Prepare!

Tags

Advent, Christmas, consciousness, Incarnation, Jesus, Messiah, prayers, preparation, prepare ye the way of the Lord, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Three times in the readings for this second Sunday of Advent we hear the call to “Prepare the way of the Lord!” We are accustomed to this directive but I always question how it is that we are preparing. Is the rush to Christmas shopping the way? The thought of gift-giving is certainly part of the thinking about that activity but it has become such a frenzy in our culture that I wonder how many of us stop to think about the genesis of the custom. Here are some questions for us – me included – for today’s reflection about preparing.

1. Do we really see this time of Advent as a true opportunity to go deeply into the mystery of the Incarnation – the entry of God’s promise into this realm of life?
2. Will we understand on Christmas day what the coming of Christ might mean at this moment to our individual lives as well as to our world?
3. What difference will our preparation make?
4. Because Jesus did not “fit the bill” of the Messiah for those waiting for the throne of David to be restored, only the really astute ones, those who intuited who he was (like Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna), really noticed his coming. What about us? Do we recognize the possibility that exists in our day? The possibility that the times warrant a new kind of Christmas, a new coming of Christ into the world?
5. Have we been preparing for the in-breaking of God to shake us up and create us anew? Is our consciousness, our recognition, such that we might recognize the Christ hidden in our neighbors? Our co-workers? Our families? Our church community?
6. In our preparation, have we set aside some special time to pray, to ask for the Christ presence to be born in our hearts so that we might face the challenges that are so evident and in need of our care and attention?
7. Do we expect our prayers to be answered?

Enough! Let us get about preparing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding the Words

Tags

Advent, Christ, everlasting glory, lightning, make ready, prepare ye the way of the Lord, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton, wake up call

Yesterday I finally put pen to paper (well, actually, it was cursor to document) in an attempt to find words to share with the Church congregation I will address on Sunday. It’s always a challenge to find something novel to say in Advent. “The Lord is coming soon” sounds flat and “Prepare the way of the Lord!” is also over-used. It isn’t as if I hadn’t been thinking about it for weeks but I’m still not satisfied with my efforts. Advent is such a meaningful time for me that I would like to say something stirring, something to wake up the desire, the yearning that lives deep in the hearts of all of us. I wonder if using the “wake-up call” that Thomas Merton gave me this morning would work. I’d probably have to pass out the words for further reflection or repeat it a few times so those only listening with their normal ears would get the image, but maybe it would be just the thing to make the light dawn. Just maybe…

Make ready for the Face that speaks like lightning, uttering the new name of your exultation deep in the vitals of your soul. Make ready for the Christ, whose smile, like lightning, sets free the song of everlasting glory that now sleeps, in your paper flesh, like dynamite. (“The Victory” from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton, p.171-172)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prepare the Way!

Tags

Advent, blessings, Godspell, heart, Jesus Christ Superstar, music, Paul, Philippians, praise, prepare ye the way of the Lord, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Wisdom School

On this second Sunday of Advent, I am filled with the gospel acclamation: Prepare ye the way of the Lord! sung with drums and loud music in the score from either Godspell or Jesus Christ Superstar. (It’s been a long time since I have heard either but I can still feel the music – impossible to listen to sitting down!) I generally sense the days of Advent in a state of quiet anticipation but occasionally the magnitude of the promise breaks through and things get a little wild inside my heart.

I have that feeling this morning as we prepare to close another introductory wisdom school, this one very different from our experience of two weeks ago with 240 people. Here we have only eight participants but the time together has been similarly filled with grace. I often stop to marvel at the blessing that is mine to have such rare and yet frequent opportunities to gather with extraordinary people in order to deepen my consciousness of God working in the world and in my life.

So today I pray with Paul in his message to the Philippians that you may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value, so that you may be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God. (Phil 1:8-11)

Prepare!

Tags

Advent, apostles, devotion, Good News, holiness, Isaiah, Jesus, John the Baptist, Mark, Peter, prepare, prepare ye the way of the Lord, psalm 85, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

As the big commercial push of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc. recedes (after more than a week of each!), the urgency of preparation in a different way for Christmas emerges more strongly. Interestingly, the word prepare is the theme in every one of the readings for this morning, beginning in the Hebrew Scriptures with the foreshadowing message of the prophet Isaiah (40:1-5) centuries before the birth of Jesus. Psalm 85 echoes the prophetic words: Justice shall walk before him and prepare the way of his steps.” For those who recognized Jesus as the one spoken of by Isaiah, John the Baptist appears at the very beginning of Mark’s gospel as “a voice of one crying out in the desert” proclaiming the same theme: Prepare the way of the Lord!

By the time the gospel of Mark was written about 40 years after the Resurrection, belief in Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophecies had taken hold in many places in the known world. We have the letters of those apostles who became missionaries of the “good news” urging faithfulness to Christ and his message of God’s love. In those early years, their understanding of the prophecies and the words of Jesus had convinced the Christians that the end of the world as they knew it would be coming soon and Christ would appear to take them to their next life in the kingdom of heaven, a realm of peace and justice. The fact that we are still here does not negate the importance of the messages to the early Christians about preparing “as we await new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” The second letter of Peter (3:8-14) asks us to reflect on a great question as we wait – maybe the perfect one for a Sunday in Advent:

What sort of persons ought you to be, conducting yourselves in holiness and devotion…?