Advent

"...the people that sat in darkness have seen a great light."  

Matthew 4:16; Isaiah 9:2

Light again. An entire bloomin' season devoted to it.

Matthew said that the folks sat (past tense) in darkness. Isaiah, somewhat more dramatically said they were walking.  Matthew quoted Isaiah 750-800 years after the prophet wrote it.   Goodness.  Human longing for light, joy, peace never ends.  Among Advent's persistent themes longing will do as well as light.

This year I heard the same thing twice on the first Sunday, once in church and once in ready.  We celebrate two comings of Jesus. One is the one is 4-6 BC in Bethlehem. The other is the one at the end, the one trailing clouds of glory.   The pastor's question was this:  Does the second one fill us with fear or dread? Shouldn't we long for it, pray for it, ask for it?

The little Advent booklet we got at church had a question on day 1. When Jesus comes, what will you say to him?  I began cataloging a list from, "I couldn't help it" to "Oh now I get it." (You will note those are all about me.) My husband, always wise, said simply, "I love you."

Joy

Rejoicing comes in the morning...

Psalm 30:5

The sun shines bright this morning.  It filters through the two dozen trees in my back yard. It gives the little piles of fallen leaves a sparkle. Every morning has its own unique beauty.

I am well housed, well fed, well loved in a home my grandson moves comfortably in and out from his own home down the street.  Life is good. I should be bursting with joy -- and giving thanks.  And in some ways I am--really.  Thanks and praise come readily to my mouth. 

Joy has always been a struggle, though.  Contentment is tough.

I don't know why, but in my life (and in my writing) I seem to be more comfortable with angst and struggle than peace and joy. When things are this good a wee small voice deep inside is saying, "Are you sure? Better look more closely." Gloomy, grey mornings come and I think, "Ha! I knew it." Given a fabulous day with one bad moment I have to force myself not to focus on and pick over the bad moment.

I don't know where this came from. I've learned to work around it. (I once made a conscious decision to stop thinking of my life as a Greek Tragedy and being to see it as a situation comedy, but that is hard to remember.)  One thing I do know: it reflects a fundamental lack of trust on a spiritual level.

We're in God's hands. Let us give thanks and rejoice.

Darkness

For you Lord give light to my lamp; my God brightens my darkness.

Psalm 18:29

Some periods of life are murkier than others.  Having changed my life utterly and completely, there is an opportunity to rebuild it. God, as always, hasn't sent blueprints.  The potential for growth is enormous; the darkness, smothering at times.

Do I pray more? Seek religious community? Reduce the clutter of this world in my hours and mind?  Is there Good Work to do or study and prayer?  Justice to demand? Monastic schedule or spirit-led spontaneity?

One road marker is the fundamental vocation, in my case hearth and family. Nurture Greg. Create a center of peace and support for children, grandchildren, extended family. But when? how? what roles? what gifts?

The opportunities for black funk are many also. Family discord.  The burdens of those I love. Politics. Bigotry. Abortion. Violance. Wars and rumors of wars. Evil in the Church and out of it

Perhaps the greatest temptation is to believe salvation--even my own--is my job alone. The sure knowledge that I am powerless (on my own) in the face of all those things can crush me.  The good news is, I'm not on my own.

As someone once observed, "We play at being God but the almighty has a way of reminding us that the job is already filled."  Or,  as Catherine of Siena put it, "I am He Who is God; you are she who is not."

So what then? Prayer surely. Even retired I don't get the entire Divine Office in, but I can manage at least two legs and frequently three. In the middle of the day it lifts me up.  Yesterday various mishaps practically bullied me into saying the rosary while on the treadmill. I used to use drive time for it, but I don't do that anymore.  Rule of thumb: when down, pray. When confused, pray.

The psalmist tells us that it is the WORD that is the lamp unto our feet. Seek wisdom through the word.

Cardinal Newman wrote more prayers about darkness and confusion than anyone.  I need to remember his dictum:

If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about.

Give God space to act. Do not fill it with your own noise!

The Journey

God, carried you, as a man carries his own child, all along your journey...

Deuteronomy 1:31

And He still does.   We don't see where life is taking us. We have no idea what things God will send or what obstacles this world will put in the path. We can't see the bends in the road or what is around the corner.  We don't know the map of our own particular journey. We do know the ultimate destination whether it be near or far and we know one other thing:  God carries us.

Sleep

You withheld sleep from my eyes, I was troubled, I could not speak. I thought of days long ago.

Psalm 77

Bad night. It is tempting to claim I used it to ponder, as the psalmist suggests, the works for the Lord.   Alas no! 

I pondered this: Why is my tummy acting up now?  I was fine all day yesterday but at bedtime pain and, well, noise.  I was tempted to ask "Why now God?"

Greg slept, I wandered the house.  Night office done, I sought refuge in OTC meds, tea, a sip of Drambui--to no avail--not additional prayer.  An hour or more with a favorite author later I slipped into bed with a more minor tummy ache and finally, blessedly, sleep.

This morning praise and joy in the office, fog and sleepiness everywhere else.  Now I ponder, "Lord how can I work if I don't sleep?"  I've learned to ask for help for worse so I ask, "Help me get a grip on my digestive challenges and get a good night's sleep."

Actually, one night in seven isn't bad. This used to be nightly.  So praise Him for what you get, thank him for the things that humble, and do the best you can with what you get.

Work

First of all, every time you begin a good work, you must pray to Him most earnestly to bring it to perfection.  

Rule of Saint Benedict  

The psalmist says Unless the Lord build the house, they who build it labor in vain. (Psalm 127).  The house, the family that lives in it, the neighborhood, the city--without God's work the result is vanity.

Whether I'm picking up a paintbrush, sweeping the kitchen, or trying to pen a great novel, none of it has meaning if it isn't God's work.   Benedict put his finger on the problem.  The trick is to remember to pray first.   Starting the day with a general scattergun prayer, "Bless the works of our hands," is good but specific prayer for specific work is better.   

At the moment we're attempting to make a new house into a home.  Even more important, we want to create a place of comfort and joy for our grandson down the street.  If ever there was work that required God's hand, it is this.

I Believe

Between the time I started my meditations on the creed and the time I finished, the Church introduced a new translation of the Roman Missal.  Instead of "We believe..." the creed as it is proclaimed at Mass now says "I believe...."

The amount of consternation that caused was stunning.

The super conservatives seem to think that the 1970s translation was part of a plot on the part of "progressives" to weaken the church. Ha! Take that progressives. We've gone back to the real creed.

The super liberal folks seem to think that the new translation was part of a plot on the part of traditionalists to drag us back to the Council of Trent and overturn Vatican II. (Either that or a plot on the part of the hierarchy to distract us from the pedophile scandals.) Oh woe!

It isn't clear to me whether the Greek text as proclaimed at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople used the plural or singular form.  The Roman Missal, however, the liturgical version, has always used Credo or "I believe..." as the form for each of us standing up at Mass and proclaiming our own belief.

The conflict is a shame and a pity. What matters is that I believe it.  

Life

We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.  Amen.

Nicene Constantinople Creed

Aging is an interesting process.  Most of it involves letting go, letting go until things boil down to their essence.   What things do I keep? What objects to I actually need? What matters enough to spend my time on it?   When you peel away layers you come to "What is life" or "Is there life after death?" 

The great good news of Christianity is, yes, there is life after death. Jesus came and took on humanity which is to say He accepted death and in doing so destroyed it.   Paul called him the "first fruits of those who are asleep," (1Corinthians 15:20).  He's the first fruits, we're the harvest.

My grandson is Jewish. At his bris (aka ritual circumcision) the mohel asked about the Covenant.  "What do we promise?" We promise to obey His law. I anticipated that answer, but the next one was, "What does He promise in return?"  No easy response occurred to me. His other grandmother had no hesitation.  "Life."  God promises life.

Perhaps the whole long history of Judeao-Christianity, indeed, perhaps all religion, boils down to the search for life.  We find it in God, only in Him.

Baptism

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.  

Nicene-Constantinople Creed

What's with acknowledge?  The rest of the creed has been believe, believe, believe. Now we have acknowledge.  The new Roman missal actually translates it as confess.   Google translate uses confess.

The Oxford English Dictionary presents some definitions for both.   It translates confess as 
-To acknowledge, own, or admit.
-To acknowledge, concede, grant or admit for oneself an assertion [as true]

To confess is to acknowledge.   The definitions for acknowledge shed a little more light.  To acknowledge is:

-To recognize something to be what it is specified to be.

-To accept the authority, validity, or legitimacy of [something].

-To accept the truth of something.

It also can be defined as a legal term with which someone signs on to accept the truth of a proposition.

All those apply.   It seems that acknowledge (or confess) implies use of the mind. Belief does not require that we understand things.  Acknowledge implies active acceptance that there is one and only one baptism.  In our time it may be practiced by many denominations, but we acknowledge it as the same baptism.  Baptism is one of the sacraments that does not require the action of an ordained priest and could therefore be handed forward from the apostles in an unbroken line from Christian to Christian.  This is in sharp contrast to priestly ordination which we believe could only be handed on from ordained bishop to priest in an unbroken line to the ordination of the apostles.

Baptism forgives sins. Of course it does.  In the early church baptism, an adult-only   sacrament, was frequently postponed, at least in part, for that reason. Constantine is only one prominent example of someone who put it off until his deathbed.  While the forgiveness of sin (and the fact that Jesus vested the right to forgive with the Church) existed from earliest times, the primitive church did not practice the Sacrament of Reconciliation as we know it. Forgiveness of sins in manner distinct from Baptism boiled up as an issue in years after persecutions in response to the question, "Can those previously baptized persons who denied the faith to save their skins be forgiven?" Those who answered no were found ultimately to be heretics.   Eventually the problem of sins after Baptism had to be resolved, but there was never any doubt that in Baptism itself there is a clean slate, the forgiveness of sin in all its forms.

Church

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

Nicene-Constantinople Creed.

This one is a mouthful. We believe in the Church, but what do we believe about it?  

 It is the People of God first and foremost--the people! 

It is also the Body of Christ.  That is enough to keep us up late pondering.  We, the Church are the Body of Christ, hands and feet, ears and voice, heart and mind.

It is the Temple of the Holy Spirit.   The place we find the Holy Spirit. The place we encounter God. Except, the Church isn't a place.  Up until 70AD even Christians went up to the Second Temple in Jerusalem, where the God's people had been taught they would encounter Him.  Christians were gradually understanding the People of God somewhat differently and after Titus razed the whole thing, the concept of an invisible temple, with the Holy Spirit as its life and the force behind all its saving actions began to flower.

But what about one holy catholic and apostolic?  We believe the Church has all four attributes.

The Church is one because of her source / her founder. (Catechism of the Catholic Church 813).  Jesus prayed to his father: "...that they [meaning the Church] may be one just as We are."     John 17:11   Luckily unity doesn't preclude some diversity because we have plenty of that.

The Church is holy because because of (and to the extent of) her unity with Christ.  That doesn't in any way overlook the chronic sinfulness of individuals and the earthy institutions they create in His name.   The Church as Christ created it, the mystical Body of Christ is holy.  Some of its members, not so much.  We'd be fools to try to pretend otherwise.

The Church is catholic because it is universal. That's what the word means, universal. Where there is Christ, there is the Church (Catechism 830).  His love is universal.  The Church isn't European. It certainly isn't American. He was Jewish, but the Church isn't Jewish.  It is universal and we do well to stay aware that we don't confuse cultural biases with the fundamentals of the Church.

The Church is apostolic because it was founded on the apostles--not by them, on them. The eyewitness generation was the foundation. With the direction of the Holy Spirit she holds fast the the faith handed down by the foundation. (Catechism 857).

The Church we believe in, in short, transcends the Church we see, the one we read about in the news, the one whose history we both love and question.  It is more than the pastor's sermons, the church lady's whispers after mass, the demands of charity, parish gossip, diocesan financial problems, bishops' letters, papal encyclicals, architecture both bad (1970's churchs--shudder) and stunning, magnificent art or tacky images, great schools and small ones, mission appeals, Knights of Columbus, and retreat houses.  It is certainly more than the ugly headlines we've endured in recent years. It is none of those things and yet it is all of them, bound up in Christ's redemptive work.

Postscript
Paul, as usual, nails it. Ephesians 2:19-22:

[we are] members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.202122

Prophets

He has spoken through the prophets.

The Nicene-Constantinople Creed

Hear the word of the Lord...listen to the instruction of our God.

Isaiah 1:10

Pop "the word of the Lord" into any of the Bible search engines now ubiquitous on the Internet and you will get pages and pages of references from Genesis 15:, "the word of the Lord came to Abram, to 1Peter 1:25, "the word of the Lord remains forever and this is the word that has been proclaimed to you...." Those two references alone represent a two thousand year stretch.

The prophets were not fortune tellers. They didn't divine the future or act as seers.  The prophets heard God speak and were compelled to proclaim the word of God to His people.  The content of the message was always the will of God, what He expected people to do, how He expected them to live their lives.  It still is.  John L. McKenzie SJ calls that word The Two Edged Sword.

The remarkable thing is God speaks to ordinary people.  Gideon plowing his field, Amos tending his sheep, Peter fishing--even Moses tending sheep--heard God speak directly to them.  His voice wasn't always that of the great and powerful. Isaiah heard it in the night and Elijah heard a still small voice.  I suspect we all could hear it if we would but listen.The 

Creed is clear on one thing, when God speaks it is the Holy Spirit that does the speaking.

Spirit

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.  With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.  

Nicene-Constantinople Creed

Spirit as concept: easy. Spirit as person: hard.

An earlier post described the Holy Spirit as the loving part of the three persons that are the one God.  We have Lover, Beloved and the Love that passes between them, the act of loving, that is the Holy Spirit.  Loving personified. 

It is the Holy Spirit that permeates our entire spiritual life.  The Spirit leads us to prayer and teaches us how.  The gifts of the spirit enable us to live out the life that comes to us in Christ.  Wisdom, understanding, counsel (right judgement), fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord--each one is required before we can begin to grow in virtue and exercise the life of Christ in us.  Each one is given at baptism.  Our problem is remembering they are there and exercise them. 

How do we know if we are living that life, using those gifts?  The gifts enable us to bear fruit. When the fruits of the spirit shine out in our lives, we know that His gifts are being used to good purpose.  Galatians 5:22-23 tells us "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control..."
So we put our entire being in the hands of Loving Personified and hope to bear fruit for the well-being of the kingdom and the glory of God.

One side note. Some people think the Holy Spirit is the perfect expression of the sacred feminine.  One hopes She agrees.

Kingdom

...and his kingdom will have no end.

Nicene-Constantinople Creed

This phrase seems to imply that the kingdom is already here.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  "At hand" could mean coming any moment but it could also mean we can reach out and touch it. It is right under our noses.

Sometimes when I used to walk in downtown Columbus near the state capital I would think about working in the City of Man but living in the City of God.  The two coexist in space but, while the City of Man exists only in time, and that fleeting,  the City of God exists out of time and for all time.

The kingdom will have no end.