Sing the Song You Sang on High

 I came across a  story from an ancient Patericon  (a collection of ancient Byzantine  tales, anecdotes, and sayings about saints, the Church Fathers, and prominent monks.) It is not free from theological difficulties, but it speaks of spiritual truths nonetheless and it brought tears to my eyes. Is it not God's beauty that converts us?

 

 

 

With the Sign of the Cross, the old monk Abba Joseph trapped in his cell a dark and miserable demon--a fallen angel-- who had come to tempt him.

 

“Release me, Father, and let me go,” pleaded the demon, “I will not come to tempt you again.”

 

“I will gladly do that, but on one condition,” replied the monk. “You must sing for me the song that you sang before God’s Throne on high, before your fall.”

 

The demon responded, “You know I cannot do that; it will cause me cruel torture and suffering. And besides, Father, no human ear can hear its ineffable sweetness and live.”

 

“Then you will have to remain here in my cell,” said the monk, “and bear with me the full struggle of repentance.”

 

“Let me go, do not force me to suffer,” pleaded the demon.

 

“Ah, but then you must sing to me the song you sang on high before your fall with Satan.”

 

So the dark and miserable demon, seeing that there was no way out, began to sing, haltingly, barely audible at first, groping for words long forgotten. As he sang, the darkness which penetrated and surrounded him began slowly to dissipate. The song grew ever louder and increasingly stronger, and soon the demon was caught up in its sweetness, his voice fully lifted up in worship and praise. Boldly he sang of the power and the honor and the glory of the Triune God on High, Creator of the Universe, Master of Heaven and Earth, of all things visible and invisible.

 

As the song sung on high before all ages resounded in the fullness of its might, a wondrous and glorious light penetrated the venerable Abba’s humble cell, and the walls which had enclosed it were no more. Ineffable love and joy surged into the very depths of the being of the now radiant and glorious angel, as he ever so gently stooped down and covered with his wings the lifeless body of the old hermit who had liberated him from the abyss of hell.

 

 

 

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About the End of Christmas

I've switched to a new computer; I mentioned a few weeks ago that my "old" computer of 4 or 5 years was having hard drive problems and was too expensive to repair. So now with the new computer I am also working with Windows 8, a new version by Microsoft. It's very different from Windows 7, but I'll spare you the analysis. Changing computers and Operating Systems is like beginning a new relationship and learning all the wonderful as well as quirky things that go with that. Let me just say that I am researching quite a number of utilities and apps that will make Windows 8 look like Windows 7!


My new computer: Seannie

This is the last week of the Catholic Christmas Season. The last day of Christmas is the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord (this year Jan. 13). I personally would support the former calculation of the Christmas Season as the 12 Days of Christmas, from Dec. 25 to Jan. 6; Jan. 6 being the Feast of the Epiphany. I probably feel this way because the commercialization of Christmas means that we have an ever earlier shopping season before Christmas with Christmas music, parties, TV Christmas specials, etc. Imagine if we did that with Easter, making all the weeks before Easter a time of Easter music, parties, shopping, etc. What would Lent be? As it is, Advent is eclipsed by all this "pre-Christmas promotion" and when the real Christmas Season arrives (beginning on Dec. 25, imagine that), many are ready for Christmas to be over. For many Protestants it is over. But for Catholics, at least officially, we have several more weeks of Christmas; thus this Sunday there will still be all the Christmas decorations  in the church.

In some cultures in the past, the Christmas Season might not end until Feb. 2, which is the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. After the Second Vatican Council in 1962, the Church changed the liturgical calendar so that the Sunday after Epiphany would be the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord in the Jordan. In the United States, the celebration of the Epiphany is transferred from Jan. 6 to a Sunday (thus throwing off the famous 12 Days of Christmas). Actually, Epiphany (which means manifestation or revelation, as in  the revelation of the divinity of Christ) celebrates three manifestations: the Magi coming to worship the Christ Child, the Baptism of Christ, and the miracle at Cana, when Christ turned water into wine. In the Orthodox Church, as ancient as the Roman Catholic Church, Epiphany focuses mostly upon the Baptism of Christ. But we created a separate feast for the Baptism, as mentioned.
 

I like the certain logic of all this. Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ, that the Son of God took flesh and lived among us. This is the beginning of Jesus' life. The Feast of the Holy Family, which is the Sunday after Christmas, celebrates his early life, the little we know of it. Epiphany, in the Catholic Church, also focuses on a childhood event: the coming of the Magi. Then we have this Feast of his Baptism. That brings us to the beginng of his public ministry, at around age 30.
 

By the way, when  Lent begins, the story will be taken up again and the first Sunday of Lent observes the temptations of Christ in the desert after his Baptism. Isn't it interesting that Christ walks with us all through the events of our life; but also, we spiritually, through the liturgy, walk with him through the events of his life. And each event has a very rich lesson for our lives, if we can take the time to listen and think about it.

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Making Room for Jesus

On the Solemnity of the Mother of God (Jan.) I mentioned the detail given in Luke’s Gospel about how there was no room for Mary and Joseph in the inn. This detail has captured the Christian imagination for 2000 years. I said that if there was a sign over our heads, like in the cartoons, would it say "No room for Jesus"?

As I also noted, my maxim is that "the preacher preaches first to himself." I might not even pose this "No room" as a question if it weren’t for the fact that I often find that I’m crowding out Jesus from my consciousness with all the clutter in my mind and heart.

Of course, there is room to various degrees in my heart for Jesus; my entire heart and mind are consecrated to him through Baptism. Also, as a Priest, my life is dedicated to "preparing the way of the Lord" into my life and the lives of those to whom I minister. But still I find my "inner room" (aka "my soul") can get fairly filled with clutter, not unlike my personal study.

When I think of interior clutter, I’m thinking of all the things, concerns, distractions, demands, technologies which preoccupy me to the point that I seem to have little time for entering within myself to seek Jesus. That demands clearing space in my schedule, as well as in my mind. It requires prayer and reflection.  Also in Luke’s Gospel about Mary, it says that she pondered all the things about Jesus in her heart. (see Luke 2:19) That should be the goal of every follower of Jesus.

I could pose a meditation for myself: (1) What do I think is cluttering my inner room? (2) What can I eliminate and what can I retain for Christ? (3) Can I still envision Christ within me, even if I don't have my inner life in perfect order?

Well, I had an image of what I'd like my inner room to look like (via a long Google search) but Blogger won't upload it. So maybe next time.

 

(For a mediatation on this same subject, see "Bread on the Trail: Making Room for God," by Deacon Keith Fournier HERE)

 

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He Came to Lead Us into Beauty

"Good Shepherd" by William Dyce

At Christmas, especially, many Catholic Churches are decorated as beautifully as possible. Some Protestant churches are suspicious of such decorations, fearful that all that "stuff" will distract from a "pure" worship and focus upon God. Yet the Catholic instinct, as soon as the early persecutions ended (by mid-4th century), has been that beauty in our churches focuses and deepens our appreciation for God’s beauty, for we believe God is All-Beauty.

I have reflected upon this previously (HERE) and I believe it is part of the sacramental approach of the Catholic Church, shared by the Orthodox Churches and to some degree by certain Protestant churches, as well. 

This is how the Catechism (CCC#41) explains it:

 "All creatures bear a certain resemblance to God, most especially man, created in the image and likeness of God. The manifold perfections of creatures - their truth, their goodness, their beauty all reflect the infinite perfection of God. Consequently we can name God by taking his creatures' perfections as our starting point, 'for from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator'."  (Wisdom 13:5)

I have studied the subject of "religious beauty" for a number of years now. It is quite fascinating to me. I remember once reading a certain Christian author’s critique of the Church’s preaching and teaching. He said, many do not dispute that what we teach is true or reasonable (though many others  would disagree); rather we have not made our teaching and preaching beautiful enough. Love should attract...

The late Pope John Paul II wrote about the "Consecrated life" of those men and women in religious orders, such as Sisters. But we are first consecrated by Baptism, so I believe that the Pope’s words can apply appropriately to all of us:

Saint Augustine says: "Beautiful is God, the Word with God ... He is beautiful in heaven, beautiful on earth; beautiful in the womb, beautiful in his parents' arms, beautiful in his miracles, beautiful in his sufferings; beautiful in inviting to life, beautiful in not worrying about death, beautiful in giving up his life and beautiful in taking it up again; he is beautiful on the Cross, beautiful in the tomb, beautiful in heaven. Listen to the song with understanding, and let not the weakness of the flesh distract your eyes from the splendour of his beauty."

The quest for divine beauty impels consecrated persons to care for the deformed image of God on the faces of their brothers and sisters, faces disfigured by hunger, faces disillusioned by political promises, faces humiliated by seeing their culture despised, faces frightened by constant and indiscriminate violence, the anguished faces of minors, the hurt and humiliated faces of women, the tired faces of migrants who are not given a warm welcome, the faces of the elderly who are without even the minimum conditions for a dignified life.

              Quoted in John Paul II, POST-SYNODAL APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION
                                        VITA CONSECRATA. March25, 1996: 24 &75)

For a long time I have seen that in our Catholic Faith, Beauty and Justice are partners in serving God. Beauty without justice (especially caring for those unjustly treated), could lead to an escapist aestheticism. But justice without beauty would be a diminished justice, since justice is to bring us into "right relationship" with  God, who is Just, Good, True, and Beautiful in his love. (To read more about this: HERE)

If we follow Christ, he will lead us as the Good and Beautiful Shepherd into his beauty and truth and empower us to work to restore beauty and dignity to people’s lives, the original beauty for which God created us. This is why he came into our world and why we make Christmas as beautiful as we can.

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Christmas Wonder

I have always loved Christmas. Some of my earliest memories as a child (3 or 4 years old) were of the Christmas tree and its ornaments and colored lights. Being a baby boomer, I remember those big ole painted light bulbs on the tree:

I remember the shiny Christmas ornaments that after a few uses had the paint chip off. Like these:

I remember the tree sprayed with this white stuff that looked like snow and decorated with tinsel. I found a picture on the Internet that remeinded me of those Christmas mornings with tree and gifts and stockings:

I can remember being taken downtown as a child to Birmingham where I was born. I again was perhaps 4 years old since my family moved to Norfolk, Virginia when I was 5. I can remember seeing the decorations strung over the streets and the light posts had big bells or bows as decorations.

It certainly made an impression upon me. Everything about Christmas impressed my young imagination with a delight of color and song and decoration and beauty. It was all about wonder and still is.

My family was Methodist but not overly religious. We didn’t even have a manger when I was growing up. But I have a very fond memory of every Christmas Eve my mother would read to me, and then also to my brother and sister when they came along, two stories. The first was The Night Before Christmas. The second was the account of the birth of Jesus according to the Gospel of Luke. I of course loved The Night Before Christmas and its pictures of Santa and flying Reindeer. I liked the sound of "Now dash away, dash away, dash away all."

But even my childish mind also liked the story about Jesus. It has details to capture our imagination, still, even as adults: the journey to Bethlehem, the fact that there was no room for Mary and Joseph in the inn, the birth among animals, the angels and shepherds.

In 1965, when I was 10 years old, I saw the premier of a "Charlie Brown Christmas Special." At one point Charlie Brown asks: ""Isn’t there ANYONE who knows what Christmas is all about?!?!" And then Linus recites from Luke 2. It was the story my mother read to me every year! I was so impressed that Linus could recite it from memory that I also memorized the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke. (CBS executives wanted to delete that part by Linus when it was first produced but thankfully left it in. Imagine that. Christ is, after all, "the reason for the season")

One last remembrance. As a child, I was also told continuously before Christmas that if I didn’t behave, Santa would bring me a bag of switches (I suppose the Southern equivalent of coal). I’m sure I was more "naughty than nice," children get so wound-up before Christmas, yet Santa always delivered! What a lesson of grace in my childhood.

As I have grown older, I have come to think this is the true message of Christmas: grace comes even when we don’t expect it or especially when we don’t deserve it. Love is that way and Christmas is about God’s love. But like love, we must accept it; like a gift at Christmas we must open it; like the wonder of Christmas, we must stop and see it again as a child. These are some of the deeper reasons I love Christmas.

　

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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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Computers and Poems Slowing Me Down

So Slow I Fell Asleep

This sharing will be very brief. I've been having problems with my computer all day. It has slowed down to a snail's pace and everything is taking a long time to get done. Everything was fine a day ago and suddenly this. I fear my computer has a virus, but my supervirus program denies it is so.

Perhaps it is time for a new computer (just in time for Christmas!). It doesn't seem my computer is that old, but maybe computer years are like dog years. As a child I was told every year of a dog's life was equivalent to 7 human years. Maybe every year of a computer's life is equivalent to 25 human years. So my computer is now 100 years old in human years! Expect a slow-down?

Ironically, I've been wrestling with and advising the wisdom of Advent as a time to slow down and watch and pray. Has my computer been converted to this wisdom and is just helping me observe the Advent Season?

I thought I might at least give you something of substance in this post. I looked up a poem in my files (once they opened). It is a wonderful little poem. I think also how poems invite us to slow down and pay attention to their message. They do this by using unexpected words and phrasings. Sometimes we have to re-read a sentence to really comprehend it---if we comprehend at all. Here's such a poem, appropriate for the prepartion for Chrsitmas and its celebration of the First Coming of the Savior:

First Coming

God did not wait till the world was ready,
till nations were at peace.
God came when the Heavens were unsteady,
and prisoners cried out for release.

God did not wait for the perfect time.
God came when the need was deep and great.
God dined with sinners in all their grime,
turned water into wine.

God did not wait till hearts were pure.
In joy God came to a tarnished world of sin and doubt.
To a world like ours, of anguished shame,
God came, and God’s light would not go out.

God came to a world which did not mesh,
to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.
In the mystery of the Word made Flesh
the Maker of the stars was born.

We cannot wait till the world is sane
to raise our songs with joyful praise,
for to share our grief, to touch our pain,
God came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!

- Madeleine L’Engle

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