Prepare the Way

The Second Sunday of Advent opens with the cry of John the Baptist out of the wilderness:  ‘Prepare the Way’.  This cry is intended to pierce our hearts so that we may be ready for the new unfolding life of ‘the God who is to come’.  As we live into the hope of God’s gift that is coming, we are not to be lax in our preparation.  We are to do whatever is needed to prepare our hearts to receive what is coming. The hardened heart cannot receive the gift.  The heart that refuses to forgive or to offer compassion is not ready to receive what is to come.  The voice of the Baptist crying in the wilderness is one of ‘repentance’.  While we are not in Lent still this strong call to repentance is fitting for Advent: it is a call to turn from our ‘old’ ways of acting and responding.  Turn away from that old tape, that same old way of responding and turn towards the new that is coming to bring life and healing…with the advent of Christ comes the ‘new wine that asks for new skins’!  Will we be prepared to receive this gift?  Will we keep in mind that our preparation, which includes ‘repentance’, is to help us receive the Word with ‘new skins’?  We are to clear the inner channels so that they are open to receive the Coming One.

Without leaving the theme of John the Baptist’s call to ‘prepare the way’, I like to return to the text of Jean Danielou that I referred to last Sunday for the opening of Advent:  “The Christian does not have to break free from time in order to enter eternity…but is rather required to assume a state of waiting for the entry of eternity into time…”(Prayer, p.33).  We do not have to break free from ‘time’ to encounter our God…We wait in time…we prepare in time…we stay awake and listen with the inner poetic sense that we all have.  The sixth century Rule of St. Benedict opens with the words ‘listen with the ear of the heart’.  Poets, artists, musicians (if they are good!) along with monks are all to listen with the ‘ear of the heart’ for this is how they receive the creative gift, the gift of God’s enduring and prophetic life longing to be made visible through our lives.  ‘Listening with the ear of the heart’ is what we all are called to do. For it is this poetic or monastic inner sense that hears, feels, is able to apprehend the entrance of the ‘eternal’ into the historic moment that we are living in.  Christ is coming again into our historical time and he will not delay.  We only have to assume an interior state of waiting: empty, free of the old blocks and negative, fear filled voices, dwelling in the silence, listening with our poetic sensitivity for the in- breaking of the eternal Word into our humble, waiting flesh.

The eternal dwelling in time, God born in a humble stable, the human and Divine encounter one another in the mystery of Love, all creation glows with the sparks of God’s life, darkness ushers forth Divine light, the Word breathes with our very breath saying: ‘Do not be afraid, I will be with you even more now’.  He is coming and breathes with our breath, the small still voice of the Spirit is hovering over our expectant lives: let us be ready and open, heeding the Baptist’s cry to repentance, choosing the movement of faith, to turn from whatever it is that needs change….and to turn towards the One who is coming with the ‘new wine’ of hope, peace and love.  And let us, in the words of Bernard of Clairvaux: ‘Enter the inner room of the heart, straining to listen with the poetic sense to the tidings of God’s messenger’ for these tidings are bringing the ‘new wine’ of Divine life.

The Entry of Eternity into Time

In our relation to the ‘God who is to come’ how do we wait?  What is the interior demeanor that is asked of each of us if we are to receive this new manifestation of God’s life within us and in our midst?  With our liturgy we have taken the first step into Advent; we are blessed to have these days to quiet down inside, to listen, to let go, to wait with our deepest longing.

The ancient patristic writers tell us of the ‘three comings’ of the Lord: the first being the historical birth of Jesus; the second is his coming in this, the present of our lives; and the third at the end of time where the Lord will come in glory.  It is always striking to me that the universal Church chooses the apocalyptic gospels in all three of the liturgical cycles to open Advent.  There is one thing for sure that these gospels do and that is to wake us up.  In Luke’s gospel for this First Sunday of Advent we hear: ‘Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life’.  Well if we say I don’t carouse; I don’t get drunk; still I do think we all become drowsy from the anxieties of daily life.  So the Advent call is there: ‘beware’ of this, don’t let it pull you away from the moment of God’s new gift of life for you!

Indubitably the spirit of Advent calls us to interior quiet, to prayer, where in the words of Jean Daniélou, “we must not only deepen certain spiritual attitudes but also affirm our convictions” (Prayer, p.31).  I would say that the most essential spiritual attitude that needs to deepen in this Advent season is a faith-filled waiting.  We already ‘know’ experientially something of ‘the God who is’ and ‘the God who was’; in fact this experienced ‘knowing’ is what anchors our faith and keeps us open to the new ‘gesture’ of God’s love.  A faith-filled waiting, a faith-filled openness leans us into what is to come!  ‘Waiting’, with this level of faith and conviction, overshadows us with expectancy.  It is not a fearful waiting for some possible bad news, but a waiting that brings us back to our ‘yes’, a ‘yes’ that says we need this new birth and we are ready to receive it and to carry the new Christ life fully into our daily lives, no matter the cost involved.

Jean Daniélou further states: “The Christian does not have to break free from time in order to enter eternity…but is rather required to assume a state of waiting for the entry of eternity into time…”(p.33).  Dear sisters, this is the spirit of Advent: the eternal God coming once again into the present history of our lives: the commingling of God and humanity…the Christ of God becoming even more flesh of our flesh…Love becoming more present and expansive in and through each human life, each human life with her tiny seed of faith receiving the gift freely given, the gift of God’s beloved Son.  And ‘the Word was made flesh’…and the Word is still becoming flesh of our flesh.

Let us not lose sight of this Christian reality: the eternal God meets us, encounters us in the present history of our lives.   In this Christmas birth eternity and time unite. Pope Francis in one of his commentaries on the Advent apocalyptic gospels says: “The Gospel does not want to scare us, but to open our horizons to another, greater dimension, one which, on the one hand puts into perspective everyday things, while at the same time making them precious, crucial.  The relationship with the God-who-comes-to-visit-us gives every gesture, every thing a different light, a substance, a symbolic value” (Angelustalk-2016).  This is the outcome of Christ’s new birth in our lives this Christmas: everything becomes fresh and new, touched, overshadowed by the breaking in of God’s eternal gift.  The horizon of our lives will not be the same…they will be expanded…how we see, how we feel will be different….Imagine: the same old stuff being transformed by this birth.

To underline this last point, here is what Pope Francis says: “In this season of Advent, we are called to expand the horizons of our hearts, to be amazed by the life which presents itself each day with newness.  In order to do this, we must learn to not depend on our own certainties, on our own established strategies, because the Lord comes at a time that we do not imagine.  He comes to bring us into a more beautiful and grand dimension” (Angelustalk-2016).  This, sisters, is the ‘entry of eternity into time’, of the Christ life being born in the humble stable of our personal history and the present history of our world.

Third Sunday of Advent – December 17, 2017

This is Gaudete Sunday, which means in one word: Rejoice!  I think as we delve a little into the readings we will see how apropos this title is for describing the Third Sunday of Advent!  The first reading from Isaiah opens with this announcement: ‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me’.  It follows with a kind of delineation of what this anointing of the Spirit means.  And all of this is pointing to the Coming One: Christ.  The second reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians gives an orientation for our lives in the context of the One who is coming:  first, ‘rejoice always…pray without ceasing…in all things give thanks’:  doing this the reading tells us is the will of God in Christ.  Then comes the warning:  ‘Do not quench the Spirit.  Do not despise prophetic utterances.  Test everything: retain what is good.  Refrain from every kind of evil’.  Now if we are to heed the voice of John the Baptist who is crying out in the wilderness, again on this third Sunday of Advent, we have in concrete terms what we are to both heed and do!

‘Do not quench the Spirit’:  as I have already said in an earlier chapter talk the Spirit is hovering over our lives, ready to birth forth the NEW of God in our lives.  Do we even notice the Spirit hovering?  ‘Rejoice’, ‘pray’, ‘give thanks’:  what if these three realities were our default?  What if even one of them each day was our default?  It feels to me that if we anchor our lives around praying, giving thanks, rejoicing we have found the medicine that keeps us open to receive this Divine birth and to live from this newness that the Coming One longs to grace us with.

Another way of helping us receive God’s gift is to ponder:  How do I quench the Spirit?  I encourage each one of us to give time this week to note down some ways I do this, for just doing this little task (this inner work) will open us more and keep us more attentive to the new gesture of God hovering in and around our hearts.  The next phrase is even stronger: ‘Do not despise prophetic utterances’.  There is one prophetic utterance, which tells us what Advent is all about:  God is coming…in spite of our selves…in spite of our fears, our doubts, our hopelessness, our negativity.  Are we ready and willing to pray the grace to believe…to live into this reality that our God is coming?

A final comment on the Thessalonians reading:  ‘Test everything: retain what is good.  Refrain from what is evil’.  The heart is complex…it is the receptacle for this new birth…still it has the potential to not serve the good.  ‘Test everything…’:  this is not about being over scrupulous; it simply means to reflect upon our intentions as they come up, to sort through those different voices that pull us one way or another: am I doing this act out of jealousy, out of hurt, out of rebellion because no one cares?  We could all add on different scenarios that come up in our human relationships.  And still the Spirit hovers over our lives.  God will not disappoint.  We rejoice because this is the season of God’s immense gift to us and to our world; we pray, even more, so as to be open to receive and to be bearers of this gift; we give thanks because we are humbled, as we already ‘know’, we already feel these stirrings of life, of the Coming One, who will take root even more in the ‘hodie’ of our lives.  Amen.

Second Sunday of Advent

"Prepare the way of the Lord’:  this is the proclamation for the Second Sunday of Advent.  Jean Danielou wrote over 40 years ago these words that so aptly describe our present day reality:  “The Baptist’s message is addressed to a world held captive by sin and death, powerless to free itself, a world destined for death and incapable of justice, a world without hope.  And his happy vocation is to proclaim that all the bonds will be broken and that love will overcome.  This is already the message of grace” (Prayer, p.37).  Christ is always coming—‘he comes, comes ever-comes’, writes the poet Tagore—Advent emphasizes the God ‘who will be’ and so John the Baptist continues his proclamation so needed right now for salvation: for the saving grace that will free us from hopelessness, from self-centered ways, from narrowness in perceptions, from rigidity that compromises our ability to receive the Spirit hoverin

g over our lives.  John the Baptist cries out in the wilderness of our hearts and in the wilderness of our lost world: ‘prepare the way’….prepare your hearts, prepare your lives….this message hidden only if we are living at a distance from our ‘center’, from what is most true, authentic, compassionate…from what is most God-oriented.  Turn for a moment into the silent depths: there his voice will be heard once again….‘prepare the way’…in John’s message there is already grace…for it contains light to guide us forward to receive God’s gift….it is a message of comfort, it opens up for us and our world a way of salvation:  a way of peace, of healing, of forgiveness.

An essential ingredient of John the Baptist’s message is repentance.  This is not Lent but it is a time to turn inward for there is the gift….there will be born more of Christ’s life for each one of us in a personal way.  Contemplative space, silence, inwardness: this helps prepare the way: step out of our busyness, take space from the noise of the political landscape right now…the One who is coming, the One to be born will bring peace…it is important first that this gift begins with us….it will ripple outward….each one of us together forming a living body of faith where the God of unconditional love will be manifest.

Danielou says that Advent is a “pedagogy of faith”, but not a faith that God exists, more strikingly that “God intervenes in history” (p.38).  God intervenes in our personal history and in the larger history of humanity.  This is a miracle, is it not?   Our ‘living faith’ pivots around this miracle.  This is how close the Divine life is to us…in and through this personal relationship with the Christ of God we are given the Love that no one can extinguish.

Our God is coming bringing the new of hope, the new of compassion, of peace, of a way of meeting the ‘other’ who is different from us.  This new manifestation of God’s life is what we all need right now.  Amen. 

First Sunday of Advent 2017 - Awakening the Spark Within Us

‘Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways, and harden our hearts so that we fear you not’?  This is how Advent opens with the first reading from Isaiah (63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7).  Left to our selves we wander from the ways of God, our hearts become hardened almost unnoticed because we are living without much awareness of what is happening inside, within the heart.  Once we become aware and notice more, we may feel moved to cry out, ‘Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down’…or simply, ‘Oh that you would come to change my heart’.

Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh

The reading continues with this plea:  ‘Would that you might meet us doing right, that we were mindful of you in our ways!’  And then this finale which has all the elements of a song of longing – ‘You O Lord are our father’: meaning, you are our Source, you are our Creator: we are the clay, which is a humble posture of acknowledgement and awareness of who can shape us anew – we are the clay and you, our Creator, the potter.  Finally the Isaiah reading concludes with this existential reminder: ‘We are all the work of your hands’.

So here dear sisters we have our entrance into Advent…does more even need to be said?  Jean Daniélou wrote: “To talk about Advent implies that someone or something is coming or will come.  The liturgical time of Advent is a waiting for divine action, a waiting for God’s gesture toward us” (Prayer, p.32).  And how are we to wait?  The gospel tells us to be awake, watchful.   I wonder if the beginning of Advent awakens a little spark within us.   Have you noticed a small, quiet stirring, a movement of anticipation that we each need to stay close to?  Already just the word ‘Advent’ stirs our hope, our longing.  This stirring already knows before we even do (!) that more of God is coming into our lives…God will not disappoint!  But let us remember it begins small: in ways that we can easily miss, so we are to attend with the ‘ear of the heart’, listen for those silent movements of the Spirit…we are being over-shadowed by the One who seeks us, who seeks to grace us with new life, with His life.

Pope Francis, in his 2014 homily for the First Sunday of Advent, offers insight into how we are to wait and be watchful.  He says that this eschatological gospel is not trying to frighten us but is “‘to open our horizons’ to further dimensions, giving meaning even to everyday occurrences.  This perspective is also an invitation to ‘sobriety, to not be dominated by the things of this world’ but rather to keep them in their proper place”.  Is this not why the beginning of Advent calls us to turn inward, to be vigilant and watchful?  This new moment of God’s manifestation is for each one of us.  It is so important for us to receive this gift of new life, for how are we to incarnate Christ’s life if we do not first become receptive vessels, like Mary, of this newness wanting to birth forth? 

We all need change; any true change in our lives must have its root within otherwise it lacks the solid rock on which our house is to be built.  This is what this Divine birth can and will bring to each one of us.  Pope Francis says in the same homily: “‘We are called to enlarge the horizons of our hearts, to be surprised by the life that is presented each day with its newness.  In order to do this we need to learn to not depend on our own securities, our own established plans.’”  To be bearers of the Divine gift means we can only receive this grace if our posture is open and attentive, open that is to changing our ways, even a small movement of change makes us ready bearers of this new life that is to be ‘given to us and for us’.  During this short Advent season, let us ponder:  in what way or ways do the boundaries of my heart need to be enlarged?  What small change do I need to be ready to receive God’s new gesture of grace?  Just the honest intention of praying for change brings the Coming One close, very close indeed.

A prayer:  Oh you the Potter, you who shape and form us into a vessel worthy and humble enough to bear your life, come enlarge my heart, soften its hard edges, prepare it for your new ‘gesture’ of love.  Grant me a living faith that knows you will not disappoint me in my desire.  Amen.

Sr Kathy DeVico, Abbess

A "Yes" That Overcame All Fear

“Her willingness was her magnificence.  This we know and marvel at when we recall how You first came to us,” (Upon A Luminous Night, Christine Rogers, p.9).  Mary’s willingness was echoed in her ‘yes’…her ‘yes’, says the poem further on, “to a thing she only partly understood” (p.9).  This ‘yes’, which was encircled with mystery, with fear, not knowing what it all would mean or ask…still she proclaimed her ‘yes’ and never turned back.

No wonder she is the icon of our ‘yes’.  This Advent season asks each one of us to utter with our lives this ‘yes’ once again…‘yes’ to the promise that God will be born in the humbleness of human flesh…our flesh, our lives, no matter how imperfect, how much struggling we are going through.  But, (there is always a but!) it all pivots around our saying again ‘yes’, ‘yes’ to the Spirit who is hovering over our lives right now.  Even if we do not sense the Spirit hovering, God is present ready to breathe new life, ready to become more in our lives.

Holding the reality of Mary’s ‘yes’, I want to turn to some of the images put forth in the readings for this third Sunday of Advent: ‘strengthen the hands that are feeble’, ‘make firm the knees that are weak’, ‘be strong, fear not’; ‘be patient’, ‘make your hearts firm’.  While we may feel weak, not strong enough, fearful, our ‘yes’ can root us beneath these fears and weaknesses…remembering the Spirit is overshadowing and waits our ‘yes’.  Mary had her doubts but she sensed and felt something more and after some pondering gave her assent in these words: ‘Let it be done to me according to your word.’ 

In the annual Pax Christi Advent and Christmas reflections Sr. Anne-Louise Nadeau, for this Sunday of Advent, focuses on what she calls the “tyranny of fear”.  She writes: “The common element that appears to limit the fullness of life is fear.  Fear blinds our eyes to seeing our own possibilities, our own shadow side, our own goodness, and the goodness of others.  Fear closes up our ears to the truth and distorts our humanness” (p.18).  It is striking how much we hear in the Advent scriptures ‘Fear not your God is coming’.  At Mary’s Annunciation after the angel’s greeting, she is ‘greatly troubled at what was said’ and then she ‘pondered’, she went deeper, stretching to understand what this all could mean.  She went deeper than her fears and found faith, enough faith to face and accept the message that would change her life.  The angel’s response to Mary as she pulls back and ponders is ‘Do not be afraid’.  Fear in and of itself is not bad; it can be an opening into the life of God, into deeper listening and understanding about our existential situation and that of our world.  The Holy Spirit is always hovering; we are not alone.  But we have to be ready to meet our fears with faith.  God will not disappoint.  Her willingness, even with her fear of what all this could mean, even with so much that she did not understand, became her magnificence.