Now, now- it is the Lord who speaks- come back to me with all your heart, fasting, weeping, mourning. Let your hearts be broken, not your garments torn, turn to the Lord your God again for he is all tenderness and COMPASSION, slow to anger, rich in graciousness and ready to relent.
Each of the readings in the Liturgy of the Word for Ash Wednesday speak to me of a call to conversion and wholeness. They do this in slightly different ways. The Prophet Joel’s words are a rallying cry for a community in crisis. It is time for the community to turn back to the Lord. Their turning back is possible and desirable because God’s very being is compassion.
In Jewish thinking compassion is one of the highest virtues and marks of a faithful Jew. The word compassion (rahamanut) shares its root with the word for womb (rehem). The faithful keeping of Torah is a means by which the heart and soul are shaped in tenderness and compassion. The Torah binds in love, as a mother is bound to her child in the womb.
Lent is an invitation for us to turn our hearts and minds back to God. It’s an invitation to compassion for others and for ourselves.
BELOVED And from the cloud there came a voice which said: ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; he enjoys my favour. Listen to him.’
The Lent Lectionary pairs Matthew’s account of the Transfiguration with the story of Abraham being promised God’s blessing.
When Abraham is asked to look at the night sky and to try and count the stars, he is at a threshold in his life. He is following a call where the only certainty he has is that God will be faithful. When Jesus climbs the mountain with Peter, James and John he too relies on the knowledge that in whatever lies ahead God’s faithfulness will uphold him. A relationship of love frames both stories.
When God speaks to Abraham there is a tenderness in what is promised; ‘I will bless you and make your name so famous that it will be used as a blessing.’
There is a similar tenderness in the Father’s voice from the cloud: ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; he enjoys my favour. Listen to him.’. These words are full of affirmation. Some years ago I read an article by Jesuit, Pat Davis, on the Psychology of Obedience. He made this comment: It is very interesting that when God the Father speaks of Jesus it is always affirming. Now you would think that Jesus was the last person who needed affirmation, since he was fully human, fully mature, and yet each time we hear the Father’s voice speaking about his Son, it is very affirming, ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.’
So Lent then is an invitation to us all to move deeper into the mystery of God’s love and know that we too are beloved.
How would you most like God to show you that you are Beloved this Lent?
But when you give alms, your left hand must not know what your right is doing; your ALMSGIVING must be secret, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.
Lent begins in a potentially re-assuring place by offering us the three ancient spiritual tools of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Our Biblical ancestors knew these tools well. Faithfulness to the Torah consisted in making prayer, fasting and almsgiving the roots from which all else could grow. It was a way of life.
It’s easy to look at these three tools as Lent begins and to use them as a measuring stick. But what if we saw Lent not as a time to feel guilty, but more as an opportunity for deepening what is already embedded in our lives?
Matthew’s handling of these traditional practices moves our attention to our hearts and our motivations. This is where the real work of Lent begins. That Matthew uses the word secret ‘six’ times in this passage speaks to me of the inner work that God calls me to do. The invitation to almsgiving turns my attention from my own needs to the needs of others. We naturally think in terms of giving money or food to those in need. In many ways time is as precious a commodity as food or money. You may be in a position to give all three.
Throughout the liturgical year there are some hymns which seem to draw together all that I hold dear in biblical imagery and incarnational theology. Hail to the Lord who Comes is one of those hymns. This hymn helps me make an immediate connection between the Gospel scene of the presentation and my own life. Sometimes I need those connections to be very obvious.
Hail to the Lord who comes, Comes to the temple gate, Not with his angel hosts, Nor in his kingly state;
But borne upon the throne Of Mary’s gentle breast; Thus to his father’s house He comes, a humble guest.
The world’s true light draws near All darkness to dispel, The flame of faith is lit And dies the power of hell.
Our bodies and our souls Are temples now for him, For we are born of grace – God lights our souls within.
O Light of all the earth! We light our lives with thee; The chains of darkness gone All sons of God are free.
The hymn opens with a scene that is fairly easy to picture: Mary and Joseph, a little travel weary, come in faithfulness to the Temple, clutching their precious child. I imagine them standing on the Temple threshold, breathing in the sacred. They are filled with that awe that we have all experienced when we enter a sacred place. I imagine Joseph holding the offering tight and Mary holding Jesus tight. The gift in Joseph’s hands represents the love and longing of every faithful Jew to fulfill the Torah. The gift in Mary’s hand represents the love and longing of everyone who looked forward to the coming of the Saviour.
Can we see ourselves in the scene? Can we picture our hands open with all that we hold precious?
The world’s true light draws near All darkness to dispel
The promise of this light draws Simeon and Anna near. They have walked towards this light all their lives. Each prayer, each small act of kindness, each fulfilling of the Torah has made space inside them to recognise and receive the light. And there they stand, bathed in that light. God’s promises have come full circle.
Our bodies and our souls Are temples now for him,
These are the lines that touch me most from this hymn. They speak of wholeness and the goodness of every created thing. Read alongside the Gospel text they invite each one of us to be that Temple. We build the Temple out of the many fragments of our lives. It’s incarnational. It’s messy. But the promise is there that we are ‘born of grace’ and God ‘lights our souls within’. We were carried once, a precious bundle held tight. Our parents made an offering of all they held dear when they brought us to church for Baptism. God’s light has always been within us.
We light our lives with thee; The chains of darkness gone All sons of God are free.
In these days of darkness and uncertainty we might look outside ourselves for light. In fact, the light we seek is already within us. We often glimpse it in others first. Today’s feast is an invitation to celebrate the light within each one of us.
How is God calling you to celebrate the light this Candlemas?
Numbers 6:22-27 Luke 2:16-21 In the Desert Tradition the men and women who fled to the physical margins of society developed a very particular relationship with Scripture and particularly with Biblical characters. They were judged by the Master to have understood the Scriptures in so far as they embodied the virtues of the Biblical characters.
This teaching came to mind today as I listened to the Gospel. When I ask myself how can I embody Mary’s virtues, I am brought back to this verse:
As for Mary she treasured all of these things and pondered them in her heart.
In the regular rhythm of monastic life I am invited to treasure and to ponder many things. Silence provides the seed ground for this to happen. It’s always an invitation. I imagine Mary as someone who had always been closely attuned to the many ways in which God speaks. I imagine that the Psalms and Prophetic books had sunk into her bones. She knew what to treasure.
How is God calling you to treasure and to ponder as this new year begins?
Christ is here, Emmanuel! Majesty so mild: Wisdom dwells with grace and truth, Hidden in this child.
Here is God’s eternal Son, Now to us made known, By the Spirit’s love conceived, Mary’s flesh his own.
Born of God’s creative will, Christ is Light from Light, Come to rescue Adam’s sons, Waiting in the night.
Father, Son and Spirit blest: Heav’n their glory sings, While the earth with mighty voice Praise and Worship brings.
Stanbrook Abbey
This beautiful hymn says everything I want to say about the mystery of Jesus born for us at Bethlehem. May Jesus reveal himself to you today in every moment of grace and truth. Happy Christmas!
On this last day of Advent the Church lays before us a pivotal text in the Old Testament, 2 Sam 7. Walter Brueggemann describes it as ‘the taproot of the Messianic idea in Israel’.
After successfully bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and putting it in a tent, David now wonders if he should build something much grander. There’s a wordplay at work here. The word for ‘house’ can also mean ‘dynasty.’ The prophet Nathan tells David;
‘The Lord will make you great; and the Lord will make you a House.’
The roles are now reversed as David will no longer need to build God a ‘house’ as God intends to build David a ‘dynasty’. God makes a ground-breaking promise that in the lineage of David his faithful love will be made manifest. Up until this point God’s promises have been conditional, but now the dynasty is guaranteed in perpetuity. None of this is David’s doing. David is to be bound in relationship to the Lord: ‘I will be a father to him and he a son to me.’ The tender language of father and son always strikes me. God’s covenant is not a legal contract, but a relationship of love. As the story of salvation unfolds there are many falls from grace along the way. God’s promise remains.
Our final Gospel text in Advent brings us to the threshold of the fulfilment of all of God’s promises. In the Benedictus Zechariah sings of rescue, salvation and the promise proclaimed by the prophets. His son, John, will prepare the way for the Saviour. All of this is possible ‘by the tender mercy of our God’. Through the desert and exile, through the poor and the easily forgotten, our Advent journey has taken us to the very heart of God.
You may feel your Advent journey hasn’t quite ended and you are not really ready for Christmas to begin. Perhaps your plans have been radically changed and you are left disappointed. Into every situation of your life God is waiting to pour his tender mercy.
Where do you most need God’s mercy this Christmas?
O King of all the nations, the only joy of every human heart; O keystone of the mighty arch of man, come and save the creature you fashioned out of dust.
O Rex Gentium
O King of our desire whom we despise, King of the nations never on the throne, Unfound foundation, cast-off cornerstone, Rejected joiner, making many one, You have no form or beauty for our eyes, A King who comes to give away his crown, A King within our rags of flesh and bone. We pierce the flesh that pierces our disguise, For we ourselves are found in you alone. Come to us now and find in us your throne, O King within the child within the clay, O hidden King who shapes us in the play Of all creation. Shape us for the day Your coming Kingdom comes into its own.
‘And the Lord you are seeking will suddenly enter his Temple; and the angel of the covenant who you are longing for, yes, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.’
In today’s reading from the prophet Malachi there are two words which always stand out for me: ‘seeking’ and ‘longing’. These words are firmly part of our Advent vocabulary. We have met them in our Scripture readings and hymns. Through the centuries Christian writers have explored the theme of longing for God. I have found myself reminiscing about my childhood and the special times of longing for birthdays, holidays, the arrival of my grandparents from Denmark. Nothing as an adult seems quite to equal the build up of excitement that I experienced as a child.
In her book, The Coming of God, Maria Boulding osb, captures beautifully the longing that is in every human heart:
‘… the work of grace is going on in you through the whole business of living, to hollow you out, to make you Capax Dei as the old mystics used to say, able to receive God. You yourself are the place of desire and need. All your love, your stretching out, your hope, your thirst, God is creating in you so that he may fill you. It is not your desire that makes it happen but his. He longs through your heart. Your insufficiency and your forgetting to long for him are no barrier. In your prayer God is seeking you and himself creating the prayer; he is on the inside of the longing.’
The Gospel text from Luke 1:57-66 today tells of the birth of John the Baptist and his naming.
The time came for Elizabeth to have her child, and she gave birth to a son; and when her neighbours and relations heard that the Lord had shown her so great a kindness, they shared her joy.
Here Luke expresses a joy that I can easily relate to. Shared good news brings a blessing that ripples out to all who hear it. This joy is possible because Elizabeth and Zechariah are both people who have walked faithfully in God’s ways and been humble enough to make space for God.
I don’t think I could imagine a more poignant scene if I tried than that of Hannah leaving her child Samuel in the Temple at Shiloh. Everything about the story raises a huge question. Hannah had longed for a child and saw the birth of Samuel as the greatest blessing. And yet, she had made a vow that he would be given over to the Lord.
Perhaps we need to take a step back from the poignant details and see this episode as part of God’s overarching plan. By growing up in Shiloh Samuel is shown to have been trained from a very young age to listen to God’s word and to act upon it. It is Samuel who will anoint David as King, and from David’s line the Messiah will be born.
We can trace a thread through the stories of the Old Testament of people who were faithful to God against all odds. Each small choice and each big ‘Yes’ paves the way for the fulfilment of God’s promise. Maria Boulding, in her book, The Coming of God, expresses this beautifully:
‘The chosen people were created to be a centre of attunement, receptivity and expectation, a place of felt need and desire. They were to listen to God’s word, to long for him, and to be the womb-community which would bring forth the One who was to come.’
In Luke’s Gospel when Mary sings her Magnificat she embodies every longing of Israel. Every choice to be receptive to God’s Word will now take flesh in her.
And still today, God longs for our whole-hearted participation in the promise of salvation. We are still called to be that place of longing for our communities, for our country, for the world.
Read through the passages a few times during the day. How is God speaking to you through these texts?
