Reed of God ~ Et Homo Factus Est

Giotto: Nativity: Birth of Christ, Scrovegni Chapel

All things were made by him;and without him was made nothing that was made.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

And the light shineth in the darkness,and the darkness did not comprehend it."  John 1, 3-5

This is a very short section, but it contains the most powerful concept of all, which is that Mary, in giving Jesus her humanity, gave Him death.

In giving life to Him she was giving Him death.

All other children born must inevitably die; death belongs to fallen nature; the mother's gift to the child is life.

But Christ is Life; death did not belong to Him.

In fact, unless Mary would give Him death, He could not die.

Unless she would give Him the capacity for suffering, He could not suffer. 

 I find this overwhelming. I really don't have anything to say about it. I suppose it's one of those things that Mary pondered in her heart.

Then Miss Houselander talks about the birth of Christ as a separation from Mary and says this:

The description of His birth in the Gospel does not say that she held Him in her arms but that she "wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid Him in a manger."

As if her first act was to lay Him on the Cross.

She knew that this little son of hers was God's Son and that God had not given Him to her for herself alone but for the whole world.

This is one of the greatest of all the things that we must learn from our contemplation of Our Lady.

All my life, pictures of the infant Jesus wrapped up in swaddling clothes and laying in the manger have bothered me because I couldn't stand the thought of those delicious little arms and legs being all bound up and hidden away. I have in the past five years had experience with my grandchildren being swaddled--only for sleeping--and I can see that it works and the babies seem to like it--although I seem to be incapable of the art of swaddling--still, it seems so stiff, and babies are so un-stiff.

And this image of laying the infant on the cross, while theologically correct and all, again is overwhelming. I know of course that Mary had to hold Jesus to feed Him and I'm sure that she did play with his little fingers and toes, and I hope that she was able to do this without always thinking of what was to come.

The real message that Caryll Houselander is trying to convey, though, is that Mary was aware that her son was given to her in order to be given to the world, and that she could not try to hold him too close, or protect him from all the horrors that were to come. She also writes about how this is true for all mothers. Our children are, "...part of a whole and that the whole is the family of God, to whom every child born owes all the love and service of a brother or sister."

I also wanted to mention the above quote from John which introduces this chapter. In Catholic churches today, the translation we read says, ". . . and the darkness has not overcome it," while many translations use some verson of, ". . . the darkness did not comprehend it." The latter has a much deeper meaning, I think, especially when we think about the definition which uses comprehend in the sense of containing or enclosing. The Light was too great to be held bound by the darkness.

And finally, there is this:

We need to say to ourselves a thousand times a day: "Christ wants to do this"; "Christ wants to suffer this."

And we shall thus come to realize that when we resent our circumstances or try to spare ourselves what we should undergo, we are being like Peter when he tried to dissuade Our Lord from the Passion.

There is one tremendous answer to the question which is reiterated to the point of utter weariness: "Why should I?"

It is another question: "Ought not Christ to suffer these things and so enter into His glory?"

All of the posts in this series can be found by clicking HERE.
Unfortunately they are in reverse order, so you have to scroll down to get to the beginning.

AMDG

Dwell on These Things ~ First Saturday of Advent

I must have listened to 15 or 20 different renditions of this song trying to find what I wanted. I resisted listening to this one that kept popping up in the sidebar, but well . . .

To see all of the posts in the this series, click HERE.

AMDG

Reed of God ~ Advent

Advent is the season of the seed; Christ loved this symbol of the seed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

The Advent, the seed of the world's life, was hidden in Our Lady.Like the wheat seed in the earth, the seed of the Bread of Life was in her.Like the golden harvest in the darkness of the earth, the Glory of God was shrined in her darkness.Advent is the season of the secret, the secret of the growth of Christ, of Divine Love growing in silence.It is the season of humility, silence, and growth.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

She had nothing to give Him but herself.He asked for nothing else.She gave Him Herself.

And so to Caryll Houselander it is all this simple. We surrender ourselves to Christ and He plants the seed of Himself within us. And our part is likewise simple. We go about doing the duties of our daily life and he grows silently within us.

Sometimes we are so impatient. We try to force His growth, but like that apple pie she mentions, if you take it out of the oven too soon, you don't have an apple pie.

I can remember that when I was in my 20s and 30s, and maybe even my 40s, I tried so hard. I wanted so much to be super-holy, but it wasn't working very well, and I doubt if my motives were very good anyway. People tried to tell me that it took time, that He slowly change me, but I couldn't really understand how this could be so.

And now in my 60s, I can see how all the time while nothing seemed to be happening, so many of the
prayers that I prayed--usually by rote and without much attention--were being answered. While I was working so hard trying to change A, and mostly failing, He was forming B, C, & D in my soul. I really didn't have much to do with it at all. I just realized once day, "Oh, I'm not scared of that any more," or "I've really gotten to love doing this." I think he must give us A to play with so we won't get in the way while He's working on B, C, & D like we give a small child a toy to distract him from the needle that the doctor is about to stick in his leg.

If we are going to make an apple pie, we have to know all the ingredients and perform every step of the preparation in the right way if we want the pie to turn out right. But even the most educated scientist in the world could not tell us all the tiny minutiae that go into forming a baby in the mother's womb. True, we try to eat right, and live healthily so that the baby will be well, but in truth, the process is a mystery. And the growth of Christ within us is an even greater mystery.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There is much more in this section, but if I try to write about it, I won't be able to post tonight. If there's anything else you see there that you would like to mention, please do.

All of the posts in this series can be found by clicking HERE.
Unfortunately they are in reverse order, so you have to scroll down to get to the beginning.

AMDG

Dwell on These Things ~ First Thursday of Advent

Image Source: Used by permission of the artist, Owen Swain,
all rights reserved 2014 (may not be reproduced for
personal or commercial use without written permission of the Artist)

Another beautiful image by my friend Owen Swain who painted my St. Martin de Porres icon. She has the most joyful expression on her face.

To see all of the posts in this series, click HERE.

AMDG

Dwell on These Things ~ First Wednesday of Advent

Listening this time: Alison Krauss, Yo Yo Ma, and Stephen Foster

To see all the posts in this series, click HERE.

AMDG

Reed of God ~ Fiat

Fra Filippo Lippi, Annunciation

The surrender that is asked of us includes complete and absolute trust; it must be like Our Lady's surrender, without condition and without reservation.

In this section Caryll Houselander refers repeatedly to Mary as a child, and says she could not have been more than 14. I have no idea whether or not that is an accurate statement, or whether or not she would have been thought a child in that time and place, but sinless as she was, she certainly had the mind and heart of a child. She was, indeed, as she was when she had, "...just come from God's hand." The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that only someone very young could have responded to Gabriel as she did. It had to be someone who had never been betrayed or seen real corruption who could be brave enough to offer that total surrender.

"Be it done unto me according to thy word" seems a very bold prayer indeed in view of the words we know God has uttered. It would be easier to sacrifice some big thing to God, to impose some hard rule upon ourselves, than to say, "Do what you like with me."

 At the heart of this surrender is trust, trust in the only One whom we have any reason to trust. And yet, in practice Our Lord is far down on the list of those or those things in which we place our trust. In our everyday lives we trust in a hundred different things: our car, elevators (ugh), our intellect, our friends, too many to enumerate, all of which may fail us without notice. And then, of course, Miss Houselander mentions money. Who of us does that think that just a bit more money could make us more secure?

Money means the safest, swiftest travelling, the speediest spoken or written word (Could she even have imagined how swifly our words travel now?), the warmest clothing, the best medical aid.

Small wonder is it that gradually, without know it, we have come to trust more in money than in God.

From his earliest childhood the modern man is brought up to value money above all else and even to value himself by his capacity for getting it.

It is hardly surprising, when we think of all that money has come to mean to men, that if the breadwinner suddenly changes his mind and sets some other thing higher, he is thought to be a traitor in his own home.

And yet, every day now we see images of people, who were formerly secure in comfortable lives and with enough money, trudging in long, exhausted lines of refugees, leaving behind all the things they trusted in and on their way to who knows where?

What does it take for us to make that great leap of faith into the heart of Him who is the only safe refuge? It's understandable, of course, when we look at the lives of those who have made that leap. From the outside it looks pretty terrifying.

"Be it done unto me according to thy word" surrenders yourself and all that is dear to you to God, and the trust which it implies does not mean trusting God to look after you and yours, to keep you and them in health and prosperity and honor.

It means much more, it means trusting that whatever God does with you and with yours is the act of an infinitely loving Father. 

It seems impossible to choose this kind of vulnerability, and yet, it is only on the other side of that leap that we can be really peaceful, that we can see that every loss is a gift and every pain is the coin of the realm, that we can look into the future without fear.

All of the posts in this series can be found by clicking HERE.
Unfortunately they are in reverse order, so you have to scroll down to get to the beginning.

AMDG

P.S. I know you're out there. I would love to hear from you.