This year for Lent, I took on the discipline of fasting before the Eucharist. It doesn’t quite rank up there with St Antony of the Desert’s heroic efforts of asceticism, but my spiritual director felt that they would be a good discipline for me. My tendency is to want to take on more, do more, accomplish more, and so any discipline of letting go, of self-denial, is going against the grain for me – and is therefore all the more necessary.

I can tell that it’s a necessary discipline, because it’s going quite badly.

To begin with, the idea of fasting before morning mass filled me with trepidation. I like breakfast. I feel that breakfast is necessary. What’s more, my schedule means that if I don’t have breakfast on the days I go to church, I won’t eat until lunchtime. I go to the 9 AM mass on Tuesdays and Thursdays, then have just enough time to have coffee or run an errand or two before I go to work, and on Sundays I go to the 10:45 AM mass, which means that I’m not home from church till probably 1 PM. I explained all this to my spiritual director. “My blood sugar might get low, and I’ll get a headache,” I said.

“Well, then, bring a granola bar and eat it on the way to work,” Fr Doran replied.

He wouldn’t let me off the hook.

That first Tuesday I anxiously contemplated the lengthy stretch of time before I would be able to eat, but lo and behold! I survived. Even Sunday was not a problem. In fact, when I got home from church I even just had a light meal, a bowl of soup, and felt completely satisfied.

First lesson learned: as a well-fed American in good health, I am not going to starve to death, or have any ill consequences whatsoever, if I skip a meal a couple times a week. (I found myself reflecting on the difference between my own self-chosen circumstances and those of people who have no choice but to go hungry.)

Second lesson learned: my anxiety was about control, not hunger. I was afraid of being hungry; I was afraid of not feeling well. My fears dictated my actions, so that I didn’t just prefer to eat breakfast, I felt that I had to eat breakfast, whether or not I felt hungry at that moment. I began to see that fasting was a way of recognizing the ways in which our bodies control us, rather than the other way around.

The next week, I thought: “I can do this!” My confidence was raised higher by the fact that one day, I ended up not having a chance to eat lunch either, and yet I managed to get through the day just fine. “Now that’s discipline!” I told myself. Rising above the physical, subjugating the desires of the flesh to the control of a well-ordered mind, and all that.

As you might guess, I was headed for a fall.

I remembered the desert fathers and thought, “If they could live a prayerful and productive life with just one simple meal a day, I can too!” (O Lord, have mercy on me.) I skipped breakfast, didn’t worry about having a snack, didn’t worry about fitting in time for lunch into a busy day…

… and by the end of the day, found myself exhausted. True, I didn’t feel hungry. I also didn’t feel like praying. I didn’t feel like reading. I didn’t feel like writing or working, either. In fact, I didn’t feel like doing anything but sitting apathetically in my armchair. Finally I roused myself sufficiently to reheat some leftovers in the microwave.

An hour later, I felt enormously better. All of a sudden I had energy! I felt able to do some work – to think clearly!

And I realized the obvious: I need to eat. I am not some sort of spiritual superwoman; if I don’t eat, I don’t have energy to do the work that I need to do – certainly not to do it well. I felt like a failure. “I can’t do this. I need to quit this discipline. I can’t handle fasting! I’ll tell Fr. Doran that I’m giving up.”

To put the final icing on the cake, as it were, this past Sunday at church a few of my fellow parishioners were talking about fasting before the Eucharist, which it turns out they all do as a matter of course. Here I was, thinking I was actually doing something worthwhile by taking this on as a Lenten discipline, and it’s something most people take for granted. I felt like an idiot.

I think I’m starting to see the point of fasting.

I’ve managed to hit the extremes: obsessive attention to making sure I eat regularly, and careless inattention to whether I eat at all; cowardice about suffering any bodily discomfort whatsoever, and spiritual pride over being able to ignore my bodily needs; a sense of personal merit for taking on this discipline, and a feeling of personal embarrassment at being behind when I thought I was ahead.

To discipline something is to train it in the way that it should go. If there is one thing that I have seen so far in this experiment of fasting, it is my own need for discipline.

My nature is to go to extremes – and most of all, to go to the extreme of trying to do more, be better, work harder. My natural response to failure is to castigate myself. What an idiot I was, to be proud of myself, to think I was doing so well, to consider even for a moment that there was special merit in taking on this discipline. What was I thinking?

Since I recognize (rather belatedly) that I am not going to climb the summits of asceticism, at least not during this particular Lenten season, it is tempting to give up on the project altogether. It’s easier to turn aside from the path than to recognize that I am only one tiny, tiny step forward on it, and that the path leads up, up, up ahead of me, with many people farther along than I am (not just older and wiser, but younger people too).

Fasting is not really about managing my desire for food, but about managing my desire for success, and the control (or sense of control) that comes with success. It’s one more facet of the same challenge that I recognized, and feared, before I became a Christian: “Your will be done, not mine.”

That’s never easy, is it?

I suppose that’s why Our Lord says “When you fast…”

Not if, but when. He knows we need practice letting go.

Related posts:

1. Ash Wednesday
2. The Spiritual Disciplines: The Wings of Prayer
3. Experiments with a Lenten Cupboard

Almsgiving, fasting, and prayer: these are the three essential disciplines that every Christian must practice if we are to have any hope of resisting evil. Our Lord himself in the Sermon on the Mount commends these disciplines to us.

Matthew 6.1-6, 16-21

“Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.  “Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

There is one reason that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us; one reason our Lord Jesus Christ suffered and died on the cross… one reason why he rose victorious from the grave. That one reason is this: to save us from sin. The sin of our ancestors, and yes, our own sin.

“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds [we] have been healed.” (1 Peter 2.24)

Sin is the universal problem.  It leads to death.

Jesus is the universal solution.  He gives us life.

The Christian life is a constant struggle to choose Jesus and resist sin. We know that in Christ is our life. And yet so often, as Jesus says to his disciples, “The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

The great irony of sin is that while we can get ourselves into it, we cannot get ourselves out of it. The Rev. Dr. E.B. Pusey, one of the great spiritual lights of the Oxford Movement, writes, “We cannot give ourselves any grace: but we have the fearful power of not asking for it…What we have made ourselves, we cannot ourselves unmake.”

What Dr. Pusey is saying is that we cannot remove the effects of our own sin.  For this we can only throw ourselves at the mercy of God and beg His forgiveness.  And in so doing, we are comforted by the promise that, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1.9)

Repentance is the only road to forgiveness. In fact, there are only two kinds of sinners: penitent and impenitent. The cry of the penitent sinner is the cry of the psalmist who says, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”

In our baptismal covenant each one of us promises to “persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever we fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord.”  The season of Lent is a special opportunity to do just this: persevere in resisting evil, and repent of the sins we have committed. In the ancient world a person covered himself in sackcloth and ashes as a sign of his deep remorse and heartfelt sorrow for his sin.  The ashes with which we mark our foreheads on Ash Wednesday serve the very same purpose; they are a sign of deep remorse and heartfelt sorrow for our sin.

For those of us who practice sacramental confession as part of a rule of life, Lent is an important time for confession and spiritual direction.  If you do not practice sacramental confession as part of your rule of life, Lent is a good opportunity to consider beginning that spiritual discipline.

Repentance is what we do when we sin, but what about preventing sin?

No serious athlete or soldier engages in competition or battle without first dedicating themselves to rigorous training and preparation.  Even with the best training and preparation, victory is not guaranteed.  But to engage without any training at all is almost certain failure.

The Christian life and our battle against sin is no different — except that the stakes couldn’t be any higher.  To engage in this battle against sin without any training is almost certain failure.  How then do we train to resist evil?  There are three essential disciplines that every Christian ought to practice.

Almsgiving helps us turn from the attractions of the world. Fasting helps us to control the desires of the flesh. Prayer helps us to defeat the wiles of Satan.

Almsgiving, fasting, and prayer: these are the three essential disciplines that every Christian must practice if we are to have any hope of resisting evil. Our Lord himself in the Sermon on the Mount commends these disciplines to us: “when you give alms, when you fast, when you pray.”

Almsgiving strengthens our love of others.

Fasting strengthens our denial of self.

Prayer strengthens our devotion to God.

These three disciplines go together.  They are not meant to stand in isolation.

Vernon Staley in The Catholic Religion writes:  “It is not uncommon for Christians who pray, to omit the kindred duties of fasting and almsgiving.  This is clearly wrong, for our Blessed Lord has coupled them with prayer; Fasting and Almsgiving are the wings of Prayer.”

The wings of prayer! Now that’s an amazing thought.

How often do we pray?  How often do we give alms?  How often do we fast?  Each one of these spiritual disciplines ought to be a regular part of every Christian’s Rule of Life.

Now of these three, probably the most foreign to our culture is fasting.  Why do we fast?  What does it have to do with resisting evil?

Again from Staley’s Catholic Religion: “The object of fasting is that the flesh may be subdued to the spirit; in other words, that the body may become an apt and willing minister to the soul.  St. Leo the Great wrote, “A man has true freedom when his flesh is ruled by the judgment of his mind, and his mind is directed by the government of God… If we are able to deny ourselves in things lawful, we shall be better able to deny ourselves in things unlawful.”

The point of fasting is to discipline our bodies to be completely obedient to our souls, so that when our souls are completely obedient to God, everything is in its proper place.

So often our souls are in the right place — desirous of loving and obeying God — and yet we still fall prey to sin.  It is because our souls are not in control of our bodies.  The discipline of fasting seeks to correct this.

Confession of sin, almsgiving, fasting, and prayer: all these spiritual disciplines ought to be a regular part of every Christian’s Rule of Life. Our Lenten Rule is merely an opportunity to focus and enhance our year-round Rule.

If you have a Rule of Life and have been successful in keeping it, God bless you!  Lent is a good opportunity to add a little more to your rule.

If you have a Rule of Life and have struggled to keep it, welcome to the club!  Lent is a good opportunity to focus on keeping that rule.

If you do not have a Rule of Life, Lent is the perfect opportunity to begin one.

Yes, the season of Lent is an equal opportunity season.

Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?  Yes, we will — with God’s help.

Related posts:

1. Ash Wednesday
2. The Spiritual Disciplines: Praying the Daily Office
3. What Is Prayer? (2): God Is Not a Vending Machine

Jesus’ Transfiguration reveals in all its fullness the mind-boggling nature of his voluntary act of self-sacrifice.  This voluntary act of self-sacrifice has a name — and that name is Love.

Luke 9.28-36.

Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray.  And as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white.  And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Eli’jah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.  Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, and when they wakened they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.  And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah”–not knowing what he said.  As he said this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were afraid as they entered the cloud.  And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”  And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silence and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.

Epiphany, the season between Christmas and Lent, is a celebration of the wonderful, saving truth that the Creator of the universe has made Himself known to His creation.  Almighty God, He who is unknowable, incomprehensible, infinite, and uncreated, has become fully present and physically tangible to all of humanity.  How has He accomplished this impossible task?  By becoming a human being Himself.  The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.  God has revealed Himself fully to the whole world in the person of Jesus Christ.  This is our Epiphany celebration.

It is quite fitting then, that on the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany, we celebrate the Transfiguration of Our Lord. The Transfiguration is the consummation – or the climax – of Epiphany.  This mysterious and miraculous event on the mountaintop is an unmistakable reminder that the tender infant in the manger, the small boy presented in the temple, the young man baptized in the waters of the Jordan, is in truth the God of the universe.

What happened on that mountaintop?

In St. John’s gospel, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one,” (John 10.30) and “he who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14.9).  At his Transfiguration these words are mystically fulfilled.

The light that shone so brightly that day was not a light shining down from heaven upon Jesus.  It was the uncreated light of God Himself, bursting forth from within Jesus.  For just a moment, Peter, James, and John beheld the Lord Jesus Christ in all his radiant glory: God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father.

It’s hard to blame these disciples for their excited bewilderment.  It must have been a disorienting experience.  Quite naturally, they mistake this event as somehow being the end of all they had been waiting for: the end of their journey, the end of their mission. Peter is ready to build booths, to set up camp and stay awhile. But Jesus’ Transfiguration is not the end of his mission; in fact, the mission has only just begun.  While the disciples are ready to stay put, Jesus is on the move.

Where is he headed?

The calendar of the church year shows us the way . . . twice, actually. Some of you may know that we celebrate the Transfiguration not only at the end of Epiphany, but again every August 6^th.   In both cases, this glorious event marks the beginning of a much darker road. Our celebration today takes place on the cusp of a 40-day journey that leads us straight to the cross.  (Yes, that’s a reference to Lent). Likewise on August 6^th, if you count forward 40 days you will land on September 14^th, which is the feast of the Holy Cross. The calendar models the life of Our Lord who, after revealing himself as God on one mountaintop, begins his journey towards another: that of Calvary.

Which brings us to our final question: why the Transfiguration?  What is its purpose and meaning?  The answer is realized some 40 days into the future… on the cross.

Jesus’ revelation to his disciples is a gift to them.  It is a vision of hope: of promised resurrection and future glory.  They are given this vision to carry with them as they journey the way of the cross with Jesus.

We too must take the Transfiguration with us, on our journey to the cross.

Now you may think, “Well, I wasn’t there on top of that mountain.” But consider this. Many of us have experienced our own revelations of God in the person of Jesus Christ: those times when God has made Himself known to us in profound and unmistakable ways along the road of life.

These experiences are given to us for the very same reason the Transfiguration is given to the disciples: to be visions of hope, of promised resurrection and future glory. They are gifts to us especially for those darker periods in our lives, when we find ourselves in the valley of the shadow of death.  God gives us these experiences to take with us as we journey the way of the cross with Our Lord. They are sure and certain reminders that He is real, that we are not alone, that He is with us in our suffering, just as He is in our times of deliverance and celebration.

The Transfiguration is God’s gift to us, a gift of the vision of hope at the foot of the cross.

But that is only the beginning.

The connection between the Transfiguration and the cross goes far deeper than this; it reveals to us the motive of the mission itself.

However, for this we must set the stage.

The Transfiguration is not the first time God has revealed Himself. Throughout the course of salvation history, He has done so in a variety of ways to a select few.  One such revelation was to Moses on top of Mt. Sinai. Yet, as God says to Moses at that moment, “no man shall see my face and live.” (Exodus 33.20).  So on that mountain with Moses, God literally covers Moses with His hand as He passes by Him — that he might live.

In another revelation, with the prophet Elijah, God does not come to him in a violent earthquake, or a raging fire, but rather in a gentle wind, so that Elijah would remain unharmed.

And so it is with Peter, James, and John.  At the Transfiguration they witness the revelation of Almighty God: the voice of the Father, the glory of the Son, and the cloud of the Spirit enveloping them.  They are privileged to behold the All-Holy Trinity . . . and live!

God says, “No man shall see my face and live.”  Jesus says, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”  Christ’s identity as God is fully revealed at his Transfiguration.

And yet, this is the same Christ who will be betrayed in the garden.  This is the same Christ who will stand before Pilate and be condemned to death.  This is the same Christ who will be whipped and thrashed by the soldiers.  This is the same Christ who will fall repeatedly into the dust of the earth under the weight of the cross.

This is the same Christ who will be stripped of his garments, nailed to the wood, pierced in the side.

This same Christ, who on the mount of Transfiguration shines with the pure brightness of the everliving Father in heaven, will on the mount of Calvary die on the cross.

Here we see a most significant connection between the Transfiguration and the cross: the revelation of the divinity of Jesus at the Transfiguration is confirmation that his blessed passion and precious death were voluntary.

The Transfiguration is confirmation of Jesus’ own words, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again; this charge I have received from my Father” (John 10.18). And again at his arrest in the garden, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26.53)

No soldier or bystander could have withstood the glory of God in the face of Christ.  It is of Jesus’ own free will that he allows them to destroy him.  For their sake even — for their own deliverance from the power of sin and death — he sustains them in grace as they put him to death.

Jesus’ Transfiguration reveals in all its fullness the mind-boggling nature of this voluntary act of self-sacrifice.  And this voluntary act of self-sacrifice has a name — and that name is Love.

Love, by definition, is voluntary.  It is not mandatory.  It is free.  It is not something we have to do.  It is something we desire to do, not counting the cost.  Love is what we give, regardless of what we get in return.

The Transfiguration reveals for us the essence of Christ’s pure love for us on the cross: to be by very nature God, and to freely and voluntarily lay down his life for his friends.

True love is the motive of the mission.

True love . . . dies on the cross.

On the cross, Jesus is patient and kind; he is not jealous or boastful.

On the cross, Jesus is not arrogant or rude;  he does not insist on his own way.

On the cross, Jesus is not irritable or resentful; he does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.

On the cross, Jesus bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. The love and life that Jesus gives to us on the cross . . . never ends.

Made in God’s image, we too are free to walk in love, just as Christ loved us, and gave himself up for us.  Beloved, let us pick up our cross, and follow him.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Related posts:

1. The Garden, the Cross, and the Tomb
2. Salvation and Marriage
3. What It Means to Follow Jesus: The Faithful Fishermen’s Perspective

Why do we decorate our homes at Christmas? Should we? It’s an easy shot to mock the Puritans for attempting to abolish Christmas festivities: what a bunch of kill-joys! Nevertheless, the impulse for a plain Christmas is honorable: to call our attention to our sinful state, to remind us that this is the day that God Himself deigned to be born among us, to share our joys and sorrows and ultimately to die for us.

But the impulse to celebrate with song, and decorations, and festivity is the truer one, for if we take Christmas seriously we cannot help but be joyful. Love Himself came down for us, to be the way for us to join in the eternal communion of love in the most holy Trinity. If we are reflective, Christmas is both a solemn time and a joyful time – captured in the joyful solemnity of a serious midnight mass, in the poignant sweetness of real Christmas carols, in gifts exchanged among the people we love.

Why do we decorate our homes? In one sense, it’s all so unnecessary. After all, the stable where our Lord was born wasn’t hung with multicolored lights and tinsel. But wait: Christmas celebrates the Incarnation, the day that grace and truth came down to dwell among us – grace, truth, and beauty.  For there never was in all of creation anything so beautiful as the child who lay in the manger on that first Christmas day. The Author of all beauty, born a human child.

Genesis tells us that God made the world, and saw that it was very good. All around us we see the beauty of the Creation, and in it, the mark of the Creator’s hand. We, made in His image, are creators too: small-c creators after the likeness of the big-C Creator, but sharing in that joyful work of imagining beauty and making it real in the physical world. So I say to you: don’t pack away the ornaments just yet, don’t take down the tree! The twelve days of Christmas run from Christmas Day to Epiphany, December 25 to January 6 – rejoice just a little longer in the beauty of the season and your own share in making it beautiful.

Unto us a child is born – O come let us adore Him. Alleluia!

Related posts:

1. Worship Him in the Beauty of Holiness: Church Art, Architecture, and Worship
2. Advent and Christmas Poetry 4: Awe – John Donne’s “Holy Sonnet 15”
3. Advent Season: Living In Between

After the anticipatory and penitential season of Advent, we come to Christmas. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1, 14) Christmas is the Feast of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ – the Word made flesh.

The Greek word used in the Gospel for “Word” is Logos. It doesn’t just mean word, in the sense of a spoken or written word; Logos also means order, rationality, logic. The universe is an orderly place, one in which laws of nature can be discerned. Cause and effect function; we can observe nature and draw conclusions from it; we can use our own minds, our own reason, to interpret the world rightly and put our interpretations into practice. We take all this for granted, but we shouldn’t. It doesn’t have to be the case that the universe is orderly and comprehensible. The ancient Greeks thought the world was fundamentally chaotic; as a result, they didn’t bother to pursue experimental science. Why observe nature, when it is random? Why run an experiment, if it will just come up differently another day? We should pause in wonder and awe at the fact that the world is, indeed comprehensible, because it doesn’t have to be. Though there is so much that we do not understand about the world, yet we can understand so much through the use of our minds, somehow standing above and apart from the universe that we study.

The underlying structure of the cosmos; the basic rationality from which all reason comes; order, rationality, meaning – Logos. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us… full of grace and truth.” When we speak of the order of the universe, whether we know it or not, we speak of the Second Person of the most holy Trinity, the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Who was born in a stable in Bethlehem.

John Donne’s poem “Holy Sonnet 15” invites us to consider what that means.

Holy Sonnet  15

Wilt thou love God as he thee ? then digest,
My soul, this wholesome meditation,
How God the Spirit, by angels waited on
In heaven, doth make His temple in thy breast.
The Father having begot a Son most blest,
And still begetting—for he ne’er begun—
Hath deign’d to choose thee by adoption,
Co-heir to His glory, and Sabbath’ endless rest.
And as a robb’d man, which by search doth find
His stolen stuff sold, must lose or buy it again,
The Sun of glory came down, and was slain,
Us whom He had made, and Satan stole, to unbind.
‘Twas much, that man was made like God before,
But, that God should be made like man, much more.

Like Eliot, Donne shows the connection between the Incarnation and the Crucifixion. For why did God become man? For us, and for our salvation: “The Sun of glory came down, and was slain, / Us whom He had made, and Satan stole, to unbind.” We are bound by sin, stuck in alienation, misled by Satan to put our own wills higher than the will of the One who made us. Despite the fact that our situation is, to put it bluntly, all our own fault, the Son, the Light of the World – the Sun of Glory – came infinitely far down to us, to loose us from the chains of sin.

And at what a cost. He made us, and so we are rightfully His, but even so, He chose to pay for us again – to pay the ultimate price of His own perfect and sinless life, for us: “And as a robb’d man, which by search doth find / His stolen stuff sold, must lose or buy it again, / The Sun of glory came down, and was slain.”

Yet Donne reminds us that our Lord offers not just rescue from sin, but eternal life as adopted children of God! “The Father… Hath deign’d to choose thee by adoption, / Co-heir to His glory, and Sabbath’ endless rest.” It is an offer that seems too good to be true… except that it comes from the hand of the Father, who is perfect Good, and so it is an offer that we can trust.

What does Christmas Day mean to us? It means that on a particular day in history, God Himself took on mortal flesh and was born as a human baby, in cold and poverty, in fear and uncertainty and the shadow of Herod’s murderous intentions.

We could not reach up to Him, so He came down to us. No myth, this. No fairy tale – but reality, a fact of history, as hard-edged as it gets.

What does this mean to me, to you?

If it is true – it changes everything.

“’Twas much, that man was made like God before,

But, that God should be made like man, much more.”

Related posts:

1. Experiencing the Trinity in Poetry (2): John Donne’s Holy Sonnets 10 and 11
2. Experiencing the Trinity in Poetry (1): John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 1
3. Experiencing the Trinity in Poetry 3: John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 12

We all know the story of the Three Kings, even if only from the chorus of “We Three Kings of Orient Are.” However, Holy Scripture does not call these men kings, but rather magi, “wise men from the east” (Matthew 2:1) who journeyed from a far-off land to offer gifts to the baby Jesus. But why did they make the trip? What did they hope to find – and what did they find?

They came to find the Truth. Their story reminds us that Christmas is a call to conversion, if we will only hear it.

The great poet T.S. Eliot, arguably the finest poet of the 20th century, converted to Christianity as an adult. The poem “The Journey of the Magi” was written shortly after his conversion; an imaginative extrapolation of what the magi experienced on their journey to see the infant Christ, it is also an extended metaphor for the journey to faith in Christ.

We are all called to conversion, every one of us. God calls each and all of us – but He does not force us to listen, or to respond; that is our choice, given to us by the God who made us in His image. The choice to accept Christ may be dramatic, or it may be slow; it may be early in life, or it may be late. In one sense, conversion is a one-time event, but for every Christian it is also a daily, even hourly choice. Every day is a new conversion as we choose that day to follow Christ.

Eliot’s poem reminds us that such a choice is not always easy. The way of Christ is, after all, the way of the Cross. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?… For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Romans 6:3, 5) We like to jump ahead to the glorious resurrection part (who wouldn’t?) but how do we get there? Paul says it straight: only if we die with Christ can we live with Him. We must crucify our old selves, die to sin, in order to live in Christ Jesus. Death, and rebirth.

Eliot’s narrator, the unnamed magi who is reflecting years later on the journey, puzzles over this very concept: “I have seen birth and death, / But had thought they were different; this Birth was / Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.”

The magi makes the long journey, accepting hardship, pressing onward despite the voices of self-doubt that sing in his ears, “saying / That this was all folly.” He passes through a landscape redolent with meaning that he does not see, images that foreshadow the Crucifixion – for when this baby was born, the Cross was already at the other end of His life. So, too, we have experiences whose depths of meaning we can only understand in retrospect… and so, too, we must face the insistent voices of self-doubt that whisper that searching for truth is foolish, naïve,  quixotic, a waste of time…

And the magi sees the infant Jesus, the Word made flesh. Words fail him; “it was (you may say) satisfactory.” In that moment, he is transformed; he has seen the Truth. How can anything be the same? Indeed it cannot.  It is birth – and death, his own death.

He cannot stay. He goes home – to a people who have not seen the Truth, “an alien people clutching their gods.” These are his people – but he is no longer one of them. He has seen into the Kingdom, and cannot any longer be at ease in his kingdom of this world.

Like the magi, we too cannot stay at the foot of the manger. We kneel in adoration, but then we have to go home, to live and work among a pagan people. We cannot be at ease in the world, nor should we be, because the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and has called us to follow Him.

In his final words, the narrator of “Journey of the Magi” challenges us. Have we accommodated ourselves to the pagan world? Have we become comfortable, and ceased to bear witness to the terrifying and beautiful Truth? Will we be glad of what the magi looks forward to?

Journey of the Magi

“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.”
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Related posts:

1. Advent and Christmas Poetry 4: Awe – John Donne’s “Holy Sonnet 15”
2. Advent and Christmas Poetry 1: Tension – Christina Rossetti’s “Sunday Before Advent”
3. The Call to Repentance and Conversion

Christmas is a joyous season, for love, fellowship, giving, and relaxation – or at least we recognize that it ought to be, even if we get caught up in the snarls of everyday life, trying to shape  impossible expectations, family relationships, and Christmas shopping into something recognizably festive. Advent strikes a different note. Advent is about anticipation, but also penitence – and patience.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24) Penitence means recognizing that we are not as we ought to be, that we have failed in thought, word, and deed to be as God calls us to be. The penitent heart recognizes this, and cries to God, “Help!” For only God can remake us – but He has indeed promised to do His redeeming work in every heart that turns to Him.

In His own time, and in His way. Penitence means letting go of “having it our way,” and letting God have it His way. How hard that is, sometimes! Gerard Manley Hopkins, the virtuoso poet-priest of the late Victorian era, recognized how difficult patience can be, and gives us “Patience, Hard Thing!”

“Patience, Hard Thing!”

Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray,

But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks

Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks;

To do without, take tosses, and obey.

Rare patience roots in these, and, these away,

Nowhere. Natural heart’s ivy, Patience masks

Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she basks

Purple eyes and seas of liquid leaves all day.

We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills

To bruise them dearer. Yet the rebellious wills

Of us we do bid God bend to him even so.

And where is he who more and more distils

Delicious kindness?—He is patient. Patience fills

His crisp combs, and that comes those ways we know.

Hopkins begins by recognizing that waiting is difficult. “Patience who asks / Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks; / To do without, take tosses, and obey.” We are called to bear our cross, whatever it may be – even though sometimes what we are called to bear is neither exciting nor dramatic. When we are called to be patient, we may instead wish that we had war and wounds to deal with: conflicts and struggles that demand action. Instead, our task may be to graciously “do without, take tosses, and obey.” And in that acceptance of our given task, true patience sets down its roots.

Patience as heart’s ivy – covering over our “ruins of wrecked past purpose”! God may frustrate our plans, if they are not according to His will for us. As we survey the ruins of our self-centered plans, we may grow penitent as we recognize our own rebellion. The giving up of self-will can be agonizing: “We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills / To bruise them dearer.” Isn’t it enough to recognize that we were wrong? Do we really have to give up everything to God? Can’t we still have it our own way, at least sometimes? No?

Yet this is what grace is: God can, and will, do the transforming work that we cannot do for ourselves, when we ask Him to help us: “Yet the rebellious wills / Of us we do bid God bend to him even so.” Hopkins shows us that we can choose to ask God to bend our still-rebellious wills to Him; we may not feel obedient, but we can be obedient even so.

Patience, hard thing! But what is the result of patience? “And where is he who more and more distils / Delicious kindness?—He is patient. Patience fills / His crisp combs, and that comes those ways we know.” We know how bees make honey. The patient bees visit flower after flower, bringing back the tiny grains of pollen to the hive; grain by grain, ever so slowly, the honey forms and, hidden within the hive, the crisp combs fill with its delicious sweetness.

Related posts:

1. Advent and Christmas Poetry 1: Tension – Christina Rossetti’s “Sunday Before Advent”
2. Advent and Christmas Poetry 3: Conversion – T.S. Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi”
3. Advent and Christmas Poetry 4: Awe – John Donne’s “Holy Sonnet 15”

During Advent we are called to experience the tension between Right Now and Not Yet. We look forward to celebrating the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, an event in history, but we also look forward to a future event, the Second Coming of our Lord in glory, to judge the living in the dead.

Our Lord tells us to be watchful: “But know this, if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” (Matthew 24:43-44)

As that great Anglican poet and priest, John Donne, asked, “What if this present were the world’s last night?” One day there will be a Last Day. It will be either the world’s Last Day, as Christ returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, or our own personal Last Day, but either way, there will be an end, and we will stand before the Lord in judgment. The season of Advent invites us to prepare ourselves for that final day.

But how?

The best poets, the ones who have sought and found Truth, can help us to take in big ideas like this one, the tension between “right now” and “not yet.” Christina Rossetti’s poem “Sunday Before Advent” challenges us to face this Advent tension – and think through what it means.

“Sunday Before Advent”

The end of all things is at hand. We all
Stand in the balance trembling as we stand;
Or if not trembling, tottering to a fall.
The end of all things is at hand.

O hearts of men, covet the unending land!
O hearts of men, covet the musical,
Sweet, never-ending waters of that strand!

While Earth shows poor, a slippery rolling ball,
And Hell looms vast, a gulf unplumbed, unspanned,
And Heaven flings wide its gates to great and small,
The end of all things is at hand.

“The end of all things is at hand. We all / Stand in the balance trembling as we stand; / Or if not trembling, tottering to a fall.” The end of all things is at hand – indeed it is, for this very night could be your last night; and if not today, then one day. In the terrible light of that knowledge, are we trembling or are we tottering? Indeed if we are not trembling, in awe before Christ our God, then we shall surely be tottering, about to fall – for if we are not grounded in the knowledge of who God is, then how can we stand firm?

“O hearts of men, covet the unending land!” We live surrounded by the impermanent. The things of this world will pass away; do we long for the permanent, the eternal, or do we struggle to cling to the transient things of this world?

“Hell looms vast, a gulf unplumbed, unspanned.” To turn from God, to reject Him and to thus reject all that is good – to prefer the self to the Author of that self – is a choice open to any and all of us. Hell, the No in response to God’s gracious Yes of the Incarnation – Hell is real. Advent is the season not just of anticipation but also of penitence, of self-examination. What sins do I cling to, what is there in my heart that stands between me and God? As Advent is a season of penitence, so too it is a season of reconciliation. What better gift on Christmas than the gift of God’s loving forgiveness, His grace freely given?

“Heaven flings wide her gates” – because, while the end of all things is at hand, we should hear the echo of Jesus’ words to the disciples as He sent them out to preach the good news: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 10:7). Indeed, the Kingdom is at hand – it is here, now, if only we will enter! This Christmas, we celebrate the Incarnation, the first Advent, when God Himself entered history – and we look forward with joyful hearts to the second Advent of our Redeemer.

The end of all things is at hand!

15th c Russian icon, from http://campus.belmont.edu/honors/FestalIcons/FestalIcons.html

Related posts:

1. Advent Season: Living In Between
2. Every Sunday Is a Little Easter
3. Advent and Christmas Poetry 4: Awe – John Donne’s “Holy Sonnet 15”

The Advent message is of repentance and conversion, a call to turn away from sin and self-will and turn toward God. It is an ongoing call. I can point to the day, even the hour, when I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior. Christ has made me His own. And yet, each day – each hour – still calls all of us to a new conversion.

Accepting Christ is a serious thing. It means allowing Him to do His work – stripping away the layers of sin, rebellion, resentment, resistance, fear, all the things that stand between ourselves and God. Even when I want to let go of these things, it is hard. It hurts when God peels off a layer, strips away what seems to be my very self, revealing the vulnerable self beneath.

What will be left of me, if I let Him do that? Can I trust Him to leave me something of myself? I can trust Him, yes, but not to leave me myself. It is precisely myself that I cannot hold back. I must give Him all. He will not leave me alone; He will remake me, in the refiner’s fire if necessary.

It is a process, like the art restorer patiently working away at an old masterpiece, removing the dulling varnish, the soot and grime of the centuries that obscure its beauty. Is it pride to say that I am that masterpiece? Only if I think that I am the creator of myself – one more layer to strip away. In truth, God is the artist, God is the Author of my being.

I understand now that the mature Christians whom I admire and emulate are not so different from me – they are simply further along in the process. God has peeled off more of the obscuring layers of their selves, so that the person God made them to be shines through more clearly.

The process of restoration and renewal will not be complete until I stand before His face. But even now, the process has already begun and indeed continues. As He strips away each layer of sin and rebellion, His light shines more clearly through me. The curious thing is that when I feel most transparent – when I feel most fully that it is Christ who works in and through me, and that I am simply the lens through which His light shines – that I also feel most fully and completely myself.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1-5, 14)

Related posts:

1. Advent and Christmas Poetry 3: Conversion – T.S. Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi”
2. Sin and Love
3. Hope and Love on the Way of the Cross: The Transfiguration of Jesus

I write this in the waning hours of the Feast of Christ the King, the last Sunday before Advent. It is a day to focus our attention on our Lord as the King of kings and Lord of lords, the Alpha and the Omega.

Every day I feel the pressure to put myself first: to look out for number one, to consider that I know better than anyone else what’s best for me. In this fallen world, too often those in authority focus on power rather than on those entrusted to their care… though perhaps we are too ready to hear reports of the abuse of authority, for such stories allow us to cultivate a distrust of authority, an excuse to be disobedient. More subtly, sometimes those who ought to be in authority over us have abdicated that authority, and taken the easier route of saying “Whatever you want, that’s fine.” It’s easier to say “do whatever you want” than to do the hard, unappreciated work of reproof and correction, training and teaching people who don’t want to accept authority.

Yet we have an authority above all other authority. We have a King. We can trust Him with our whole hearts, devote ourselves entirely to Him, and obey Him in all things, knowing that He is perfectly good – indeed, knowing that He loves us and cares for us, even to the point of dying on the Cross for us. And our King will never abdicate His position; He is eternally seated at the right hand of the Father.

Knowing that, we can turn back to our imperfect leaders, pastors, teachers, parents and see in them the echo, as it were, of His perfect authority. Only God deserves our perfect and unconditional obedience, but while we wait for His coming again, we can certainly work a little harder to practice obedience in imperfect situations – so that we, like the servants in the parable from today’s Gospel reading, having been faithful in a very little, may hear our Lord’s voice saying “Well done, good servant!” (Luke 19:11-27).

Where does George Herbert come into this? An Anglican priest and poet, he gave up a dazzling potential career at the king’s court to answer the call to be a pastor over a small, rural parish. Herbert knew well what it was like to struggle with obedience – and he is a model to us, for he chose obedience (hard though it was) and found joy.

Here is Herbert’s poem “The Collar.” Notice the play on words: the title refers to the traditional priest’s collar, which is a symbol of his submission to Christ, but also to “collar” more prosaically as a restraining device. Listen to how the speaker gets angry, expressing his frustration, rebellion, and even his stated intention to reject the calling of service. Herbert lets us know that he understands that obedience can be hard, bitterly hard; he knows that sometimes when we are called to obey, we see nothing but bleakness ahead. And then pay attention to the closing lines of the poem. When we hear God’s still, small voice… how will we respond?

“The Collar”

I struck the board, and cry’d, No more.

I will abroad.

What? shall I ever sigh and pine?

My lines and life are free; free as the road,

Loose as the wind, as large as store.

Shall I be still in suit?

Have I no harvest but a thorn

To let me blood, and not restore

What I have lost with cordial fruit?

Sure there was wine

Before my sighs did dry it: there was corn

Before my tears did drown it.

Is the year only lost to me?

Have I no bays to crown it?

No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted?

All wasted?

Not so, my heart: but there is fruit,

And thou hast hands.

Recover all thy sigh-blown age

On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute

Of what is fit, and not. Forsake thy cage,

Thy rope of sands,

Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee

Good cable, to enforce and draw,

And be thy law,

While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.

Away; take heed:

I will abroad.

Call in thy death’s head there: tie up thy fears.

He that forbears

To suit and serve his need,

Deserves his load.

But as I rav’d and grew more fierce and wild

At every word,

Methought I heard one calling, Child:

And I reply’d, My Lord.

Related posts:

1. Honoring Christ the King
2. Experiencing the Trinity in Poetry 3: John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 12
3. Listening to God