This year my mind has been taken with the words "GOD IS WITH US" These 4 words seemed to jump out of the page when I read then in the nativity narrative in Matthew's Gospel. I immediately also remembered the end of the gospel with Jesus' assurance 'to be with you until the end of the age' So the Gospel of Jesus' earthly life is enfolded in this presence and the whole of his gospel is an affirmation of the presence of God in all that is. Now it isn't that it started with the incarnation but that is more like a sacrament that makes visible that which is invisible and brings alive God's intimate presence. God becomes accessible and vulnerable and is alongside us and not over against us as a strict judge and taskmaster. It is this intimate, loving and totally giving God that we can discover in our hearts as we enter a stillness and silence of contemplative prayer.
On Saturday I had a great time at the 90th birthday of a dear friend, Dom Sebastian Moore a monk of Downside Abbey. We began with mass at noon at which I concelebrated with Seb. Here i are the few words he said at homily time.
God so loved the world that he sent his only Son. A question we don't think of asking is: what does 'so' mean? Does it mean what all assume, 'so much', or does it mean 'in this way' and then go on to explain what 'this way is: sending his Son. Love is an act. God loves us by sending his Son. God loved the world this way, he sent his Son. This is how God loved the world: he sent his Son. I labour the point, it's so important. No one has ever seen God, John explains. God is inaccessible. So God becomes accessible in his Son. Accessible? And how! Accessible, available with a vengeance, vulnerable and able to be killed by us so that he could be manifest beyond the power of death in all his divine reality, in the whole truth of him as his glorious body of which we are members. God the inaccessible becomes God the vulnerable, and when Jesus shows himself his disciples adore, and the Holy spirit rearranges the furniture of the mind to see that Christ had to suffer and so - that little word 'so' again! - come into his glory at the sight of which the heart burns, as we learn from the story of the walk to Emmaus.
How disarmingly simple John is. It's a simplicity that evades busy pious souls. God loved us by becoming vulnerable to us, so that, arrested - in a revelatory film-still - at the act of murder by which, unknowingly, we run the world, we are exposed to the blinding light of his love.
The party afterwards was filled with countless numbers of family and friends and the English public (Exclusively private) school accents were much in evidence. It was a jolly affair with many there whose acquaintance I knew only by seeing their names in the papers, books and magazines.
Here's another of Seb's sayings: "Evil is the desperate being exploited by the unscrupulous"
He also reminded us the the search for God can only be found in the ordinariness of our lives amongst the love of family and friends.
ENGLISH INFO:
Ex prime minister Tony Blair became a Roman Catholic on Saturday evening. It is interesting that while Bishops in the USA excommunicate politicians who are not anti abortion that the cardinal Archbishop of Westminster receives one who as actively worked for many moral issues that are contrary to current catholic teaching!
BOOKS
My enforced extra day in Tulsa due to the ice storm gave me time to read O'Murchu's book @Catching up to Jesus' I found the first half a good summary of current biblical scholarship on the Jesus story that contained many challenging thoughts. The second half where he tells the story as if it were Jesus setting the record straight I found less satisfactory.
As part of my study I have been carefully reading Taigan Dan Leighton's Faces of Compassion where he looks at classic Bodhisattva archetypes and their modern expression. The book begins with a general orientation of Buddhist history and practice of which the portion on practice is particularly helpful. he then goes on to describe the characteristics of the Bodhisattva with their wisdom and compassion. Without much difficulty one can easily apply what he says to the Christan contemplative or Zen practitioner. It would be worth reading!
I WISH YOU ALL A MOST JOY FILLED CHRISTMAS
Finally here's a tip for a long life; just keep breathing !!!
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