message again, and to especially slow down for prayer and to become more aware of the places and people where the Lord is coming to me.

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Longings Within

These reflections which I share in this blog have the primary purpose of sharing a more personal side of who I am. My parishioners certainly see it in various ways, even in my public preaching; however, preaching isn’t primarily about sharing my personality but rather the personality, or better, the person of Christ in his relationships (with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, with his Church, the world, etc.)

So I've found that I enjoy this blogging and I even learn more about myself in the act of writing. Someone once said, "I write so that I know what I think." I used to write in journals a great deal, but rarely now  simply because of time constraints.

I was thinking today about Advent (of course) and how different it’s "tone" is than the "tone" of Christmas. What do I mean?  For me, Advent has a kind of  subdued, quiet note of yearning, of longing. It’s almost melancholy, but that’s not quite right because it’s not sad, in fact it can be quite joyful. This "yearning note" is classically sounded in the Advent Song "O Come, O Come Emmanuel."

"Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel,

And ransom captive Israel,

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to you, O Israel!"

 (Listen to  a beautiful recording of the hymn HERE ) 

I realize that I am very responsive to this kind of yearning in my spirituality. I thought about this today also and recalled a term introduced to me by a favorite professor from my young University days. I took a class with Dr. Corbin Carnell and he spoke of the concept of "sehnsucht" (pronounced in English as sane-zookt). I now want to find in my library Dr. Carnell’s book which he wrote on the subject. For now, wikipedia gives a good description of sehnsucht: "It is a German word literally meaning ‘longing’, which C. S. Lewis used to describe an ‘insatiable longing" for "we know not what’."

Wikipedia continues: "Sehnsucht represents thoughts and feelings about all facets of life that are unfinished or imperfect, paired with a yearning for ideal alternative experiences. It has been referred to as ‘life’s longings’.....

"It is sometimes felt as a longing for a far-off country, but not a particular earthly land which we can identify. Furthermore there is something in the experience which suggests this far-off country is very familiar and indicative of what we might otherwise call ‘home’."

Advent is a perfect season to invoke such longings. We long for the coming of Christ. We long for that promise that when he comes again in glory at the end of time, there will be a new heaven and a new earth where the justice of God will reside. (See 2 Peter 3:13)

At other times, sometimes it is a piece of beautiful music that invokes this longing. Or it may be a particular image. I’ve begun saving some of these images when I come across them. Here’s one, for example:

There’s something about this image that invites me to go down that path perhaps to some mysterious, other place.

Let me close with a passage by Henry Suso, a Dominican mystic who died in 1366, who expresses what I’ve been trying to describe about divine longing which can’t be satisfied in this life:

"Lovable, gentle Lord, since childhood my spirit has eagerly sought and thirsted for something which even now I do not fully understand. Lord, I have pursued this desire for many years without overtaking it because I do not really know what it is, even though it attracts my heart and soul to itself and its absence leaves me without true peace.

"At first, Lord, following the example of my companions, I tried to find it in creatures, but the more I searched the less I found, and the closer I drew to it the further it receded from me, because before I could fully enjoy or abandon myself to any pleasure-yielding idea, an inner voice warned me: 'That is not what you are looking for.'

"Lord, even now my heart hungers for this unknown satisfaction and has often experienced what it is not; but what it is, that my heart has not yet discerned. Alas, cherished Lord of heaven, what is it, or why is it that this strange longing should make itself felt so mysteriously within me?" (Little Book of Eternal Wisdom ch. 1)

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Making Room for Advent

I like Advent very much. Not growing up a Catholic, my childhood Protestant Church at the time had no Advent to precede Christmas. So, among the many spiritual riches of our Catholic Tradition, I was given Advent when I started attending the Catholic Church.

Even still, our society doesn’t celebrate Advent at all. There is a diminished sense that the time before Christmas is still a time of preparation. But business has high-jacked this time as a time to buy gifts, to spend lavishly, even if you have to go into debt. (See this sad article: HERE).

And I suppose in order to get people in the "Christmas mood" to buy gifts, business has promoted decorating ever earlier for Christmas (I think the TV shopping channels have had Christmas trees and decorations in October!) and the shops play Christmas carols earlier and we have Christmas parties and Live Nativity scenes in the Protestant churches and TV Christmas specials —all before Christmas Day, which is still, by the way, December 25^th.

I am no Grinch when it comes to Christmas. I love Christmas. But it makes little sense to me to over-celebrate the things of Christmas before the actual day of Christmas. Some will decorate now and enjoy the parties and listen to carols and that is ok---I am not trying to make anyone feel guilty for whatever celebration we chose to enjoy!

But for the Church, we are not right now in the Christmas Season. You are going to notice that the Church (at least the Catholic Church) does not sing Christmas carols or decorate or celebrate Christmas before Christmas Day. Yes, there will be a Children’s Christmas Play on Dec. 8 and other parish Christmas parties, some of which I will gladly attend. I’m not rigid in my Advent Observance. But I do wish Advent was not so drowned out in our lives as it tends to be. At least when we enter the Church during this time, we can fnd some alternative space to reflect upon the message of Advent.

The Church does have a Christmas Season–it’s for about 3 weeks after  Decemeber 25 (more today than the 12 Days of Christmas of yore which ended on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany). Then the Church celebrates by singing Christmas carols and decorating and the Priests put on their finest vestments. But because society has been pushing everything Christmas (except the religious stuff),  (more today than the 12 Days of Christmas of yore which ended on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany). Then the Church celebrates by singing Christmas carols and decorating and the Priests put on their finest vestments. But because society has been pushing everything Christmas (except the religious stuff), I fear our Catholic people will be exhausted by actual Christmas Day ands want it to all be over. For many Protestants it is over after December 25.

There are two remedies for this, short of a Vatican takeover of the United States and a subsequent prohibition of Christmas celebration before December 25.

First, I am very blessed as a Priest that every day of Advent (over its almost 4 weeks) I will celebrate Advent Masses. The Scripture Readings and prayers and songs in these Masses are all about Advent and the various comings of the Lord (Second Coming at the end of time, First coming at Christmas, and how he comes to us in between these two events).

Every day I will pray the Liturgy of the Hours (the Church’s Official Morning and Evening Prayer and other spiritual readings), where everything is again geared for Advent. I will be reading some book specifically about Advent as daily spiritual meditation. And I have to preach Advent for 4 weeks. This means I get to live in "the world of Advent" while still stepping in and out of our consumer society’s "holiday season."

I suggest to anyone reading this that you can experience some of this yourself without having to enter a monastery! The U.S. Bishops website has the daily Scripture Readings for Mass (HERE). You could read these Scripture passages daily for a "taste of Advent." You could, if so blessed, actually attend some daily Masses in Advent. You might also read a Catholic daily devotional booklet (like Living Faith) which gives meditations on Advent. The U. S. Bishops website also has a very brief daily video reflection which will be on Advent until December 25. (Found on the same page as the daily Mass Readings)

Second, when Christmas does come, then we can celebrate what I call "the Spiritual Christmas Season." But I shall have more to say on that later.

Till then, "Merry Advent!"

View and Listen to a Beautiful Advent Hymn HERE

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