3rd December 2006ADVENT SUNDAY
Fr David Cherry
Jeremiah 33 : 14 - 16 ; 1 Thessalonians 3 : 9 - 13 ; Luke 21 : 25 - 26
All glory to the God who has come among us; who is with us now; and who is to come.
All glory to the Holy Trinity, Father Son and holy Spirit now and for ever. Amen
“Watch ye therefore, and pray always.”
The invitation is to prepare so as not to be taken unawares.
Advent Sunday is the beginning of the Christian Liturgical
Year. And the season of Advent is about preparing for the coming
of the Lord. Most of the season focuses on preparation for the
coming of the Lord at the end of time in power and judgement. As
Christmas draws near our thoughts turn more towards the commemoration
of God’s coming into human history over 2000 years ago in the
Birth of a Saviour, Jesus Christ our Lord.
It is a time of preparation so that we are not ‘taken unawares’ as Jesus tells us.
Take heed to yourselves lest at any
time your hearts be overcharged and surfeiting, and drunkenness, and
cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.
Not to be taken unawares means I need to be becoming aware of who it is
I am expecting. I need to become aware of the ground and rhythm
of my relationship with God. I need to be aware of what it is
like.
And the time is short. Four Sundays and only three weeks and it’s
Christmas. There’s an urgency about it and it is serious
business as Fr Julian pointed out in the December Parish Paper.
The colour is purple, the colour of penance, preparation. The
gold leaf is hidden so that we can go deeper, the music subdued, but
the mood is of expectation and hope, light coming to birth in darkness.
And this is difficult because the streets are already garish for
festivity as if something so sure has arrived; and we’re
beginning to wind ourselves up with Christmas cards and so on. Going
deeper, being contemplative, thoughtful, meditative hardly seems
possible… but then, if not now, when will it be possible?
“Watch ye therefore, and pray always.”
The invitation is to prepare so as not to be taken unawares.
Unless I am giving space, time, silence to enter into that secret place
within myself, I find my true life getting buried, buried beneath the
clutter of life, the important and necessary things. Notice how
they affect you. It takes me two weeks to unwind on holiday
because my mind is ‘overcharged and surfeiting’ - so full
of important clutter. My soul left thirsty.
So now is the time to go deeper into that hidden place. And it is
risky. I risk being perplexed, confused. I risk finding
myself distracted. I risk finding that my relationship with God
is not what I want it to be and myself not how I wish to
be. I risk finding myself not really in control, subject to
forces and impulses. Out of vanity I risk being discouraged
by finding out too much about myself.
But if I dare to go there I will find that this is the beginning of the
process of awareness – of what I am like before God. Pulled
about, and not at all in control.
This is a strange place of not-knowing, of inability to cling onto my
own opinions and small ideas; my own wisdom and common sense, my sense
of who I am; of allowing myself to fall into unknowing where I cannot
be in control, but only held in God - what is called the apophatic
tradition, the via negativa – saying no to any definition of God
so that I can be in relationship with God or rather : to allow God to
reach and find me.
Why no! I never thought other than
That God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within…. writes RS Thomas Via Negativa
And this is what we all fear, but what we all need to get used to. We
fear not having life cluttered up. No doubt you’ve seen
that fridge magnet which says: ‘Jesus is coming. Look
busy!’
There’s even religious clutter – such important business
for some of us, but often far too engrossing and time consuming;
‘overcharged and surfeiting’ with keeping the show on the
road. I stand judged.
Going deeper is about the personal, the hidden, about what is uniquely me in relationship with God. Can I risk it?
This is what Fr Daniel O’Leary that prayerful priest in Leeds
Diocese, is discovering in that extract I’ve put on the back of
the Mass Paper today. I commend it to you. And I
commend prayerful meditation, silence, space for yourself at this
beginning of Advent. Go back to reading the wonderful lessons for
Sundays prayerfully, mulling them over, relishing God’s word to
you.
Give space to day dream in the queue and bustle, space to find that in
all the busy-ness and anxiety even, there God may be found.
May Christ find you watching, your heart ready to receive him. He
comes to you and me in Holy Communion. He has come and abides
with us; and he will come – we know not how or when – to
fulfil and complete the Communion that he has begun among us - in you
and me. May this season open to us the treasures of his love.
“Watch ye therefore, and pray always.” Amen
__________________________________________________________________
SPACE FOR GRACE
When it comes to understanding the essence of the Gracious Mystery,
silent space and empty nothingness have long been at the heart of the
Church’s apophatic tradition – a non-negotiable reminder
that all our descriptions of God will forever be well wide of the mark.
The Being called Love can never be confined in small images, in small
liturgies, in small churches. We are always tempted to lock God away in
windowless places with low ceilings and high security; to pinpoint the
divine presence with fallible compasses and dogmatic navigation
systems. The Spirit of God will always need space to blow and
dance where she will.
There are two such inner spaces for grace that I am learning to
treasure. One has to do with the tiny but eternal space we make room
for, when we hold off, even for a split second, the negative –
even violent – reaction to a sudden hurt, allowing into our souls
a sliver of saving light. In that tiny oasis we recover our almost-lost
balance and centre, our precarious peace. It lasts the space of a
breath – but hides a heaven. The other subtle space is equally
soul-saving. It is the space we move to, to stop the deadly habit of
judging everyone and everything – a common and destructive habit.
This place of grace, rarely visited because it remains uncharted in the
doctrinal maps of our salvation, is where we, too, hold before us
Christ’s compassionate understanding of the complexity of our
lives. “Out beyond right and wrong here’s a field,”
wrote Rumi. “I’ll meet you there.”
Only when we sink into the thought-less, sense-less, image-less space
of contemplation, when we surrender, in great and graced trust, to the
emptiness and nothingness of the void we call God, will we ever even
begin to get a glimpse of God at work in both of these Advent moments.
There is an unforgettable humility and respect in R.S. Thomas’
Via Negativa:
Why no! I never thought other than
That God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within, the place where we go
Seeking, not in the hope to
Arrive or find. He keeps the interstices
In our knowledge, the darkness between stars.
Daniel O’Leary The Tablet 18th November 2006