Advent

  ADVENT : THE SAVIOR PREPARES TO COME. THE WORLD PREPARES TO RECEIVE HIM.     

"I will go and tell the world: I will go seek my bride and take upon myself her weariness and labors in which she suffers so; and that she may have life, I will die for her, and lifting her out of that deep, I will restore her to you”        

                                       "...the Lover becomes like the one he loves"      

 "....for He would make himself wholly like them, and He would come to them and dwell with them; and God would be man and man would be God, and He would walk with them and eat and drink with them; and He himself would be with them continually until the consummation of this world" (St John of the Cross).

"IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD, AND THE WORD WAS WITH GOD, AND THE WORD WAS GOD.” (John 1:1)

AND MARY ANSWERED,

"BEHOLD! I AM THE DOULY (BOND-SLAVE) OF THE LORD. LET IT BE DONE UNTO ME ACCORDING TO YOUR WORD." (Luke1:38)

“AND THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH AND DWELT AMONG US." (John 1:14)

We journey together again through Advent. The greatest love story of all time is being re-told. A mystical door is opening from Heaven to inflame earth in the "burning Furnace of Love" that is God's passionate Love affair with His people. He is madly in love with our soul and His love is revealed in and through "The Word." 

We search and dig and pray to try to hear and understand what this "Word" is saying to us. His language is sometimes beyond us because we are finite. He is Infinite. He is totally Other. We are totally dependent on Him.  

                                             "When God loves us, He is loving Himself in us."

Inherent in these words is a staggering truth... that if God loves Himself in us, then He must be Present within us. 

                                   

                                      How to fathom such a profound and eternal meaning?

In Sacred Scripture, The Word speaks, so we go there to "sit at His feet" to hear His Voice. 

                                   

And to hear Our Father's response.

Jesus, The Word, spoke in the darkness of the stable of His Birth. We sit at the mouth of that cave and we look inside. We see His Poverty. In this, we hear Him inviting us to let go of attachments that make our hands stick to things that can do damage to our souls. "Attachments can be dangerous because they prevent us from relying on faith. And they can ultimately make us prey to the devil. Detachment is non-possessiveness and opens a soul-space for God to fill it with poverty of spirit."

Like Mary, the Douly of the Lord, we say our own YES to that gift of poverty.

And the Father sees His Son's Poverty growing within us. God the Father is seeing and loving in us something of what He saw and loved in His Son. As He gazes on us, we hear His delight with our small gift and He proclaims to all the hosts of Heaven: 

                  "BEHOLD! MY BELOVED... IN WHOM I AM WELL PLEASED." (Mt 3 :17)

                    

During His life on earth, we see Jesus, Savior, Son, as Humility enfleshed. He is the Doulos, the Bondslave of God. Everything He said and did and had, came from His Father. In Matthew 3:6, John is baptising many in the waters of the Jordan. To be submerged in the waters was an external marker for an interior confession of sin and a desire to repent. Jesus, Son of God, Redeemer before time began, approaches John to ask to be baptised. In that moment, He, the Innocent One, not only aligned Himself with my sins, He was expressing ownership of them. For all of us. In full view of the great number of sinners waiting to confess and to repent, He, the Christ, waited in line and was submerged in our place. 

And when the Savior came out from the waters, the Voice of God was heard:

                       "BEHOLD! THIS IS MY BELOVED... IN WHOM I AM WELL PLEASED."

When we wait in line to confess our sins and our spiritual pride tempts us with a hundred reasons to abandon such a place of humiliations, we may be given the grace to attend to another whisper: God can use even my sins for the salvation of my soul. But more, much more, we can offer our humiliation to God for the soul of another, one who never prays and who will not do penance, to be brought back to God through my offering. 

 And at the words of absolution, the Father sees more of His Son in us and we hear His delight:

                                 

                       "BEHOLD! MY BELOVED... IN WHOM I AM WELL PLEASED." 

It was a shocking and terrifying and electric moment when Jesus, Lord raised his friend Lazarus from the dead. The scorching sun must have blazed on that scene among the caves of tombs. And into that stunned silence, Christ Jesus walked to the entrance of the tomb. Suddenly, He raised His hands and arms high into the air. His head was thrown back and His eyes stared up toward Heaven. And then He gave a great shout that must have rocked the silent crowd. 

"Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I know that you always hear me but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me." (John 11:38-44)

Jesus was addressing His Father and His Voice was filled with holy joy.

In deeply challenging circumstances, when even friends don't fully stand by us, when all that should be just isn't, do we ever throw our hands and arms high in the air and shout a great shout of utter holy joy in the midst of our storm: Father, Thank you. I know that you always hear me?

And the Father's Gaze sees the faith and holy joy of His Son alive in our soul, and He replies:

                                        

                          "BEHOLD! MY BELOVED... IN WHOM I AM WELL PLEASED." 

Our fallen human nature is being pursued by Love in every passage and event in Sacred Scripture. The Word is speaking Himself into life in, through and with us. Christ is the Father's "entire Locution and Response, given to us as Master, Brother, Companion, Ransom, Reward." (St John of the Cross)

This is never more miraculous and powerful and uncontained than at that moment when we leave our seats to walk forward to the Altar where the Unbloodied Sacrifice has been offered to the Father at the hands of the priest. On our way up the aisle, we offer ourselves: all that we were, all that we are, all that we have, all that we will be.  

                                

We receive the Word made Flesh, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.

To give Himself to us, the Son had to be totally annihilated so that we can be totally filled with God. The Breath of the Father, through the Spirit, breathes in the Son, now actually and Physically Present on our tongue or in our hand. We are breathing the Breath that empowers us to communicate with God and the Hearts of the Trinity are now beating in our own. 

           

AS HE GAZES ON AND IN US, THE FATHER CAN NOW PROCLAIM IN FULLNESS TO ALL OF HEAVEN:

                              "BEHOLD! MY BELOVED... IN WHOM I AM WELL PLEASED." 

                                                      And the Word speaks into our depths...

                                                   "DON'T CLING TO ME... GO AND TELL" (John 20:17).

“WHEN GOD LOVES US HE IS LOVING HIMSELF IN US. HE THUS MAKES US HIS EQUAL" (St. John of the Cross).

Feast of the Immaculate Conception

MAY WE REFLECT TOGETHER ONCE MORE ON THE "KECHARITOMENE" (LUKE 1:28), THE ONE WHO IS FULL OF GRACE, THE ONE IN WHOM GOD'S ACTION OF LOVE WAS COMPLETED YET WHICH STILL GOES ON....

                     I AM THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

St. John Paul II, a deeply loved Pope and theologian, a mystic, a brilliant and humble man, once wrote, "God seeks man in the womb of Mary". 

And his words continue to draw all of us who love Our Mother into an awed silence. Many are perplexed, perhaps confused, some may even be discomforted by his words. Perhaps we may be standing alongside Nicodemus:

"How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born?"  (John 3)

Even if there were an answer to the unanswerable question posed by Nicodemus, we are then confronted with an ever deeper, seemingly unsolvable question.... How could we, born in sin, enter into a womb so utterly pure? 

                      The Womb of the Immaculata is the CREATED Immaculate Conception just as the Holy Spirit, Sacred Spouse of the Mother of God, is the UNCREATED Immaculate Conception. 

The Uncreated Immaculate Conception conceives Divine life in the soul of Mary, His Immaculate Conception (St. Maximilian Kolbe; St. Francis of Assisi).

This is a union of Mary's very being with the Holy Spirit. He dwells in her, and He always will, for Eternity. He made her body virginal too, an Immaculate Space for the Divine Life of the God-Man to dwell.

St. Louis de Montfort describes to us how God rewarded His deeply humble Handmaid: 

"Mary has the authority over the angels and the blessed in Heaven, and as a reward for her great humility, God gave her the power and mission of assigning to saints the thrones made vacant by the apostate angels who fell away through pride.  Such is the will of the almighty God who exalts the humble, that the powers of Heaven, earth, and hell, willingly or unwillingly, must obey the commands of the humble Virgin Mary.  For God has made her queen of Heaven and earth, leader of his armies, keeper of his treasure, dispenser of his graces, mediatrix on behalf of men, destroyer of his enemies, and faithful associate in his great works and triumphs." 

AND THIS IS THE WOMAN WHOM THE LORD, THE CRUCIFIED ONE, GAVE TO US.

WE CALL HER, "MOTHER".

           The WOMAN whom our greatly loved Pope teaches us that God seeks us in her womb.

She herself replies to our trepidation in approaching her, this CREATED IMMACULATE CONCEPTION, this "WOMAN who sits at God's Right Hand as His Queen:

"Listen, and let it penetrate your heart, my dear little one; do not be troubled or weighted down with grief. Do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain. Am I not here who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your fountain of life? Are you not in the folds of my mantle? In the crossing of my arms? Is there anything else you need?" (Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego and to all of us)

In her womb of purity, God's Tabernacle, she teaches us spiritual childhood, sweet gentleness,  ardent charity, faith-filled obedience, how to practice the Presence of God every second of every day, purity of thought and action, patience in the harshest of trials, self-mortification to win souls for her Son, and wisdom from the one...

"...who was already spiritually the Seat of Wisdom through faith, became also the Seat of Wisdom Incarnate as Mother. "

                  AND GREATEST OF ALL ... SHE SHOWS US HOW TO LOVE AS SHE LOVES.

When our Mother, the Dispenser of God's graces, lovingly and gently leads us into the beauty of these, her virtues, she draws our soul into the Divine Silence that is her Womb, the Holy Place where dwells her Sacred Spouse. 

The answer to Nicodemus' question is revealed.  From Mary's womb, and as her spiritually gestating children, we give her our all as we pray for our all:

                 REMEMBER, MOST GRACIOUS VIRGIN, MARY, THAT NEVER WAS IT KNOWN,

                 THAT ANYONE, WHO FLED TO THY PROTECTION, IMPLORED THY HELP,

                 OR SOUGHT THINE INTERCESSION, WAS LEFT UNAIDED.

                 INSPIRED BY THIS CONFIDENCE, I FLY UNTO THEE, 

                 O VIRGIN OF VIRGIN, MY MOTHER.

                 TO THEE DO I COME, BEFORE THEE I STAND, SINFUL AND SORROWFUL.

                 O MOTHER OF THE WORD INCARNATE, DESPISE NOT MY PETITION, 

                 BUT IN THY CLEMENCY, HEAR AND ANSWER ME.                         

                 AMEN.

MAY GOD ALWAYS SEEK AND FIND US IN THE WOMB OF MARY. FROM BEFORE TIME BEGAN, AT HER CONCEPTION, AT THE ANGELIC PROCLAMATION, AT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS, AT HER SON'S RESURRECTION, AND ON UNTIL TIME IS NO MORE, MARY ALWAYS WAS, IS AND ALWAYS WILL BE, FOR ALL ETERNITY, FILLED WITH GOD'S GRACE. 

"KECHARITOMENE" ... FULL OF GRACE ... 

                  IMMACULATE.