Dear Friends,
While it is only week three of Advent, this year it really is our final week of preparation for Christmas. I hope it is all going well and that you are finding time to encounter the presence of God in the midst of all that must be done before Christmas happens. For your reflection this week, I would like to give you some thoughts from Dr. Wendy Wright who taught for years at Creighton in the Spirituality Program. I think it is wise to get a feminine view of preparing for Christmas:
There is a strange timeliness to the experience of the actual coming of a child. Most women who have borne children can attest to this fact. In the days of waiting, time, as medium of change, dominates consciousness. This new life growing inside you profoundly shapes your own life. A new self-concept grows, a new sense of embodiment impinges on consciousness, a new “other” holds sway from within. You are not who you thought you were. Rather, you are a person whose identity – psychic, spiritual, and physical – is intimately linked to another person. You are a person overlapped in time and space, sharing breath and blood and heartbeat. During the waiting most women are keenly aware of time. Time measured out between obstetrical appointments, time weighed in added pounds and unwieldiness, time parceled out by the growing awareness of presence – from the first moth-like flutters of the “quickening” to the astonishing protrusions of stretching feet and arms. Submerged in an ocean of time – transformed by it, submissive to it – your deepest desire is cast like a tiny float out on its shoreless waves.
Suddenly the coming is upon you, and time dissolves. There is only the present in its gleaming, stark clarity. No past, no future, there is only now – this time which is strangely timeless in its intensity. There are as many different experiences of birth as there are women, but for all of them the waiting is over. The promised one bursts forth, new life sings out, the primal rush of blood and water carries the miracle into our arms. It is a moment whose mystery is timeless. (The Vigil, pg. 76)
There is something magical about Christmas especially when it seen through the eyes of wonder. And what is more wonderous and magical than the birth of a baby? I often get the pleasure of watching your faces at Mass when you are sitting behind or near a baby. You are transformed into a being that is making faces and smiling, achieving communication of care and kindness without words because Mass is going on. I am sure the baby is communicating back to you as well. My guess is that your heart is transformed during this encounter with a baby; you experience the magic of new life, you are made young again.
This week, take a few moments of silence and join with those whose lives are transformed through the process of waiting for a child and the birth of a child. God wants to do a similar transformation in you this Advent week. Be transformed into a place where Jesus can dwell and be loved.
Peace,
Fr. Damian
P.S. I am in Kearney, Nebraska on Saturday giving an Advent Day of Reflection at Prince of Peace Parish. I will be back for Sunday Masses.